Page 90 of If the Stars Align
“Hewas?” I ask.
Now my mom looks nervous. She bites her lip. Her gaze shifts down to the floor first, before she answers me. Then she looks into my eyes. “He died, Sunny.”
I feel Jeremy’s arm around my shoulder, but I must be in shock. It’s like the world around me goes wavy all of a sudden. My vision’s blurry, and my hearing’s muffled, like I’m underwater.
I think Jeremy’s asking me if I’m okay. I don’t answer him.
I look at my mom instead. “When?” I ask her.
“Three years ago,” she says. “I looked him up online and found an obituary. It didn’t mention anything about surviving family members. As far as I know, he was an only child. His parents must be long gone. He was ten years older than me, which made him seventy-four when he died. A little young, but he was a smoker for decades. I suspect that’s what caused it.”
I don’t remember doing this, but I must have turned to Jeremy, because my face is buried in his neck, and I’m sobbing. He’s stroking my back and kissing the top of my head.
“Sunny, I’m sorry,” I hear my mom say, although she sounds miles away.
My head whips in her direction. “You’resorry?Nowyou wantto tell me you’re sorry? All the years he was alive…you kept him from me! That was your choice to make when I was a kid, but as soon as I turned eighteen, the choice should have been mine. You robbed me of that, Mom.”
She frowns. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about him, sweetheart?—”
“I don’t want to hearanythingabout him from you. I would have liked to hear it from him. But he’s dead now, and it’s too late.”
My mom sits forward in her chair. “Sunny, I was protecting you from a cold, heartless man. Don’t you think I tried reaching out to him? Idid. By the time you’d turned one, I’d survived a year of being a single working parent—but I missedhim. I wanted him to see what a beautiful child he’d fathered, and I was sure that if he did, he’d change his mind.
“You look exactly like him. Same coloring, same hair…same stunning features. I figured something biological would have to kick in when he saw you, and he’d want us to be a family. So I sent him pictures—the professional photographs of you and me together on your first birthday—and I wrote a letter to go along with them. I told him I still loved him. That his daughter needed her father. And that we’d welcome him with open arms whenever he was ready. Do you want to know what he wrote back?” She sighs. “He told me I looked good, Sunny. And he wished us well. That was it.”
I turn back to cry on Jeremy’s shoulder, and he wraps his arms around me. At some point, I feel my mom’s hand on my back, and there’s a little exchange between her and Jeremy, but I’m not listening. I’m releasing twenty-seven years’ worth of tearsover a man who never wanted me.
When my tears finally dry up, Jeremy shepherds me upstairs to my bedroom. He changes me out of my dress and puts me in pajamas. He takes me to the bathroom and squeezes toothpaste on my toothbrush while I pee. And when we get in bed, he holds me.
“I’ll never leave you, Sunny,” he says. “You never have to worry about that. I love you more than anything in this world.”
Poor Luis and Jeremy work overtime the next day to ease the tension between my mom and me. They start by making a nice breakfast, because they know firsthand that my mom and I aren’t our best selves when we’re hungry.
After a quiet meal of pancakes and bacon, in which I catch Jeremy and Luis exchanging the occasional hopeful nod, we linger at the table for a second round of coffee. That’s when Luis uses the mediation skills he must have acquired as a father of two daughters, and helps my mom and me express our feelings to each other.
I tell her I understand that she was trying to protect me. But I don’t like how she handled things over the years—refusing to speak about him, and keeping me in the dark about my heritage. Watching me question my curly-haired reflection in the mirror as a kid, and walking past me without saying a word.
She tells me she understands why I’m upset, and that she’s sorry. She says she knows it’s hard to see sometimes, but everything she does for me is out of love. She explains that avoidance isher coping mechanism for anxiety. She avoids the risks. Avoids the triggers. Avoids the difficult conversations. She admits she’s been considering therapy. She hasn’t made an appointment yet, but she’s saying it out loud now, to hold herself accountable.
I don’t want to get my hopes up prematurely. But if my mom were to actually work on her issues, maybe we could have the relationship I’ve always longed for. One that’s not rife with dishonesty.
Maybe that’s why I’ve gravitated toward Jeremy since the moment we met. He may be brutally honest…but at least I can trust that when he says something, he means it.
Finally, my mom and I hug.
Then Luis treats us all to ice cream.
We end the visit on a high note, with a dinner of chicken and rice we make from scratch—the four of us—while Luis plays his favorite Spanish guitar album over the kitchen speakers. It’s the kind of night I always dreamed of having in this house. With family.
But while Jeremy’s driving us back to Chicago the following day, my thoughts turn on me, like the dark storm clouds in the sky, brooding over us.
I always knew my father never wanted me. But now I know that he rejected me more than once. The first time, it was just the idea of me, before I was born. But the second time, it was one-year-old Sunny from the photographs I used to love. The adorable little cherub with rosy cheeks and thigh rolls, smiling on her mother’s lap.
He got a glimpse of me, and he left this world without everwanting to know me. My mom gave him an open invitation to join us when he was ready, but he never did. He never changed his mind—not even when he was dying.
And the pain of knowing this truth feels…insurmountable.
When we get back to Jeremy’s apartment late that night, he suggests a drink on the rooftop to unwind before bed. The sky is clear in Chicago, and it’s unseasonably warm, so I agree.
