Fourteen
Kristmas
I don’t get a lot of visitors.
It’s not that I don’t have friends. I have friends. Okay maybe friends is a strong word—I have women I work with. A group of fellow teachers I go to Happy Hour with on the occasional Friday. Maybe one or two of them close enough to catch a movie with on a Sunday afternoon or a local art exhibit and a glass of wine or two on a Friday night.
But that’s the extent of it. I don’t have a person. Someone I can count on. Someone who will drop everything and come running if I need them. Someone who would call on me to do the same. I never thought too much about it. Never let myself feel sorry for myself for being such a loser. I tell myself that I don’t need a person. I don’t need people the way other people do. I never did.
But that’s not exactly true and I realize it the second I open the door and see Mad standing on the front porch. Everything about him is dark. From the watch cap tugged low over his ears to the way he’s looking at me over the top of his daughter’s head.
That’s when I get it.
I don’t need a person because I already have one. I’ve always had one. Someone I’d walk the ends of the earth for. Someone I’d crawl through hell on broken glass to get to.
I have Mad.
And even after I didn’t have him anymore I never replaced him. Never even tried. Because there’s no replacing someone who was your everything. Trying to fill the hole he left behind would’ve only served to prove how empty it is without him.
“Can we come in?”
I force my gaze away from her father and look down at the little girl standing in front of me, giving her a suspicious once-over. “I don’t know… what’s the password?”
Maggie’s face is practically split in two by a grin that’s so excited it borders on awe-struck. “Terabithia.”
Terabithia.
My gaze snaps up for a moment to land on Mad. His gaze is passive. Almost blank.
“Lucky guess.” I give her a wink and she giggles as I move aside so she and her father can come in.
“Not really.” She hands a piece of folded construction paper to her father before dragging her beanie off her head. Turning back to me, she gives me another gap-toothed grin. “It’s my favorite story.” she says, struggling to unbutton her coat with mittened fingers. Sighing, she gives up and starts tugging off her gloves. “Well, that one and the one where you convinced Dad he could fly if he jumped off the roof of the garage with kites tied to his arms.”
Her off-handed admission that Mad’s told her about me is almost too much. Nearly pushes me up the stairs and down the hall. Into my room so can hide under the bed until they’re gone.
Don’t you think you’ve hidden long enough?
Thinking fast, I drop to my knees and unbutton Maggie’s coat, pushing each button through its loop with trembling fingers. “Well, in my defense, I was eight and I really did think it would work.” Coat unbuttoned, I pull it off her shoulders. She’s wearing a pair of thick, bright red leggings topped with a white, cable-knit sweater. “Also, your dad got me plenty.”
She gives me a solemn nod while I work off her boots. “Like the time he put a rubber snake in your toilet?”
“Exactly like that.” I laugh even though I can feel the hot sting of tears press against the corners of my eyes. “You know I still use a broomstick to lift the toilet lid when I have to go?”
Before she can respond, Nan pops her head around the corner. “Hey, kid,” she says, aiming a conspiratorial grin in Maggie’s direction. “You want to frost a birthday cake.”
She aims a pleading look at her father and he laughs. “Go for it—just remember the frosting goes on the cake, Magpie.”
She lets out an excited whoop, shoving her discarded gloves into his hand before taking off. She gets halfway to where Nan is waiting for her when she stops and turns around to look at me. “I’m glad you’re real,” she says, splitting a grin between her father and me before disappearing through the doorway.
With Maggie gone, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How to keep pretending that all of this is normal. That it hasn’t been ten years since I’ve seen her father. That I didn’t deliberately and decisively cut him out of my life without giving him a choice.
That he doesn’t hate me for it.
Standing slowly, I shake Maggie’s coat out, tucking her beanie into one of its pockets. Finally left with nothing left to do, I fold it over carefully over my arm.
“She’s beautiful, Mad.” I say it to the coat on my arm because acknowledging that there’s a piece of him that doesn’t belong to me hurts. Confirms that he’s lived a life without me and that pain makes me selfish.
“She looks like her mom.” His tone is guarded. Tight. He knows what I want to ask.
Who is she?
Where is she?
Did you love her?
He knows and he doesn’t want to tell me.
So I say something else.
“You told her about me.”
“Not everything.” The same guarded tone as before but there’s an underlying heat that warms my cheek. Pulls my head up and my gaze to his. He’s standing a few feet away, watching me the way he used to. Like doesn’t want to look at me but can’t look away. Can’t see anything else.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for everything.
Before I can get my mouth open to give them a voice, he speaks again. “Look,” he says, reaching up to drag his watch cap off his head before running a rough hand through his hair. “About what I said to you earlier—at the lot. I…”
I wave my hand at him to stop him, mid-sentence. “It’s okay.” I shake my head, a flush erupting across my chest to creep up my neck. “Don’t worry about it. We all say things we don’t mean when we’re angry.”
He drops his hand and stuffs his cap into his pocket. “I wasn’t angry.” He cocks a dark brow at me, head tilted slightly, a familiar smirk playing with the corner of his mouth. “Not worried either.” He starts working on the buttons of his coat, pulling them free, one by one. “And I meant every word of it.”
“Oh.” I roll my lower lip between my teeth and nod, trying to wrap my head around what he just said. What it means.
Dark gaze fixed on mine, Maddox closed the distance between us in a single stride, too fast for me to counter it. “We’re gonna have another go, you and me.” His gaze drops to my mouth, lingers there for a moment before working its way back up. “And this time, I’m not letting you get away.”