Author: Cassia Leo

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Lynette,” he says and I breathe a sigh of relief that I have Chris, and his fame and charm, to make this introduction smoother. “This is Claire,” he says, looking up at me.

He flashes me a quick smile, but I know in that one smile he’s saying, “You can do this. I’m here for you.”

I hold out my hand to her, to Abigail’s mother, and I feel the emotions building inside me, threatening to thwart me. I bite my lip to hold back the tears as I imagine all the times she probably rocked my baby to sleep, kissed her forehead, made her smile. I hold out my hand to her and she can see how difficult this is for me. She reaches her hand out slowly and I do something so stupid, but I can’t stop myself.

I pull her into a hug. “Thank you,” I whisper through the tears. She hugs me weakly and I know she wants me to let go. “I’m sorry. I’m just really grateful for… for this.”

I want to thank her for taking care of Abigail, but I’m afraid this might come across as patronizing since it’s their job to take care of her—because I wasn’t able to.

“You don’t have to apologize,” she says as she takes a step back so I can’t hug her again. “I was really scared about doing this, and Brian was pretty dead set against it, but I’ve been up many nights these past few weeks just… agonizing over what I’d want someone to do if I were in your position.”

Brian comes in and kisses Lynette’s forehead as he wraps his thick arm around her shoulders. Buchik steps forward so he’s standing off to the side between us.

“Would you like me to explain the procedure for the birth parents?” Buchik asks and I nod even though he’s obviously not asking me.

Lynette looks uncomfortable with this, but she nods.

“You can explain it to us out in the corridor,” Chris says, nodding toward the door.

I don’t want to go out there. I want to stay in here with Abigail. I haven’t even seen her yet. But I follow reluctantly as everybody shuffles out into the corridor where Buchik explains the procedure for correcting an AV canal defect.

“Does your family have a history of congenital heart defects?” Buchik asks us and Chris immediately shakes his head. Buchik turns to me awaiting my answer. Everybody is waiting for my answer, but I don’t have one.

“I don’t know.”

Is that what this was about? Did they ask us here under the guise of allowing us to see Abigail so they could find out our family history?

“I don’t have a family history. My mother died…. She’s dead. I never knew my father.” Stop it, Claire. “He raped my mother and she killed herself when I was seven. I don’t know anything about my family history. I’m sorry.” Chris grabs my hand and squeezes. “I’m sorry.”

I take off running down toward the exit door at the far end of the corridor.

“CLAIRE!” Chris calls after me, but I keep running.

My legs fly across the floor as silent as my past. Not a single secret given up. No history to speak of. I’m a ghost. A phantom. A flicker of an actual soul.

The exit doors slide open and I rush out onto the pavement then into the parking lot. I don’t stop until Senia grabs my arm and I’m wrenched backward.

“Claire!”

I cover my face in shame. “Get me out of here.”

“I thought you wanted—”

“Just get me out of here!”

I don’t want to face the judgment. The look in their eyes when they realize I gave up Abigail because I’m no better than my mother. Lynette and Brian didn’t really care about letting us see her. They just wanted to know our family history. Well, now they know. And now they can go home and breathe a sigh of relief as they realize how much better off Abigail is without us.

Senia throws her arms around me and I lose it. “You’re a good person. You deserve to know her.”

“Please just take me home.”

I ignore Chris’s phone calls and texts on the ride home. I keep telling myself it’s over now. They will never want us around Abigail. Now I just have to focus on school. I have to study for a test. I have to write a term paper on the importance of the father in the family unit. I have to call Adam.

I need him so much right now.

Chapter Twenty

Adam

I’M WOKEN BY THE PINGING sound of a voicemail message. I glance at my phone on the bedside table and see the screen is lit up. I slide it off the table and squint at the screen as my eyes attempt to adjust to the brightness. Claire just left me a voicemail at one in the morning.

I touch the screen and it automatically plays the message in my ear: I’m sorry to call you at this time. I just need to hear your voice. Call me later.

I can hear the anguish and uncertainty in her words. She has to be upset if she’s calling me at six in the morning, her time. I should never have come here.

I call her back right away and she picks up on the first ring. “Adam?”

The way she says my name with such relief is both comforting and worrying. “What happened?”

I’ve been going over our next conversation in my head all day, thinking of how I’m going to break it to her that I think we need a break from each other, to get things straightened out in our lives. She has so much going on and I want to be there for her, but I can’t. She needs someone there. If it can’t be me—fucking hell—it should be him.

“I just wish you were here,” she whispers.

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“I think I just needed to hear your voice.”

Fuck. How am I going to do this?

“I love hearing your voice,” I say as my stomach clenches with anticipation. “I wish I was there, too.”

“You sound tense.”

I take a deep breath and sit up in my bed. This room is a lot bigger than my bedroom in Wrightsville Beach. Most people think that they want spacious homes, but they don’t realize how the emptiness of a large room just amplifies the emptiness in a broken heart. And we’re all broken, in one way or another.

“I am tense.” She’s silent as she waits for me to elaborate. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“When am I ever truly okay? I’m a mess, as usual.”

I want to say, “You’re my mess, and that makes you a beautiful mess,” but I don’t want to get distracted. I need to get this over with before I lose my nerve.

“Claire, you know I love you, don’t you? You know I’d do anything for you?”

She pauses for a moment, probably trying to figure out where I’m going with this. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to talk to you. I’m trying to talk about what’s best for you.”

“What best for me? Are you trying to talk to me or are you trying to tell me what’s best for me?”

She’s not going to make this easy, not that I expected she would. I can hear each of her breaths, soft and quick on the other end of the phone and it’s killing me. She can already anticipate what’s coming.

“I don’t want to be another distraction. You need to focus on school. You can’t keep failing tests and losing sleep. You need to be healthy, physically and emotionally, if you’re going to get through this semester and all this stuff with Abigail. I just want you to have everything you need.”

“And you think that I don’t need you? How could you ever think that this would be the solution?”

“Because I can’t do anything for you from here and it’s killing me. I don’t want to worry that you’re not getting everything you need. I want to know that you’re okay. I want to know that you’re being taken care of.”

“And dumping me is supposed to ensure that I’m taken care of? Are you handing me off to Chris? Is that what this is? You’re tired of dealing with my shit so you’re just pawning me off?”

I grit my teeth as I climb out of bed and make my way to the window. I have a view of the ocean from here that’s much nicer than the partial ocean view in my Wrightsville apartment. But no ocean view is beautiful enough to paint this ugly moment pretty.

“I’m not tired of your shit. How could you even say that? And I’m not pawning you off. I’m just trying to be mature about this. This was really bad timing for me to come here. You need to focus on school and I need to focus on this project and the competition.”

My muscles are wound up so tight I could probably punch straight through this wall.

“I don’t fit into your world. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Her voice is small and dark with despair.

“Claire, you are my world, but that world is crumbling and I’m just trying to do what needs to be done to stop it.” I take a deep breath as I watch the waves roll in and out. “I’m trying to throw you another lifeline.”

The sniffle on the other end of the line makes my stomach ache. I’ve gone over this conversation a thousand times in my mind since we talked yesterday. In my mind, she got pissed and hung up on me.

“So what are we supposed to do now? Just go on with our lives as if we never knew each other? Am I still going to know you? If we break up now, we’ll never see each other again, even when you get back. Wrightsville is a hundred miles away.”

“When I get back, I’m moving to Raleigh as soon as I help Cora find a new tenant. I would love for you to wait for me, but I don’t expect you to.”

She’s full on sobbing now and my arms ache with the thought of holding her. I want to soothe her pain and make her feel loved. I want her to know that this is not permanent because I fully intend to fight for her and for our future when I get back. But we will have no future if we don’t get through this separation.

We will definitely not get through this if I have to keep hearing about all the things she’s doing with Chris and how he doesn’t give a shit about her failing a test. I don’t actually know if he doesn’t give a shit, but I get the impression that he’s less concerned with her doing well in school than he should be, probably because he never had to go to college.

“I don’t want to wait for you. I want you here now. I need you here now,” she whispers.

“Hey, let me tell you a story.”

“I don’t want to hear a story.”

“Please?”

“A story about what?”

“When I was eight years old, there was this little girl, Victoria, who used to ride her bike up and down our street every day. She would do this for hours sometimes and one day I asked my mom why Victoria always rode her bike alone.” I pause as I try to remember the exact words my mom replied with. “My mom told me that sometimes being alone is more desirable than being in a roomful of people who aren’t there. I thought I understood what she meant by that, but it turns out I didn’t really understand it until now.”

I get back in bed and lie down as I await her response.

“Are you going back to sleep?” she asks.

“Not a chance. Did you sleep okay?”

“I haven’t slept at all and I have a class in two hours.”

I don’t say it aloud, but this is exactly why we need to break up. She already has enough to worry about without having to worry about what I’m doing or if I’m going to be pissed about what she’s doing.

“I would tell you to take a day off and get some rest, but I know you won’t.”

“I don’t want to go to class.”

She sounds like a child when she says this, fragile and frightened of what awaits her. I know we have to end this conversation before I change my mind, but I can’t bear the thought of hanging up the phone. She has to be the one to say goodbye first.