Things felt lonelier than ever without Paige around. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be to fall back into my old routine. My cabin seemed bigger and more isolated than ever, and my bed still smelled of her.
No matter how many times I washed the sheets and vacuumed my mattress, it still smelled of her. She had penetrated everything about this cabin, and laid her memory here to rest and haunt me after she was gone. I was glad to have the day off work today because I was in no frame of mind to be operating heavy machinery.
Damn it. I had purposefully isolated and secluded myself from the world. Now I just wanted one woman to share it with me and I felt her presence everywhere but she wasn’t even here.
As I laid there in my bed hoping Paige would call, there was a knock at my door.
Reminiscent of a few nights before, I hopped from my bed and threw on some clothes. The knock was light and rapid, and had I not already been awake, I would’ve slept right through it. Images of Paige standing there crossed my mind. I pictured myself throwing my arms around her and pulling her into the cabin.
I thought about how I wanted to hold her naked body against mine and simply sway in the middle of my kitchen. I didn’t want to fuck her, and I sure as hell didn’t want to share her with the public.
All I wanted was to feel her cheek pressed against my chest.
However, when I opened the door, I was shocked by who was standing there. It was the woman in the white car. The one with the big brown eyes and the scarf around her head. Her daughter was with her. I looked down at the little girl, whose eyes were bright blue, and suddenly, my memories came crashing down onto my shoulders.
I knew why this woman had seemed so familiar to me when I saw her at the store that day.
“Could we come in?” she asked.
“Marlie,” I said.
Her smile was bittersweet. “Hi, Zach.”
I looked down at the little girl as she clung desperately to her mother’s leg. I studied her jet-black hair and her chubby little cheeks. I took in the ringlet curls that were pulled into two little pig tails on either side of her head. She had long legs like her mother, but stern features that were all-too familiar.
“Please?” Marlie asked.
Swallowing hard, I stepped to the side. I remembered that night at the docks now. Marlie walked into my cabin while holding her daughter’s hand, and the memories came rushing back.
Her long legs in those thigh-high boots and her slender shoulders pressed into my body. Her short brown hair that framed her delicate face perfectly and the way her long, slender fingers danced in the curls of my hair. Curls her little girl had sitting on top of her head.
Marlie made herself comfortable on my couch as I stood at the door. The little girl climbed up into her lap, burying her face into her mother’s bosom.
I studied the two of them closely, taking stock of Marlie’s slim features. She had always been a slender girl from what I could remember, but she looked almost sickly. Her skin didn’t have the vibrant tan to it that I remembered, and her eyes seemed a little too sunken for the rest of her face.
I could see the little girl peeking her curious blue eyes out from underneath her mother’s chin.
“Could I talk to you for a second?” Marlie asked.
My eyes traveled to the little girl as she looked up at her mother. “How old is your daughter?”
“Would you like to answer him, Blithe?” Marlie asked.
The little girl looked hesitantly into her mother’s eyes before she turned her gaze toward me. Her eyes were even shaped like mine.
“Four,” she said lightly.
My legs grew weak as I slammed the door to my cabin closed.
“If I tell you I’ll apologize, will you let me speak?” Marlie asked.
I had no words to communicate just how blindsided I was by all of this. I turned my head toward a woman I’d seen maybe three times before she’d dropped off the face of the planet, and now I knew why. She had been pregnant, and instead of telling me, she ran off to live whatever life she felt she couldn’t live with me.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m sick, Zach,” she said.
“How sick?” I asked.
“Please, will you come sit down?”
She beckoned for me to sit beside her, but I could see the fear in her daughter’s eyes. Well, our daughter’s eyes. I slowly walked over, and I watched as she curled deeper into her mother. I decided to sit in a chair across from them.
Holy shit. I had a daughter.
“It’s terminal,” Marlie said.
“What’s terminal?” I asked.
“The cancer I have. It’s why I look the way I do.”
My eyes roamed up and down her body. Her skin was pale. She looked thin. Her eyes had lost their luster, and she seemingly had no hair on her head underneath that scarf.
“What kind of cancer is it?” I asked.
“It’s a brain tumor,” she said. “The details don’t really matter now. Part of it was inoperable, and treatment isn’t working.”
I tried to speak, but it was like my brain was no longer functioning correctly. I had so many questions, questions I never thought I’d ever ask a woman.
Why didn’t she tell me? How was her pregnancy? Did my daughter know about me? How long had she been battling all this alone? Was there any family in the picture?
What the fuck was happening?
“I was diagnosed about a year ago. Just before Blithe’s third birthday. They told me my chances were slim, but I decided to shoot for the moon anyway.”
“How, uh, much longer?” Holy hell, I couldn’t even fucking ask her the damn question.
“It’s coming soon,” she said. “I can feel it. I came off treatment a couple of months ago in order to enjoy the rest of the life I did have. I took Blithe to all my favorite places. Santa Barbara. The Space Needle.”
“You always did like that touristy shit,” I said.
“You remember,” she said, smiling.
“You talked about it,” I said, nodding. Now that I remembered how I knew her— or, the old her, the one who looked and acted very different from this new, diseased her— the memories were still flooding back.
Our eyes connected, and it took me back to the short time we’d spent together. I’d only seen her three other times besides that night on the dock, but she had forever imprinted herself onto my life. The memories I had buried started to resurface, drawing my eyes toward the small little girl sitting in her lap.
She was pressed as close to her mother as she could get.
“Blithe knows something’s wrong, but she doesn’t understand,” Marlie said.
“Is there something I can do?” I swallowed thickly as Marlie’s tearful eyes rose back to mine.
“I’m here because Blithe should be with family after I’m gone.”
Her words stunned me. She wanted me to take Blithe? Did she not have family that could take this little girl? Surely, this scared, raven-haired little girl had other people who loved her and could take her in. People she knew and was more comfortable being around.
“You don’t have anyone else who can take her?” I asked, knowing how shitty it sounded the moment the question left my lips.
“You’re her father, Zach,” Marlie said.
“Biologically, sure, but I’m not her daddy. There’s a difference in those two roles.”
“She has no one else,” Marlie whispered. “She’ll go into a foster home if you don’t take her.”
I watched Marlie’s eyes sink back to the little girl who was now asleep in her lap. Light snores were coming from between her cupid’s bow lips. They were shaped just like her mother’s.
“I want better for her than that,” Marlie said.
“Marlie, I’m not equipped to be a father. Surely you understood that when you made the choice not to tell me.”
“I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure how you were going to react,” she said.
“Exactly. You know me well enough to know that I’m not father material. I don’t live in a place that would support a child, nor do I work a job that would support the schedule of a child.”
“There is no other option,” she said. “Do you know what it’s like in the foster care system? Do you know anyone who grew up in it?”
My mind careened back to the memory of Paige. I could remember the look of utter regret and sorrow in her eyes when she told me she’d grown up in that system. She didn’t want to talk about it, and she was standoffish about the entire subject. I couldn’t imagine the abandonment she felt growing up like that, but I knew if I put this little girl there, that was what she would feel like.
Abandoned.
Marlie continued. “Back when Blithe was born, I knew what your reaction would be, so I didn’t tell you. You were a wild bad boy, and I was attracted to that, but now it’s time to step up. Now, the future of a delicate life relies on the decision you make. Just like it did for me four years ago.”
“Holy fuck,” I said, whispering.
“I know it’s a lot to take in. Believe me, I get it. You can think on it, but I’m going to need an answer by tomorrow.”
“Did you get twenty-four hours to make your decision when you were debating whether to tell me you were pregnant?” I asked. I knew it was a low blow, and I immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry.”
“I need an answer by tomorrow because I still have time to try the formal adoption route before things get bad,” she said. “I’m counting my days, but I’m trying to make the best of them. If you give me an answer by tomorrow, I still might be able to save Blithe from the system.”
Holy fuck, I was a shitty human being. “How can I get in touch with you?”
Marlie dug a piece of paper out of her pocket before she tossed it onto the table between us. “That’s my cell number and the name of my hotel. You can call me there.”
I reached for the sliver of paper, and Marlie started to gather her things. The scared little girl was sleeping soundly on her shoulder as she struggled with her bag. I leapt to my feet to help her. I picked it up and ushered her to the door, helping her down the stairs and into her car. I watched as she buckled her daughter—our daughter—into her car seat as she slept.
There was so much I was clueless on when it came to raising a child.
“I’ll keep my phone close to me,” Marlie said. “I won’t judge you either way. I know this is a shock, and as long as you get back to me by tomorrow evening, I should have enough time to arrange something else.”
“Why were you driving by my work?” I asked.
She opened the car door and stood there with her eyes hooked onto mine.
“All those times you drove by and could’ve come in. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wasn’t driving by to talk with you,” she said.
“Then what were you doing?”
“I was driving by to see if you were stable. To see if you had pieced yourself together a bit. You were a mess four years ago, Zach. My first priority is protecting my daughter.”
As angry as that made me, I understood where she was coming from. I was still battling a great number of demons when we first met. I still had anger issues, and I was still harboring anger and resentment toward my father.
Maybe that was why she didn’t tell me she was pregnant. “Drive safe,” I said.
“Call me tomorrow,” she said.
I watched her pull away from my cabin before I started back inside. The piece of paper in my hand felt heavier than the weight of the world. I rested my back against my front door, my mind spinning with questions and worry and doubt. The one thing that stood out more than anything was my mother.
She would’ve been a grandmother, and she would’ve been fucking ecstatic.
Leaning my head against the door, I closed my eyes. I didn’t have the first idea about what it meant to take care of a child. There were so many things I would need for this cabin. Hell, perhaps it was beyond salvaging to get into good enough shape for a child to live in. I was probably looking at finding a new place altogether.
I didn’t have any family or support network to walk me through this shit. How the fuck would I even cook for a child? What did they eat? Surely, she wasn’t eating baby food anymore, but did she eat steak or something?
A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts, and I slid it open immediately.
A hand slapped a wrinkled piece of paper against my chest, surprising the shit out of me. Paige stood in front of me, her eyes wide and her head cocked to the side. I furrowed my brow at her before I grabbed the paper. My eyes scanned the document.
“Did you know?” Paige asked.
There it was. All the proof I needed on Blithe’s birth.
I frowned. How the fuck did Paige have my daughter’s birth certificate?