Chapter Text
i.
Henry McCord stood outside the door to Elizabeth Adams’ apartment.
Or, at least, what he hoped was Elizabeth Adams’ apartment.
It had been, once. Five years ago.
Before they’d said goodbye.
To call it a break-up would be to give the wrong impression. There’d been no harsh words, no slammed doors, no eau de betrayal or telltale lipstick marks (shade: The Other Woman), no loudening silence, no growing distance, no loss of the closeness or love they’d once shared—if anything, on the day they said goodbye, he’d loved her more than ever.
But they had an agreement, one that had been with them from the very beginning. After he finished his master’s, he would be heading to flight training, and then, from there, active duty, where, what with growing global hostilities and the need for his skills as a fighter pilot, he’d find himself deployed most of the time. He didn’t want to leave anyone behind, she didn’t want to wait for anyone (she’d spent every day since a warm fall afternoon, not long after her fifteenth birthday, waiting for parents—my sun and moon—who went for milkshakes and never returned), and they both knew during his time away each of them would change: who would she welcome back? who would he come home to? what if they spent all those years clinging to something that no longer existed and it was only when they were reunited that they realised they’d already lost it—that they no longer fitted? So, they agreed his deployment would mark the end of their relationship. Better a clean break, a proper goodbye.
It was rational, it was level-headed, it was the best way forward for both of them.
They’d each been convinced of it.
Only…his heart didn’t listen to logic, and a ‘goodbye’ devised by the head and loosed by the tongue didn’t release her from his mind.
He hoped thoughts of her, dreams of her, feelings for her would fade with time, but instead each second, minute, hour that went by without her felt like the turning of a reel, winding a thread that ran between them tighter, drawing him closer to the moment when he could finally see her again. And what he really hoped for, the secret hidden in the silent space surrounding his wish for his memory of her to fade, was that when his active service finished and they came back together, they’d be proved wrong—they would still fit, despite any ways in which they’d changed.
It took all of his effort not to contact her in the interim, to respect their agreement: letters were penned but never sent, leave was spent at BOQs or his parents’ so there’d be no risk of him running into her or having his subconscious deliver him to her doorstep.
But now that he’d returned to the States for good, that was exactly where he found himself—on her doorstep. Or, at least, what he hoped was her doorstep. Praying that, in more ways than one, she hadn’t moved on. New apartment, new partner, new life.
He unslung the strap of his seabag from his shoulder and set the bag down so that it leant against the wall by the door—a wall he’d often pinned her to as she was hurrying to shove her key in the lock, and kissed her senseless, years before—straightened up, took a steadying breath, ran through the speech he’d prepared once more, then raised his fist to the door, and knocked.
Rap tap.
His hand retreated to his side. His breath quieted. In the hush that filled the hall, he could hear, as well as feel, the thud of his heart: an echoing in his head, a pounding, half a beat too fast, at the top of his chest. He tried to listen past it, to catch any sound coming from the apartment. If it turned out she no longer lived there, his only hope would be to call her aunt. He’d have to find a motel for the night, then, in the morning, make his way to his storage unit and locate the old, leather-bound notebook in which he’d jotted down Joan’s details back in college when Elizabeth had an appendicitis. But there was no guarantee the number he had for Joan was still correct, or that Joan would be willing to pass on Elizabeth’s address. So, what then? Show up at Langley…? That wouldn’t go down well. And, anyway, who was to say Elizabeth still worked there?
The silence could only have lasted a few seconds, yet it was long enough for him to play out years trying to track down Elizabeth. An Ahabian quest.
But then a shout, muffled by the door, came from inside.
“Just a minute!”
At her voice, his heart tripped. Though it made him sound like a schoolboy, bashfully (and perhaps pathetically) in love with his first crush, he was man enough to admit it.
The thud of bare feet on floorboards approached from the other side of the door.
The thud of his heart grew louder in step.
The handle clattered and turned.
The door swung open.
And then there she was.
Elizabeth Adams. In high-waisted jeans and an old, navy blue UVA Cavaliers tee; her hair shorter than the last time he’d seen it, blonde ends curling softly around her shoulders, supple and shimmering in a way that made his fingers beg to run through it; her figure just as slim as before, but no longer clinging to the cut glass angles of late teen-hood—instead, exuding a velvet warmth; her features even more striking than those of the image he held in his memory, as if with each day that had passed, time had etched away at ‘pretty’ to reveal beneath a breath-snatching beauty.
And snatch his breath, she did. A thousand artists could paint a thousand masterpieces and still come nowhere near close to capturing how beautiful she looked to him right then.
Elizabeth stared at him. Recognition rose into her expression, like dawn witnessed in time-lapse, shock so swift on its heels that it overtook it.
“Henry?”
Her voice shone with that shock, too.
“Hi,” he said.
His palms were suddenly damp with sweat; he’d been sent into an uncontrolled roll at ten thousand feet—barely room to bail—that had been less nerve-racking than this.
“I hope it’s okay me showing up like—”
The plan was to apologise for appearing unannounced, then, if she was willing to hear him out, steer into his speech, but before he could finish that roundabout apology, her shock turned to what looked like relief, and she stepped forward and flung her arms around him.
He froze, stunned for several long seconds, before his surprise and the numbing that came with it faded; as it did, it let in the warmth of her embrace, along with the familiarity and comfort he found in it (several times over the last five years he’d returned on leave to the States, but only now, in her arms, was he home), and with that feeling rushing through him, he wrapped his arms around her in turn. He hugged her—tight. Though, not as tight as he would have liked: While her welcome was a good sign in that it suggested she was pleased to see him, it could just be she was relieved an old friend had made it back alive from active duty; it didn’t necessarily mean she still felt for him what he still felt for her, or that, after he delivered his speech, she would say she too wanted them to be together. He couldn’t get ahead of himself, couldn’t assume.
All too soon, her warmth and the firm-softness of her body pressed to his was gone.
(A lifetime of her holding him like that wouldn’t be long enough.)
She took a step back, her hands gliding down and around to cup his elbows, and she stared up at him. The light in her eyes gleamed with hope. “Did your mom tell you?”
He stared back at her in silence.
His mom?
His mom tell him what?
He searched for understanding. Each millisecond that passed caused his frown to deepen.
With that frown, the hope in her eyes dimmed, as if his expression were a cloud casting a shadow over sun-dazzled waters, dulling sparkling blue to muted grey.
Her hands fell from his elbows. Her body shrank back.
“You don’t know,” she said.
Her words—the realisation they held—sounded as dismayed as she looked.
An ominous feeling, a tightening in his chest, a stirring at the pit of his stomach, told him he wasn’t going to like the answer (could there ever be a favourable answer with those words and that tone?), yet still he asked:
“Don’t know what?”
Before she could reply, a thump-thump-thump of footsteps sped along the corridor behind her, drawing his gaze away from her and toward a girl—a riot of unravelling sandy blonde pigtails, long, loose limbs, and paint-smeared pink t-shirt—who hurtled toward them.
There was no time for him to process what was happening, who the girl was or what she was doing in Elizabeth’s apartment: the girl barrelled straight past Elizabeth and launched herself at him, limpeting herself to his leg, her shout of—“Daddy!”—lighting up the hall.
He stumbled, instinctively stepping back, but the girl wrapped around his leg stopping him. Leaning away from the girl, he peered down at her; with her head reaching no higher than his hip and with her clinging so tight to his leg, all he could see was a crown of sandy blonde, her pale scalp peeking through the uneven zigzag of her parting.
He’d always considered himself a smart guy—admittedly, a little too smart at times—but, right then, in that moment, no understanding presented itself; instead, his mind froze, as blank and disorientating as a whiteout.
He looked to Elizabeth for help.
But Elizabeth didn’t correct the girl and coax her away, didn’t roll her eyes at him and dismiss it with a chuckle of, ‘Kids,’ didn’t explain how she’d been asked to babysit.
Instead, she met his eye. Her lips tweaked at one side, a nervous and rueful smile.
“Henry…this is Stevie,” she said.
He waited for her to continue: my friend’s kid, my neighbour’s kid, my…he didn’t know what else’s kid. But she didn’t. She just kept on looking at him, like she was waiting for him to get it.
But get what?
Why was she looking at him like that, like she was nervous and—?
His heart sank as it dawned on him.
He should have seen it sooner. Really, it was obvious.
“You have a daughter.”
He shouldn’t have sounded as disappointed as he did. He’d known there was a chance she would have moved on, would have found someone else, would have made herself a new life.
And why shouldn’t she? They were over. They’d had an agreement. It was fine.
But still…
Elizabeth opened her mouth, but then stopped. Her lips tensed around an unspoken sound.
A moment later, a light frown crept to her brow. Had he not known her as well as he did, he might have missed it, might not have understood it for what it was: part, Do you really not get it? part, How on earth am I supposed to spell this out?
But, whatever it was he wasn’t getting, he couldn’t see it.
She’d been surprised to see him, yet also seemed like she’d been hoping to see him.
She thought he knew something. Something his mom might have told him.
There was a girl in her apartment.
A girl who wasn’t her daughter yet wasn’t not her daughter.
A girl who wasn’t her daughter yet wasn’t not her daughter who, for some reason, thought he was her father.
And if the girl wasn’t her daughter yet wasn’t not her daughter, and if she hadn’t corrected the girl who wasn’t her daughter yet wasn’t not her daughter when the girl who wasn’t her daughter yet wasn’t not her daughter had leapt at him and hugged him and assumed he was her father, then…?
“Wait…” A heavy frown descended on his brow. “We have a daughter?”
Even as he said it, he could hear how ridiculous it would sound—knew he was just seconds away from Elizabeth, out of sheer exasperation, swatting his arm or chest with a swift backhand and demanding to know how a guy as intelligent as he could be so dense. Then she’d finally point to whatever it was he couldn’t see, and he’d feel like a fool for taking two and two and somehow making seventeen, and, quite rightly, he’d be embarrassed for thinking even for a moment…
But, she didn’t swat him. Didn’t mock him. Didn’t point out how idiotic he was being.
Instead, that sorry smile returned, and holding his gaze, she nodded.
He stared at her, his mind full of the busiest silence he’d ever heard, vaguely aware of the girl, her daughter, their daughter??? still clinging to him.
This hadn’t been part of his plan.
oOoOo
“My name’s Stephanie, but everyone calls me Stevie. You don’t know me, coz they kept sending back Mommy’s letters. Mommy said you might not find us, but I told her you would. You had to. This is my room. This is my pony. She’s called Skye. Over there’s my picture of you.”
The girl, Stephanie, Stevie, their daughter—their daughter??? just the thought of it sent his head spinning, each time in a different direction, like he were stuck in an aerotrim operated by a particularly sadistic instructor back in pilot training—took hold of his hand, her own hand tiny and warm and surprisingly strong, and led him into the entrance hall, toward the first door on the left, where she then stopped and pointed through the doorway into the room.
Last time he’d been in the apartment, the room had been a place for Elizabeth’s younger brother, Will, to crash, disguised by a desk and a bookcase and an ergonomic chair to look like an office so Will wouldn’t realise she’d set the room aside for him, for when he would inevitably need it, thus enabling them to avoid the argument about her babying him and him hardly being what anyone could call an adult and him being adult enough to be doing pre-med and so on and so on that would inevitably result from it, but now the room was a fountain of pink, from the painted walls, to the bows in the mane and tail of Elizabeth’s old rocking horse, to the bedside table on top of which a framed photo of him stood. Elizabeth had taken the photograph herself, on one of their hiking trips in the Blue Ridge Mountains: they’d been sitting on an overhang, staring out across the valley of gold and orange and green that rolled away beneath them, talking idly, when she’d asked him a question and he’d turned to face her and then heard the click. He could hear the sound even now, smell the crisp and smoky fall scent—a tug of nostalgia with each breath—feel the chill of the rock beneath him seeping through the denim of his jeans.
Meanwhile, Stevie continued her monologue, the tip of her pointer finger drawing sigils in the air as she directed his attention this way and that, the words she spoke barely penetrating the daze he found himself engulfed in.
How could she have a photograph of him when he didn’t even know she existed?
The front door thunked shut behind them.
There came the thump of his seabag being set down.
“Baby,” Elizabeth said, and Stevie stopped talking, craned her neck around and looked up at her mother, just as Elizabeth laid a hand on their daughter’s—their daughter’s???—shoulder.
(Henry looked to Elizabeth, too, the response reflexive, before he remembered baby, babe, honey and any number of other pet names she’d once used no longer referred to him.)
“Please will you go wash up,” she said. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
Stevie’s lips tensed into an anxious pout—a tension matched by the furrow in her brow—as if she didn’t want to go but knew she shouldn’t protest. Slowly—a kid’s idea of surreptitiously—she slid her gaze over to Henry, let it linger a long moment, then returned it to Elizabeth.
“Will Daddy still be here?”
Elizabeth put on a reassuring smile, but something flickered beneath it—maybe a pang of pain or guilt at her daughter’s fear her father might disappear, maybe a flash of her own fear she was making a promise not hers to make. Henry couldn’t tell. She’d always been good at hiding her emotions when she wanted or needed to, and no doubt being a mother had only honed her skills—especially being a mother in this situation, whatever this situation was.
“We’ll be in the kitchen,” she said. Her voice held that reassurance, too.
The tension in Stevie’s features eased, like her trust in her mother outweighed any lingering uncertainty. Her grip on Henry’s hand loosened, her fingers slipped down his fingers and fell free, and she dashed across the hall into the bathroom.
Henry watched after her, his gaze glued to the bathroom door that she’d left ajar, the same unforgivingly bright yellow light he remembered from before and the splash and gurgle of running water escaping around its edges.
When he returned his gaze to Elizabeth, he found her watching him in turn, studying him, her expression now holding the same anxious tension Stevie’s had just moments ago.
“Are you okay to stay?” she said. “We want you here, but I understand if you need time…”
It took a minute for him to process what she’d said and to understand what she meant, the words having to seep through his daze, his mind still lumbering along like a recruit in combat water survival training trying to make it the length of a swimming pool while wearing full BDU:
She was afraid he wanted to leave again, that the revelation was too much for him and at any second he would make his excuses, back out the door and hurry away.
Maybe it was too much for him—it would certainly take a while for him to get his head around it—but, even in the midst his daze with his lumbering brain, one thing was clear:
“No,” he said. “I want to stay.”
A smile burst onto her lips, small and bright, like a wink of sunlight, before it softened into something subtler but just as genuine.
“Okay, then. We can talk properly later, when she’s in bed?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
Anything she told him right then wouldn’t go in anyway. Better that they wait.
“Are you hungry?” She began walking along the corridor, heading toward the kitchen-diner and the smell of cooking. She cast a look over her shoulder at him as he followed her, a pace or so behind. “We’re having spaghetti and meatballs.”
“Did you make it?”
She laughed, a sharp huff, and sent him another look—this time with a quirk of the lips, her eyes lit with a glint of amusement. “Don’t worry. The meatballs are from a packet, and the sauce is from a jar, so it’s edible. Though, I can’t promise the noodles won’t be overcooked.”
Which wasn’t what he’d meant. He’d simply wondered what else had changed while he was away, and if she’d grown and birthed and raised a child in that time, nothing, including her learning how to cook, felt like a stretch.
“I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“I know.” The smile she gave him was gentler this time.
They stepped into the kitchen. A wall of hot and steamy air hit him—warmth radiating from the oven, water boiling on the stove. A thump-thump-thump of footsteps neared behind him, then a tiny, damp hand wrapped around the edge of his hand, and all thought of whatever he and Elizabeth had been discussing fled his mind.
“Daddy has to sit by me,” Stevie said, and she pulled Henry toward one of the dining chairs.
She waited for him to take a seat, standing close to him and watching over him, like a guard keeping an eye on a known flight risk, then she scrambled onto the chair beside him and sat facing him, and with her feet swinging—one back, the other forth—she began talking again, the words pouring out like she had to fill him in on every last detail of her life within the next five minutes.
He listened in an attentive silence, his entire focus on this strange creature he and Elizabeth had created, but her words were like footsteps on ice, slipping away with no imprint.
oOoOo
“Right, missy. Bath and bed.”
Elizabeth ushered Stevie up from her seat the moment Stevie set her spoon and fork down on the sauce-stained plate, their metal chiming against the ceramic. She had taken over an hour to eat a trio of meatballs, a fist-sized tangle of noodles and a scattering of garden peas, thanks to her non-stop talking—and it would have been several hours more with not a single bite taken, had Elizabeth not prompted her, ‘Remember to eat,’ every few minutes.
Stevie glanced at Henry, before swivelling her head to face Elizabeth. Just like the plates, the girl’s chin and all around her lips were a luminous orange. “Can Daddy read me a story?”
Elizabeth pressed her palms to the tabletop and pushed herself up from her chair. The ends of her hair danced with the shake of her head. “Not tonight.”
“Why not?” Stevie half demanded, half begged.
“Because it’s late.”
Henry didn’t know if that was the real reason why Elizabeth had said no or if she was trying to avoid throwing him in at the deep end, perhaps worried how he’d handle it, perhaps worried he didn’t want to handle it, but either way he was grateful for the excuse, relieved he wasn’t expected to read the girl a story and tuck her into bed.
And he immediately felt guilty for it.
There was just so much dissonance. While she might know him as ‘daddy’ and have a space in her life set aside, just waiting for him to step in, to him she was essentially still a stranger and it would take time, understanding, effort, for him to chip away at all that he knew and create a space in his life (in his mind) in which she’d comfortably fit.
Stevie pouted, a dangerous furrow forming in her brow that was all Elizabeth.
And, if she was like her mother in more than just that expression, she might not be quick to anger, but the result could be explosive when she did.
(Plus, traits aside, experience looking after his kid brother and sister when he was younger had taught him overexcitement and overtiredness in preschoolers were a powder keg.)
“Maybe tomorrow night?” he offered.
By then he would have had time to speak to Elizabeth and maybe the shock of it all would have lessened.
Stevie turned to him. Her expression still teetered on a brewing tantrum, but there was a hesitance about it now, a questioning, like, with the right handling, she was willing to be guided down from that ledge. “You promise?”
“I promise,” he said.
She brightened immediately, and he got the sense it wasn’t really a story she’d wanted but instead just the reassurance once again that he wasn’t going anywhere.
She hopped down from her seat, into the gap between their two chairs, and flung her arms around his waist, nestling a warm cheek against his chest in a side-on hug.
His whole body tensed, and he stared down at the top of her head, motionless, just as he had earlier, when she’d first called him ‘daddy’ and clung to his leg.
After a moment, he relaxed a little and rested a hand on her hair, gently cradling her head against him—as awkward as he might have felt, she didn’t deserve coldness.
When he glanced up at Elizabeth, seeking his own form of reassurance, Was this okay? Was he doing the right thing? Had he overstepped? Elizabeth smiled back at him, a warm smile that faded into bittersweetness at its edges, and she mouthed a, ‘Thank you,’ at him.
She waited a moment, before beckoning Stevie again.
“Come on then. Let’s get you bathed and into bed.”
Stevie gave him an extra squeeze—“Night, Daddy.”—then let go of him, and skittered off, a thump-thump-thump carrying her toward the bathroom.
“Goodnight,” Henry said, watching after her as she went.
Elizabeth pushed in her chair. “I won’t be long,” she told him. “Scotch is in the top cabinet.”
He must have looked like he needed it.
Which he did.
oOoOo
Henry sat at the end of the couch, one leg folded on the seat, his body angled to face the opposite end and the doorway beyond that opened onto the corridor. He clutched a tumbler of Scotch in one hand, holding it close to his chest; its scent—warm and woodsy and silently soothing—lapped at the edge of each breath. A second tumbler waited on the coffee table for Elizabeth.
The soft click of a door closing echoed along the hall, followed by the faint pad of footsteps.
A moment later, Elizabeth appeared through the doorway, stepping out from the shadows and into the dim golden haze that diffused from the table lamps and bathed the living room. With a heavy sigh, she sank onto the cushion at the other end of the couch, mirroring his posture with one leg folded in front of her, then reached over to claim the second tumbler.
“Hopefully, that’s her out,” she said. “She was fighting it tonight.”
“I’m sorry for disturbing her routine.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t know.” Her palm covered the mouth of the tumbler, her fingertips gripped it by the rim, then, as if hearing herself back and realising it might sound like the disruption, deliberate or not, had bothered her, she twisted to face him and shot him a small smile. “And we’re just glad that you’re here.”
Behind her words and look and tone, he heard an unspoken echo:
Finally.
“I would have come sooner,” he told her, as she picked up the tumbler and settled back in her seat. To say he would have moved heaven and earth to make it back to her, to them, would have been clichéd—but also an understatement. Had he known she needed him and that he was going to be a father, there wasn’t a price he wouldn’t have paid, a rule he wouldn’t have bent, broken or obliterated to be there with her.
She took a sip of Scotch, then rested the tumbler on her knee.
She met his gaze. Nodded. “I know.”
A second later, the corner of her lips flinched, and she added, “If you’d known.”
A whole world was folded into that ‘if’, a world he wished he’d lived in.
Why hadn’t he known?
He held her gaze. The pad of his thumb ran back and forth along the rim of his tumbler, as if the action would dissipate the prickle of nervous energy that rose inside him; the ridges and facets of the glass all blended together, so they felt at once bumpy and smooth.
“What happened?” he said at last, the words heavy, tentative.
She drew a deep breath. “Well…when a man and a woman love each other very much, and when said man decides to give said woman a goodbye to remember…”
She tried to hide a smirk—though, she couldn’t have tried that hard, because still it shone through.
He frowned at her, though not out of any real annoyance—it was hard to be annoyed when her quip, as she’d perhaps intended, caused all that nervous energy to collapse in an instant.
“I understand that part,” he said.
Her smirk brightened. “Good Catholic boy like you?”
She let the words hang in the air a moment, as if inviting a retort she knew wouldn’t come—once she’d set her mind on teasing him, there was no winning. Not for him. Then her smirk softened to a warm smile, a smile which then faded till just the barest trace of it remained at the fringes of an otherwise sober expression.
“I started getting symptoms a couple of months after you left,” she said. “When I went to my doctor, she told me I was pregnant. Apparently, it happens sometimes, even on the pill. I didn’t know where you were. I had no way of contacting you. I tried sending letters to your old bases, hoping maybe someone would send them on, but they were all returned. I tried calling your mom and asking if she had an address, but she refused to tell me. I hoped she might change her mind if I told her about the pregnancy, but turned out, not so much.”
If it weren’t for the way her lips flinched again, yet another rueful smile, he might have lost himself in self-flagellation—he should have sent the letters he’d written her, he should have shown up on her doorstep sooner—or in the realisation—his mom had known all this time, she’d known all this time and she hadn’t told him—but her lips did flinch, a movement perhaps designed to distract from the hurt that, even now, muddied the clear blue of her eyes.
His grip on the tumbler tightened. His tone hardened. “What did she say to you?”
She tilted her chin down, breaking their gaze, and shook her head. “It’s fine.”
He waited a moment, hoping she might elaborate—It’s fine. She just said… When she didn’t but instead kept to her silence, he twisted round and set the tumbler on the coffee table, its heavy base knocking on the oak, then scooched along the couch till there was no longer a seat stretching between them. He reached out a hand, as if to lay it on her forearm, just above her wrist, but then thought better of it—they might have a daughter together, and he might have come there hoping they could still be together, but perhaps the touch would be too familiar—and instead he placed his hand on the cushion, in front of her folded leg.
He dipped down, trying to catch her gaze. His tone was softer this time, coaxing.
“What did she say to you?”
She looked up at him, then rolled her eyes in a forced way—a way that once again felt like a diversion. “I don’t want to tattle,” she said.
But it wasn’t tattling she had an issue with, he knew—it was putting herself between him and his parents. No matter how unkind they (and his siblings, following his parents’ lead) had been to her all the birthdays, Easters and Christmases he and she had visited, she refused to say a word against them. He suspected it had less to do with her wanting to be the bigger person and more to do with her not wanting to put him in the position of having to choose between her and them, because she knew what it was like to lose a family, knew just because he and she were only ever meant to be temporary didn’t mean he’d hesitate—given the decision a hundred times, every last one of those times he’d pick her over them.
“Tell me,” he said, his tone still soft but now more insistent.
She held his gaze, her look searching. The slight furrow in her brow said she was tangled in debate: not wanting to bad-mouth his mother, not wanting to deny him the truth when for far too long the truth had been hidden from him.
“She said it was about time you were rid of me, and now that you were, I should leave you be. When I told her about the pregnancy, she questioned the paternity, then suggested one of my ‘own kind’ had gotten me into trouble and didn’t want to marry me and I knew no one would want me now that I was used goods and I was expecting you to clean up my mess.”
Which was a bad enough thing to say as it was, but he knew his mom—knew it would have been worded with far less restraint and delivered with far more vitriol when she said it.
(To forgive might have been divine, but sometimes he felt not so much a saint as a fool for trying to see the best in his parents.)
“I offered to do a paternity test,” she continued, “but she wasn’t interested.”
She paused a moment, her gaze flickering back and forth as she studied him. The furrow in her brow deepened. “If you want a paternity test…”
He frowned. “What? No. Of course not.” His hand instinctively reached for hers, needing to reassure her—he didn’t doubt her, not for a second—before he caught himself and pulled his hand back, though not quite far enough, so his fingers landed just above her ankle on her folded leg. “I know she’s ours,” he said. “And my mom never should have spoken to you like that.”
The tension in her brow eased. The weak smile she gave seemed to say ‘it is what it is’.
“I hoped with time she’d change her mind and tell you. I stayed here so you’d know where to find us if she did. My only other hope was to try finding where you were stationed through CIA, but as a colleague and friend pointed out when I floated the idea, that’d be an abuse of power and would break at least a dozen different laws, and being unemployed or in prison wouldn’t be a great start to motherhood. I thought about taking Stevie to your parents’ after she was born, but nothing prepares you for quite how chaotic having a new baby is, then, when she was older, I was worried they’d turn us away and she’d feel rejected. It didn’t feel fair to put her through that.”
An image flitted through his head of Elizabeth turning up at his parents’ when he happened to be there on leave, how he could have met Stevie when she was just a baby, how different things might have been, but it lasted mere milliseconds before he dismissed it for what it was: a fantasy—he’d stayed with his parents so infrequently that the chance of her arrival coinciding with one of his visits was infinitesimal, and given how he believed his parents would have treated Elizabeth and Stevie had they’d shown up when he wasn’t there, he had to agree it wasn’t worth the risk.
His fingers resting on her leg flexed—a light squeeze that reminded him his fingers were still resting on her leg and perhaps he shouldn’t have left them resting on her leg, thus prompting him to draw his hand back to rest on the cushion instead. “I’m sorry you had to go through this alone.”
She shook her head; her hair cast golden shimmers. “I had help. My aunt, my friends… Even Will helped out a little.” She stilled, met his gaze again. “I was more worried about you and Stevie. I knew you’d want to know and wouldn’t want to miss out on being a dad. And although I’ve tried to make sure you’re present in her life, having photos of you and hearing stories about you isn’t the same as having you here in person.”
He hadn’t thought about that yet—the full ramifications of the situation for him and Stevie; the psychological legacy; all the moments, big and small, that they’d lost. Perhaps it was the shock of it, how it still didn’t feel real yet, the concept of him having a daughter or that daughter having no contact—not knowing if she would ever have contact—with her father. The only thing concrete to him was Elizabeth and how it had affected her.
“Does Stevie know why I wasn’t here?”
“She knows you were away for work and I wasn’t able to tell you about her and you would have been here if you could. I wanted to be as honest with her as possible, but in a way that she’d understand. I didn’t want her thinking you didn’t want to be here with her.”
“Thank you,” he said.
And he meant it. The last thing he wanted was for it to seem like it was his choice not to be there for them, and he was grateful that, as one-sided as it might have been right then, Elizabeth had laid as solid a foundation as she could for him and Stevie to build a strong relationship.
Elizabeth smiled—a bright, sparkling kind of smile this time, not a forced flinch or one that was stained with regret—and, leaning forward slightly, she laid her hand on top of his. “Of course.”
At her touch, his stomach flipped.
Maybe she didn’t mind the contact…?
After a moment or two, her smile wavered, fading at the edges. She plucked at his fingers in an absent-minded way, like she used to when she was anxious, and her tone turned tentative.
“How long are you going to be here? I mean, when do you have to go back?”
He blinked. His mind thrown into blankness by the sudden disconnect—
Go back? Go back where?
—before it dawned on him that she didn’t know.
“I don’t,” he said. “I finished active service.”
Her fingers stilled. She frowned at him. “I thought you were on leave.”
“No. I fulfilled my active duty requirement”—he glanced at his watch—“about…twenty-one hours ago. I came straight here.”
“I got the ‘straight here’ part from the bag. I just assumed, if you weren’t here because you knew about Stevie, then you were here because you were looking for a little R&R company. I didn’t realise it was post-active duty company you were after.”
It took a moment for his mind to translate.
“You think I came here looking for sex?” His voice strained with disbelief, with horror at the realisation that maybe he’d given her the wrong impression.
Did she really think he’d shown up at her door because he wanted someone to sleep with? That he’d believed she’d be easier (and cheaper) to pick up than some random girl at a bar?
Her expression turned uncertain. “Didn’t you?”
“No!”
She paused—studied him, as if searching his face, his body language for the answer to the question before she asked him:
“Then why…?”
“Because I’m no longer deployed, and we said we’d break up when I was deployed, but I’m no longer deployed, and…”
The words tripped out, clumsy and fast, in his desperation to correct her assumption.
But that wasn’t how his speech was supposed to go, wasn’t how he wanted to tell her.
He stopped. Lowering his gaze to the strip of cushion between them, to her hand lying on top of his hand, he drew a breath, waited for the panic to subside, then met her eye again.
“I came here because I miss you. I came here because not a day’s gone by where I haven’t thought about you. And I know what we said, how we were afraid we would change and maybe we wouldn’t work anymore, and clearly things have changed, but I want to get to know you again—to know who you are now. I want to find out if we still work. I want us to work. Because I love you. I never stopped loving you. And I want to be with you.”
It wasn’t the speech he’d planned.
Hardly Byron. Hardly Shakespeare. Hardly Keats.
But it was the truth of how he felt, how, for the last five years, he’d felt, and how he felt even more now. He wanted to be with her, he wanted to learn and memorise every new detail of her, he wanted to love her and to fall back in love with her, to be part of this budding family.
Her searching look melted into one of realisation—welcome realisation—as if, although she hadn’t minded the possibility that he’d shown up at her door looking for sex (perhaps she’d even been okay with it—he too would take whatever of her he could get), the idea that they might one day still be together had been a secret she’d held within her, the same as the unspoken hope he’d held within him, and finally, now, she could allow herself to acknowledge it, to want it.
“I like the sound of that,” she said.
He paused, needing a quick check: Had he misheard? Could he be misinterpreting her?
“You do?” he said.
Her smile widened. She squeezed his hand. “You had me at ‘hi’.”