Chapter 15
The terrible traffic on the road forces me to sit behind the wheel, my thoughts running around, tossed from side to side irrationally, like a tennis ball from one racket to another. My father will put things right, I know that. Colin was so desperate that he decided to invent nasty lies about the man who was there for me, my own father, who saved me time after time when I felt the ground dropping from under my feet. Horrendous lies. He never sent money, because I would have received it. I remember our wedding day, every second of it. My father came back with the veil, and together we all went to the church and waited for Colin. Our eyes were fixed on the door expecting it to open, and my mom glanced at her wristwatch again and again. The minutes passed, and my smile changed into growing anxiety.
I dialed Colin and got his voicemail.
I kept telling myself he must have forgotten to charge it.
I left him a message and kept waiting. My father left first. Without bothering to ask, I assumed he had gone looking for my groom. After all, where else could he have gone?
The traffic light turns green and I hurry up on the road, my leg trembling with the panic attack climbing from my knees to my belly. Lies and more lies, that's what my ex-boyfriend excels at. The masked champion who returned to hurt anyone he could.
I stop with a squeal of brakes in front of the office building, lock the car and walk through the glass doors with quick steps to the elevator that leads me to the seventh floor, straight to Baringes Export.
The sign on the door welcomes me. My father has been working here since I was little. How many times did he wait for the promotion that never came? How many times was he passed on, the job given to someone younger than him?
I push away the thought and go in, the receptionist smiling at me from behind the shiny marble counter.
"May I help you?" She doesn't know me, I have not been here for years.
"I'm looking for Frank Heart." I can't smile back at her.
"Is he expecting you?"
"I'm his daughter." I'm sorry I didn't call from the road to tell him I was coming. He would wait and spare me the embarrassment.
The receptionist picks up the phone and dials, waiting quietly for a response from the other side
"Mr. Heart," she says eventually, "your daughter is at the reception desk." After a few more seconds she hangs up and smiles again.
"The last door on the left," she gestures toward the hallway.
"Thank you," I reply, my legs managing to cooperate as I walk down the long hallway and knock on the office door.
"Come in!" My father's voice booms from the other side. I open the door and a sense of shame overwhelms me. Am I really going to ask him after everything he did for me?
"Elizabeth?"
"Can we talk?" I close the door behind me and walk into the little gray office. Behind my father's desk stands a picture of Vivian smiling broadly, and on the walls hang work boards full of plans.
I have to concentrate on my plan, unveil the lies that Colin told me.
"What's going on?" My father gets up from his chair and moves toward me, worry rising over his wrinkled face.
"I feel like an idiot for even asking," I'm looking for the right words, "an idiot for even considering, but Colin was in the store, and he told me this crazy story."
"Do you want to sit down?" He gestures to the empty chair in front of his desk.
"No," I shake my head, not taking my eyes off him, looking for signs that will reveal the truth. "Just tell me he's lying, that's all I really need, tell me he didn't send you money every month, that you didn't know why he left."
"Elizabeth," he pulls the chair out without answering me, my heart pounding. "You better sit down . . ."
"I don't want to sit!" I step back, my eyes darting between his. "Tell me he's lying and we'll get it over with, okay?"
"It's not that simple." He keeps his cool, doesn't raise his voice even a little.
"Not simple?" I open my eyes wide. "It's very simple, did you meet Colin at our house on my wedding day and make him leave?"
He has to answer this question. He cannot get away from it.
"I was in your house when I picked up something you forgot." He's trying to evade, damn it!
"My veil, what did you tell him?" I curl my fingers so tight I'm afraid I'll cut my own flesh.
"What I did was meant to protect you." He takes a step toward me, but I pull back from him.
"What did you tell him?"
"That he ruined your life the day you met!" he snaps, "And that he'd continue to destroy you and endanger you and your baby, and that I wasn’t going to stand by and see my only daughter hurt because of him!"
And just like that, in one moment, the truth is revealed and it shatters the lies, along with everything I believed. My world, as I knew it. The truth is unveiled in all its ugliness, and I'm surrounded by traitors. Everyone lied to me, deceived me, let me believe the false stories.
"Didn't you consider going to the police or telling me what happened? What were you thinking?" I scream, ignoring the possibility that someone will appear at the door and ask me to calm down. "Who gave you the right to play with my life like that, lie to me all these years, let me believe he just didn’t love me?"
The realization descends upon me, without my being prepared for it, and floods a thousand new questions—my father forced Colin to write the letter. Colin never meant those words. Has he stopped loving me over the years?
"You would have looked for him," my father continues, refusing to apologize, "and you would have found him easily. What if he came back earlier? What danger would he have put you in?"
"I don't know, you took away my right to choose, you deprived Vivian of her father, we could have solved it."
"You didn't see him," my father raises his hand in the air, "wounded, bleeding, you didn't see the criminals that entered your house. Do you think I would let him stay, let them chase you?"
"Both of you are liars, and I won't be surprised if Mom was also involved."
"Your mom doesn't know anything." My father turns pale in a moment. If my mom doesn't know, she's about to find out, and he'll pay the price.
"You've had more than five years to fix this," I point to my father accusingly, "but you let my heart bleed."
"I had no choice." He seems much less sure of himself now.
"Bullshit!" I shout at him scornfully. "It was your choice to lie to me, to deceive me, to persuade me to move on and find someone else. He was meant to be my husband!"
I can't look at him anymore, am unable to be with him in the same room.
"I'll never trust you again," I take another step back toward the door, "neither you nor him, I don't want to ever see you again."
"Lizzie!"
"How does it feel to lose the only child you have left?" My fingers close on the door handle and when I turn to open it I strain out, "Do you still think you made the right choice?"
"Don't turn your back on me!" he calls out.
"You turned your back on me when you stood in the church and pretended you didn't know where Colin was, when you lied that you were going to look for him." I slam the door behind me, fury in my veins.
Wait till I tell Mom. Wait for her to hear what you did, how you ruined my life.
The descent in the elevator continues for an eternity. The doors open and I burst out of the building, barely managing to get the car keys out of my bag. With trembling fingers I put them in the door, sit behind the wheel and start the engine.
Colin didn't trust me to deal with the problem. He listened to my father, the man who hated him and waited for him to disappear, instead of coming to me and thinking together what to do. I'd have run away with him. If he had asked, I would have left everything behind just to be with him. The truth is, I will never know what danger I would have put Vivian in or what the consequences might have been. The decision was taken away from me.
I dial my mom and put the phone on speaker, tears streaming down my cheeks and washing my face. If she knew, I don't know what I'll do. If she lied to me too, I’ll be all alone.
"Lizzie?" My mom's sure voice is unaware of the bomb I'm about to throw.
"I know why Colin left." I pull my nose, my voice shivering in tears. "I know everything."
"Everything?"
"Please tell me you had no idea." A miserable sob comes out of my mouth.
"Elizabeth, what are you talking about?"
"About his father debts, that your husband paid and in return forced Colin to leave, and the money he sent dad every month."
"I don't understand a word you're saying." She sounds confused. "What debts? What money?"
"Ask your husband." I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand. "Ask him what happened, ask him how he ruined my life!"
I hang up the phone and sob, my head falling to the wheel with the feeling that the world has come to an end. Where am I going from here? A cruel headache begins to pound in my temples. Ever since Colin came back, it feels like all I do is cry. He broke my heart so many years ago and he keeps breaking it, over and over again. I have to gain back control, but how can I? And how could my father, of all the people in the world, have been able to do that?
I can't move the car from the parking lot in front of the office building, can't move my legs. I ignore the phone that's ringing, and then ringing again.
They're looking for me . . . let them.
If Viv hadn't discovered that Colin is her father, I'd pack our suitcases and get the hell away, but now I can't do that to her. She expects to meet him, and I don't want to think about the moment when I'll have to open the door and bring him back into our lives, her life.
In a few hours she will be back from daycare asking to see him, and I will have to agree.
If you'd just come to me, Colin, and told me back then, we'd have solved the problem somehow. If you had not run away, everything might have looked different.
My mom wipes a tear from the corner of her eye as she stands behind me in the bridal salon and watches me measure my wedding dress. It's design is so simple, so me. I don't care that my belly is showing and that my chest has grown at least one size. I'd better shut my mouth and not make a mistake remarking how pleased Colin is.
To be honest, I'm pleased too, especially when my fiancé stares at me at every opportunity and then leaps on me. How fortunate am I? Colin knows how to kiss, and he . . . knows what he's doing, not that I have anything to compare to. Unlike me he came with experience, a thought I repress successfully most of the time.
In the end, no matter how many girls he was with, I'm the one he is marrying. Next week he'll put a ring on my finger, for better or for worse, and I can't wait. I long eagerly for the time we'll go shopping for a baby crib, for the moment we'll hold her in our arms.
Colin will be an amazing father, I know it. He will protect her as only he can.
He will lay the world at our feet, as he promised, but it will be only the icing on the cake, because I already have everything I've dreamed of. Everything I need.
God only knows how I managed to get home, how I didn't get in an accident. How I pressed the gas and steered the wheel, how I pulled the brake and parked, shutting off the engine. My autopilot finally kicked into action and got me here, to the couch where I have been crying for an hour and a half. Whoever is knocking on my door can disappear.
"Elizabeth!" My mom's voice reverberates. "Open the door now!"
"Go away," I cry, "I don't want to see you."
"I'm not asking you, I have a key. Open the door or I'll let myself in!"
"What don't you understand?" I scream. "Go away, and take everybody with you!"
I hear the key enter the keyhole, turning and opening the bolt. The knob goes down and the door opens, my mom storming inside.
"Get off the sofa, now!" She walks briskly toward me.
"No." I curl up, bring my knees to my chest and hug them tightly.
"Stop acting like a child and deal with the situation." She stands in front of me with a frown.
"Don't tell me what to do." I turn my back to her.
"You're not a baby, stop acting like one."
"Excuse me?" My body seems to be moving on its own. "I'm a baby?"
"Excellent, you're standing, now you're acting like a grown woman."
"Is that all you wanted, for me to stand up?" I exclaim.
"Elizabeth," she breathes deeply, her eyes burning, "I just got out of your father's office, I'm not in the mood for games."
"What did he have to say?" I roll my eyes in contempt.
"Not much, as you can imagine, and I didn't have the patience to listen to his excuses. Now explain to me from the beginning." She seems to have no intention of settling down, standing in the middle of my little living room and crossing her arms.
"Colin's father got into debt," I repeat Colin's story, only now believing him, or at least a large part of it. "The thugs who wanted to collect the debt came to our house on our wedding day and beat the crap out of Colin, just as Dad came in to fetch my veil. Colin had no money. You know what state we were in. So your husband found a creative solution—he paid the guys so they would not come back to find Colin and me and then he made my fiancé leave."
"What do you mean forced him?" She looks as skeptical as I was when I heard the story just hours ago.
"He threatened to hurt him, that he would end up like Thomas Brooke." The second the name leaves my lips her face turns pale.
"Thomas Brooke died in a car accident," she says with difficulty.
"And Dad told Colin that it was what awaited him if he stayed."
"And he believed him?" She looks stunned, like a mirror that reflects me.
"Colin was laying on the floor bleeding, I think he would have believed anything at that moment," I whisper in pain as pictures begin to crystallize in my head. My mind is doing the worst thing it can, forcing me to imagine the man I loved lying where I'm standing now, wounded and bruised.
"Your father didn't kill Thomas Brooke," she shakes her head. "He might have wanted to, but it was a combination of alcohol and speed."
"How can you be sure?" I mutter.
"Because I know him, he wouldn't. Thomas Brooke was at a party, got into the car and crashed into a tree, and when that happened, I didn't shed a tear."
"It doesn't change the fact that he paid the bullies and made my fiancé disappear." My father may not be a murderer, but he's still another kind of shit.
"No," she stares at me sternly, "it doesn't change that fact. That's why he's packing his things right now and going to find another place to live."
"He's what?" My heart falls in pure panic.
"He needs to think about the consequences and overcome his hatred. What he did to you . . . It's beyond forgiveness."
So now my parents are separating? Now my mom will pay the price?
"I shouldn't have told you." I hold my head in both hands.
"And then what, would you lie to me like he did?"
"He didn't mean to." My father definitely didn't expect for my mom to divorce him. Why the hell am I defending him?
"Your father is an adult and he should have known better. Colin was only twenty one then and he wanted to protect you. He saw no way out."
"Don't do that," I point a warning finger. "Don't take his side."
"I'm not taking sides, I'm just calling it as I see it."
"Don't tell me why he left, because I know well enough, he chose not to come to me!"
"I won't argue with you about that." She gives up in surrender, when a knock at the door causes both of us to look away together.
"It's your father."
"It's Colin."
We say together in one breath without moving our gazes. The air in the room seems to freeze, and for a moment I forget the summer outside, as waves of chill passes through my body.
"Elizabeth?" The bass voice I feared echoes from the other side.
"I can't talk to him," I whisper.
"You can." My mom ignores me and takes a step toward the door.
"Stop!" I shout at her, "Vivian knows about him, it's not that simple."
My mom turns slowly, her body tense. "When did you tell her?"
"She found out yesterday on accident and she's expecting him to come today. What am I going to do?" I whisper in horror.
"You open the door and listen to him." She throws herself out of her halt and advances with her plan to get my ex in the house.
"Mom, please," I implore her, almost pleading, but she doesn't answer my request and opens the door.
"Mrs. Heart." Colin loses his ample confidence when he stands in front of my mom, who doesn't take away her accusing gaze.
"I'm glad you know who I am." She stands in the doorway and still doesn't let him in.
"I'm sorry." He bothers to apologize to her? Where are all the apologizes he owes me?
"Stupid boy," she says to him. "If my husband had problems, you should have come to me. You knew me well enough to know I could handle him."
"I just wanted to protect Elizabeth." He puts his hands in his pockets.
"You failed, young man." She doesn't approve. "You left her alone. Do you think she was safe, that her heart was protected?"
"Elizabeth," he looks over my mom's shoulder and our eyes lock, confused and helpless.
"If I were you I'd grovel." She opens the door and lets him walk inside. "Call me later, I want to know what the boy has to say."
Colin knows it's best for him to shut up and not resent the nickname my mom chose.
"I'll call," I strain in suspense as she steps out and closes the door behind her, leaving me to face my new reality.
"Elizabeth—” Colin opens his mouth, but I cut him off.
"Why don't you call me Liz?" My eyes are fixed on his surprised face.
"I didn't think . . ." He frowns, as if straining his mind to find a good answer.
"No, Colin, you didn't think."
"I just can't." He remains standing at a safe distance from me by the front door. Not taking any step in my direction.
"Can't what, show some humanity?" I insult him.
"Show you affection." His answer leaves me slack jawed.
"You don't like me?" I mutter through the curtain of shock on my face.
"Is that what you think I said?" He seems astonished by my conclusion. "I didn't say I don't like you, I said I can't show you affection."
"Just as you can't apologize," I add more fuel to the burning fire that is our lives.
"Yes," he nods.
"You should apologize!" I roar out of nowhere, my patience over. "I deserve an apology, I deserve a thousand apologies and you'll give them to me, you owe them to me!"
"I can't!" He raises his voice back at me, his words hitting me like a fist to my belly, threatening to fold me to the floor.
"When exactly did you stop loving me?"
"Elizabeth," he grits his teeth.
"When did it happen?" The pain cuts through me like a sharp knife. "When you enlisted and didn't look back, or when you slept with the first girl and discovered that you didn't miss me?"
"Watch it," his breathing quickens, his enormous chest rising and falling, pressing against to his white button shirt with every breath.
"Answer me!" I burst out. "When did it happen? With the second girl, the third, the tenth? Or when you ran away on our wedding day and decided to leave me alone, when did you stop loving me?"
"You know the answer!" He gives me a look that makes me shrink. "Don't make me say it!"
"Say it," I whisper stubbornly. "Don't hide anything from me."
"Never." His words are a tornado that threatens to pass my path and take me with it.
"You're lying." I shake my head in total refusal to accept what he said.
"You asked for an answer and you got one." He stabilizes his steadfastness. "You got a lot of answers. Your father forced me to leave, but it was my choice to run away from his threat. I came back because I have nothing to lose anymore, and I've never, ever, stopped loving you."
"You're playing games." I don't know how I still manage to stand, how I manage to breathe. How could it be that he still loves me?
"That's why I don't apologize, Elizabeth." He gestures at me with his hand. "That's why I keep my distance. Because I know that if I get closer, you will reject me. It's easier to stay cold and alienated than to face the fact that you might never love me again."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"Believe me, I've had enough years to think about it, I'm pretty sure of what I'm saying."
"I don't love you anymore." I stick a poisoned arrow in his heart. "And I can't forgive you."
I'm not sure it's true. I'm not sure of anything, but it's better if that's what he thinks. Stop him from getting ideas in his head.
"I didn't think you did." He locks his jaw again, his cheekbones sticking out even more now, "but I still love you, and I'm torn between my heart, that’s begging me to woo you twenty four seven, and my head, telling me to let you live your life."
"Don't woo me," I falter in alarm.
"Just so we're clear," his voice rattles, "Vivian is not the only one I came back for."
"We're clear." I nod in understanding.
"And tell your mom I'm not a boy."
"She kicked my dad out of the house," my voice breaks. "My family is destroyed."
"The only thing I'm sorry for is that my father didn't die five years ago. I was twenty one and made bad decisions, but that's no reason for Vivian not to have a dad."
"Your daughter is expecting you at five." I decide to end the conversation.
"I'll come over."
"You can go now." I motion to the door, my headache growing.
"Good bye, Elizabeth." He gives me one final look, then turns his back and walks out of the house that was ours, before foreign forces intervened and changed the rules of the game. I crash on the sofa, my heart pounding wildly.
Never.
He never stopped loving me, and my father is a villain. Colin made the wrong decision, which seemed logical to him at that cursed moment when he lay on the floor bleeding, and from that moment on I had to live with the consequences.
The air is drawn from my lungs, closing on my windpipe.
I don't love you anymore, and I can't forgive you.
And now all I can do is pray to God that he won't make another wrong choice, that he won't harm our daughter who is only starting to know him.