Page 61 of Hero for the Holidays

“Well, your family and mine, obviously. I wonder if we should try to invite some of the kids that go to the school? Since eventually we want to integrate her there. When she’s ready.”

“Yeah. That is true. Is there anything more awkward than being a teenager and being forced to interact with teenagers you don’t know?”

Fia laughed. “Okay. Granted. Maybe you can find out from Daniel if there are one or two people he might think are good to invite for her. He knows her pretty well now.”

“Yeah. They get along great. He loves taking on that older cousin role.”

“Perfect,” said Fia. “Then he can play older cousin and we can figure out a couple of people to invite.”

The rumor mill had definitely done its job on Four Corners. Word had spread about her and Landry’s child. And Fia had intentionallynottaken a couple of calls from her mother. She was certain that by now one of her sisters had talked to her mom. But she just didn’t have it in her.

They’d come to an okay place. Not a place of talking all that often or anything, but Fia had visited her mother in Hawaii a couple of times since she’d moved there. There was no good reason to turn down a trip to Hawaii. Not even childhood trauma.

But they didn’t talk about those dark years when her mom’s marriage had been crumbling and Fia had been doing her best to hold things together while falling apart.

She’d never been able to figure out quite why she’d made her mother so angry. She probably never would. That was okay. She didn’t need to.

She didn’t need to rehash the past any more than she already had to right now.

“Are your parents ever going to come back?”

He asked that as if he could read her mind. That was the strange thing about Landry. They really hadn’t done a good job of communicating when they were younger. She wasn’t sure they did a great job of it now. But he seemed to know what she was feeling and thinking almost as often as she did. Maybe that was why it had felt like such a betrayal when he hadn’t agreed with her then. On the most important thing. The most essential thing.

She swallowed. “I doubt it. I think we’re just going to have to accept that Lila doesn’t have functional grandparents. Though, it sounds like she didn’t before either. Jack and Melissa were isolated from their family. I don’t know why. They didn’t say. I just know that she didn’t have other relatives.”

“Yeah,” he said. “At least we have... Well, all of us.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Obviously I’ll make the cake. And we can handle a few other aspects of the food.”

“We’ve got dinner,” said Landry. “It’ll be great. A big teenage birthday party. Hell, it’s kind of a first birthday party for us.”

Fia was suddenly gripped by regret. Anguish. His words forced her to imagine a chubby one-year-old sitting in front of the cake with a single candle. Her grip slipped on the phone.

“Fia?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“I wish... I wish we had pictures of her. I’m sure they’re...somewhere. But what happened to all of her things? What happened to everything she had to give up when she went into care?”

“I can try to find out. But I have a feeling if it was easily accessed her caseworker would have said.” He sighed and Fia felt it across the distance. “I have a feeling finding it would be somewhat miraculous.”

“Well,” she said. “I guess we’re in the middle of something some people might call a miracle. You know, centered around tragedy and regret.”

His voice lowered. “Do you have regret, Fia?”

“Don’t you?” She was doing it. Turning it back around to him. She did that. She made it about what kind of father he would’ve been. She avoided thinking about what kind of mother she might have been.

“Of course,” he said. “I regret the way that I handled things with you. How can I not? I let myself get steeped in regret this whole time. But I ignored too many things. I ignored what my part in all of this could have been, should have been. Most of all, I didn’t take care of you.”

It was such a simple, stark statement. And she felt nearly undone by it.

It was what she’d wanted. To have Landry take care of her. Because of all the people in her life, she had loved him the most. She knew not to count on her parents. They had always been more interested in themselves than in their own children. But Landry had beenhers. And she had needed him. She had clung to him like she did because she’d needed him. And then when she’d needed him most he’d become her enemy.

“Fia?”

“I’m just thinking. Sorry. I did need you. That was the worst part, Landry. Well, it wasn’t the worst part. But of some of it. When I was sleeping at Jack and Melissa’s in the room that was going to become Lila’s, I just wished that I could call you. I just wished that you would be there to hold me. I didn’t wish that I had my father. I didn’t wish I had my mother. I just wanted you.”

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