Page 24 of Hero for the Holidays

“You couldn’t have given it to her,” he said. “Maybe I could have.”

“I’m twenty-nine, Landry. And I can look back on the kids we were, and I can understand why you believed the way you did. Why you were convinced that at seventeen you were equipped to be a father, that you thought it would work because you really, really wanted it to. But I’m twenty-nine-year-old me looking at thirty-year-old you, and I don’t get it. How do you not see it now?”

He looked away from her, and she kept talking.

“You expect this to work? If all you’re going to do is accuse me of taking her from you. If you refuse to see that what I did, I did forher. Not for me. Does it make you feel better to pretend that I’m the villain? Does it make you feel better to think that I felt nothing when I handed her to another woman that she was going to call mom for the rest of her life? Would it make you be certain I deserved this pain if I told you I also felt relief, along with sadness?” She shook her head.

“You didn’t have to make a complicated choice, Landry. All you had to do was make me the bad guy. And that is the simplest goddamn thing to do. You get to be the victim and the hero all rolled into one. Congratulations. I was the one carrying that baby. I was the one who had to worry about the cost of giving birth. I was the one who had to worry about the shame. I was the one who was never going to be able to dispute whether or not I was the parent. Men can run off. Then can decide they don’t want to take responsibility. It is much harder for the woman to do. But you never had to think about that, did you? You weren’t the one with something growinginside of you.”

Her breathing went jagged. “You weren’t the one who felt her move. You weren’t the one who felt the inevitability of it getting nearer and nearer every day. You weren’t the one who was so twisted up with fear and love and hope and despair that you could barely breathe. You just get to stand back and decide what youthinkI felt. And it suits you to make it simple. It suits you to tell yourself that I’m your enemy. As long as you keep doing that, I don’t think you’re going to be a good father to her. Because you’re still the seventeen-year-old boy who looked at me and hated me back then. That’s foolishness. You’re thirty years old. Be better or don’t bother.”

She looked at him, her heart beating so hard she thought it might break out of her chest. Her heart that was so twisted up in all the complicated feelings that Landry King created within her.

She knew that he thought ugly things about her. It was time to have it out. Out in the open, in the broad light of day.

“What if I can’t give you what you want?” he asked. “What if I can’t tell you that I understand why you did what you did?”

“I don’t need your understanding. But I need more than your indifference.”

He was looking at the wall, his eyes shadowed now. “You know why I’m indifferent to you?”

“Why?”

“Because that day when you brought me here and told me what you did with the baby, all that love inside of me that I felt for you turned into hate. I had a pregnant girlfriend that I loved, and she disappeared for two months, and when she came back there was no baby and she was done with me. And all I knew was that not only was Inotgoing to be a father, but that you didn’t love me.”

“That is a lie. Ididlove you. But the way that we loved wasn’t sustainable. It sure as hell wasn’t worth preserving. And it really wasn’t worth bringing a child into.”

“I thought you saved my life, Fia. You gave me something that got me through being sixteen. I’m not sure I would’ve lived through it otherwise. I guess for that I’m grateful to you. About the time you dropped me into the despair that I was in after the baby was born, well, I had decided that I was going to live by then anyway.”

His words hit her like a slap, and they left her cold. She wasn’t sure if she believed them, and that made her feel even worse. But with him... There wasn’t any trust. And that was part of the problem. They’d been a refuge for each other back then. In a weird way, even the anger had been a refuge. They’d been angry at their parents, and they’d been able to vent it on each other. But when it had come down to having to deal with adult choices, with a long-term future, they hadn’t been able to handle it. They certainly hadn’t been able to have this conversation.

They were older now, but would it be any better? They had spent all these years determinedly not dealing with themselves.

At least now they’d started it. At least they’d said some of it.

“We have to make a pact,” she said. “Because the truth is, what I did for her then, I thought was the best thing to protect her. You might not agree with me, but it’s what I believed. I still believe it. I stand by it. And what you wanted, you believed was going to be the best thing for her. We both loved her then. We both wanted the best for her as we saw it. We couldn’t make that our common ground then. For obvious reasons. But now you just have to trust that I wanted what was best for her then, and I want what’s best for her now. You have to trust that I...” Her voice broke then. “That I loved her then. And I have loved her every day since.”

She had thought of her as a baby. That little baby that she had given to the Gates. She had never let herself imagine Lila growing older. Because it had been too painful.

She had done her best to not think of it.

Now she was here. A whole thirteen-year-old. Something she hadn’t let herself imagine.

“I love her. Every day since then I’ve loved her. I want us to present a united front. I want us to be better than we were when we were teenagers. Because we have a chance to make this better. We have a chance to do better. And we have to, for her.”

“You didn’t have any confidence we could do it then,” he said.

“I didn’t think we were what she needed then. I think we might be what she needs now. Because you’re right. She’s been through too much. You asked what the point of it was, and I don’t really know. I don’t. But we’re here, and we are adults. And we can certainly put aside our—”

“You want me to put aside feeling robbed for the last thirteen years?”

“Didshefeel robbed?”

Landry took a step back, and he stopped. His face was a mask of pain. And she realized he didn’t have an answer to that. Not one that was smart. Not one that was fair.

“Did she like her life?” she pressed.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s why... She calls me Landry because she told me she had a dad. A great one.”

---