Page 96 of Flirting with Forever

John sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. But also as my father’s son. You know, he never apologized to Estrella? Even after he finally acknowledged me as his kid?”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Estrella says it’s because she was the love of his life, and to apologize is to recognize everything he lost when he walked out the door.”

Mary burst out laughing. “Jeez. To have Estrella’s confidence.”

John chuckled as well. “I think she might be right. But either way, she’s taught me not to wait around for apologies or for closure. No one can validate your story but you, Mary.”

He thought of the morning she’d shown up at his house in red shorts, the morning they’d put everything on the table. He picked up her hand and positioned her fingers so that her thumb and pointer were only a centimeter apart from one another.

“You once told me that your mother had you this close to scrapping everything you knew to be true about the world, about yourself.”

Mary nodded solemnly.

“But just remember,” John continued. “That she never got you to here.” He pressed her fingers together. “She might have brought you to the edge, Mary, but you never went all the way to her side. You never let her take it all. You held strong. Holding strong at a centimeter is just as admirable as holding strong at a mile.”

Mary’s eyes were glazed with tears when they pulled up in front of a neat, suburban lawn. The house was brick and squat and smaller than John had been expecting. The yard was well kept, the garage door closed, the blinds drawn. Everything perfectly tucked in for the night. He looked up and down the block at each house and saw more of the same. It was a nice neighborhood. He could picture Mary growing up there. Her sunny head bouncing as she hopscotched down the sidewalk. Her grinding the gears of her father’s car as she learned how to drive in that cul-de-sac.

Mary took a deep breath as they stood on the front porch and reached for John’s hand. He was about to tell her that they didn’t have to do this, that they could just turn around and head back to White Plains, when she reached forward and rang the bell.

A few moments later, the porch light flicked on, there was some scuffling behind the door and then there was an older man, his white hair in a low ring from ear to ear, a small snifter in one hand, his plaid pajamas a strange juxtaposition to the balmy summer evening.

“Mary!” Her father’s glasses winked in the porch light as he stepped barefoot onto the porch and gathered his daughter up in a huge hug, gripping her so tightly his brandy snifter almost tumbled from his hand. “Oh, my girl, I didn’t think—I wasn’t sure—Oh, Mary, I’m so glad you’re here.”

When he stepped back from her, John got the distinct impression that her father was swallowing down tears as fast as he was his surprise.

“Come in, come in.” He shuffled both of them into the house, his gaze barely even flicking over to John, as if he didn’t care who the strange man in his foyer was, he only had eyes for his daughter. “Naomi!”

“Dad!” Mary jumped, as if him shouting across the house for his wife had shocked her.

“Naomi!” he shouted again, agitated and excited and still clutching Mary’s shoulders with one arm. He obviously didn’t want to let her go. “I didn’t know she was going to do that, Mary. The blind date thing. I didn’t think she was going to spring that on you. And then when she told me what you’d said, that you weren’t going to come around here anymore, well, I didn’t blame you. I’ve spent the last month trying to figure out if I should go to Brooklyn, but I didn’t want to invade your space. But I’ve been so scared that everything was ruined. I didn’t know when I’d see you next.”

The man’s eyes filled with tears as he hugged his daughter again. John might have felt out of place or uncomfortable at witnessing this show of obvious vulnerability, but he truly didn’t even think his presence had registered for Mary’s father.

“Mary!” And then there she was, the infamous Naomi Trace. She was beautiful, of course, even more beautiful than John had pictured her. She had short, stylishly cut and dyed blond hair, and a surprisingly colorful silk robe that she clutched around her neck and covered her down to her toes. He’d never seen so much silk in one place before outside of old Hollywood films. “What are you doing here? At this hour?”

Naomi’s eyes flicked to John, and she patted self-consciously at her hair.

“You told Dad that I wasn’t going to come around anymore? That’s it? That’s all you told him?”

Naomi’s eyes bounced away from John, over to Mary, and then back to John. “I—”

“Was there more?” Mary’s dad asked, one hand still on Mary’s shoulder.

“Yes, there was more!” Mary threw her hands up in the air. “I said I wasn’t coming back hereunless she apologized to me. But I made sure to tell her that I would always answer a phone call from you two. That I would never turn you away. I wasn’t cutting you out! Either of you!”

Mary’s father turned to his wife, his face as white as chalk. Without another word, he turned and walked out of the foyer.

Naomi took half a step after him, stopped, patted her hair again and turned back to Mary. “You might have called.”

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t, so you didn’t have time to reframe your story for Dad!”

“Mary!” Naomi admonished with a surprising amount of self-righteousness, considering she’d just gotten caught in a rather egregious lie by omission. “Can we not do this in front of a guest?”

Mary pinched the bridge of her nose in a rare show of frustration and pain. It snapped something inside of John. Nobody got to make Mary cave in on herself. Not Dud Doug and not her mother. He was at her side in a second, his arm around her waist and his lips at her temple.

Mary breathed deeply through her nose, leaning into John. “Mom, meet John Modesto-Whitford. John, meet my mother, Naomi. He’s not a guest, for the record. He’s my boyfriend.”

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