Page 9 of Come Ride With Me
“So, you are still determined to go through with this? You plan to stay in America and run that company?”
At the start of this conversation her mother had sounded cheerful. Now, there was a bit of grief in her tone. Mica recognized it because she felt it herself. She’d left a life in Paris. Her graduation was supposed to take place in three months, but she would not be there. Luckily—overachiever that she was—Mica already had more than enough credits to complete her MBA. She had achieved that goal. Now, it was time for her to work on another one.
“I spoke to you just before the holidays about the fact that I intended to come here and spend time getting to know my father as soon as I graduated,” Mica said to her mother.
“Yes. You did. But I thought of that as a visit. Nothing permanent.”
Mica was downstairs now. She’d set her purse near her briefcase on the old worn couch with a hideous quilt thrown over its back. When she came in tonight, she was going to pack that in a box, far out of her sight. That was a promise.
She sighed because she knew Cecile was not going to like what she was about to say. But her mother had brought up this topic and Mica wasn’t going to back down from it.
“He was my father,” she said quietly. “For twenty-three years I didn’t even know he existed.”
“I’ve told you my reason for keeping that from you already,” Cecile said.
“I know you did,” Mica replied.
Cecile sighed heavily. “We had a summer fling. I knew I wasn’t planning to stay in the States and he knew that too. So, when my contract was up, I packed my bags and I left. Bellamy did not even go to the airport with me.”
“You didn’t tell him you were leaving that day, did you?” Mica asked.
She’d had many questions after talking to her father that first time. The break-up between him and her mother was one of the first things they discussed over the phone.
Cecile sighed. “He knew I would not be there forever.”
“You’re right. He did know that what you had was a ‘fling’ as you put it. What he didn’t know was that the fling had produced a daughter. You didn’t bother to call or write to tell him about me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say that I haven’t already said to you, Mica. No. I did not call and tell him I was pregnant. We were not supposed to tie each other down. That was one of the first things we agreed on. He did a good job of living his life without you anyway.”
Mica didn’t dispute that fact. Bellamy Anderson had built a successful company and had been quite content with his single lifestyle, until he realized he’d had a daughter.
“He certainly did, until he opened that magazine and saw the pictures of us. The article was about successful single mothers and their daughters. It hurt him because you didn’t have to be a single mother. He swore he would have been there, had he known,” Mica said.
“Okay,” Cecile conceded. “So, I was wrong. I should have told him and I did not.”
“And you’re not glad that he reached out to me after seeing those pictures. You wish I’d never found out about him,” Mica continued, knowing in her heart that this was how her mother truly felt about the situation.
“I wish for whatever will make you happy, Mica. If the fact that I kept your father away from you for most of your life upsets you, I apologize. But I cannot go back and undue what I thought was right at the time.”
It was never right to keep a child from their parents. That’s how Mica felt. In some circumstances, at least. Had Bellamy been a danger to her or to Cecile, then Mica would have understood. But he was simply a man that would have been elated to know that he was going to be a dad. Instead, Cecile hadn’t told him and years that Mica could have spent with Bellamy had already passed them by. Mica had spent exactly eighteen days in person with her father before he died. Their emails, texts and phone conversations had grown in number over the two years. She’d been looking forward to coming here after her graduation to spend a few months getting to know him and the type of life he’d had, but that wasn’t meant to be.
“None of us can go back,maman. And that’s just what it is. Now is about the present. I understand that,” Mica told her. “That’s why I’m heading back to the dealership today, to get on with things there.”
“Do you really think that will work?” Cecile asked, the relief in her tone at the change in conversation was immediately recognizable.
“I’m going to try my best to save the business that meant so much to him.”
“And how are you going to do that? You don’t know anything about motorcycles,” Cecile asked.
That was true, but with her mother’s skeptical tone, Mica decided she was going to rectify that situation today.
“I’m going to figure it out,” she said.
“And then what? When you save this dealership what are you going to do? Are you going to live in Virginia for the rest of your life? Waste your MBA on a bike shop and live in what, Bellamy’s cramped one bedroom apartment?”
“Actually, he owned a really nice house,” Mica told her mother about the place she had inherited. “It has land with trees and a garage. It looks just like one of the houses in those John Hughes teen movies you introduced me to. I like it.” Mica looked around and nodded her head as if to confirm her own words.
“So that’s it. You’re going to stay there,” Cecile said flatly.
