SWNOVELS TEAM PLAYERS: Chapter 27
Uncle Walter’s description helps me find Dad’s grave without much difficulty, but now I’m here, I feel no relief. I’ve bought a small bunch of flowers, not that I imagine Dad was ever a fan, but what else is there? Maybe I should have bought him a beer and poured it onto the ground. Maybe I could listen to a football game while I’m here. At least those things would be about who dad was, not about following the traditional routines of grief.
I place the stupid flowers down on the middle of the grave, noticing how neat everything is and smiling at the laminated picture of Dad with his foster sons that one of them must have brought up here and left.
Standing awkwardly for a while, I look around at the neighboring graves and watch as an elderly woman tends to one twenty yards away. She’s humming a gentle tune that carries on the breeze. There’s a comfortableness in her routines that I don’t feel. An acceptance too. Maybe there were no unsaid thing between her and her loved one. Maybe they had no grievances.
Can talking to a patch of land change the way a person feels? I want it to. I want it to so much that my heart aches and my breath catches in my chest.
I decide to sit, mostly because standing makes me feel pressured to do something or achieve something, and I don’t know how to make any of that happen. With my legs in soft grass and fingers twisting the green blades, I feel more grounded.
What do I say? Do I talk to him in my head or say things out loud?
Frustrated, I tear up a bunch of grass and let it fall. I’m too young to deal with this. Too young to be pregnant and alone. Too young to hold all this anger and anguish and responsibility and hurt inside. I don’t know how to make anything in my life better. I can’t see a bridge across all the turmoil.
“What do I do, Dad?” I ask, my voice cracking. “How do I make this better when you’re not here anymore? I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean for you to never call me again. I mean, I know I said that was what I wanted. I know I told you that I hated you, and I didn’t want you to be part of my life, but it was just frustration. You have to know that. I was pushing you away, wanting you to come back. Wanting you to fight for me, but you didn’t. I know you said sorry in your letter. I know you loved me all these years. The boys told me. They showed me the pictures and mementos you kept, but that just makes me sadder. How could you leave all that time to pass and not want to change what happened? You were the adult. You were the one who should have known that kids say things they don’t mean, especially when they are angry and emotional. You made me believe that my voice drove you away. My voice went from being something good to something bad.” I take a shaky breath against the welling of emotions, brushing grass from my skirt before I exhale long and slow.
“I missed you. So much. I lost my faith in people and myself. I made mistakes…” My hand instinctively goes to my belly, and I shake my head. I can’t think of the life growing inside me as a mistake because it isn’t. The process that led to its creation was a mistake. Allowing Justin to use me was the error. Believing that our fake relationship would fill the hole in my heart was where I went wrong.
“And I’m floundering.” A tear leaks from the corner of my eye, and I swipe it away. “I don’t know what to do or where to go. I don’t even know who to be… I’ve lost my way, and you’re not here to help me find it. Mom is mad, and I understand. She’s done so much for me and this path… the one I’m on… isn’t one she would have chosen for me. I just… I…” The tears are flowing freely now, and my throat is burning. I rummage in my purse for a Kleenex and pat my face, trying not to smudge my make-up.
“This baby is coming, and I’m lost. I can’t ask Mom to take care of two of us. It’s not fair, and it isn’t what I want. I need to be out of that house to have a chance at mending our relationship. And the boys, your foster sons, they want to be there for me, but I don’t know what you’d think of that. In your letter, you told me that they’d always be there to take care of me and that they’d made that promise to you. You told me they were good men and that I can trust them, but I’m not sure. Trust is something that doesn’t come easily to me, and that’s something you’ve left behind. They want to take care of the baby and me, but they want more too. I know you knew about Danna, and maybe that’s what you thought when you wrote those things, but you weren’t explicit, and now I have to try and guess if me being in a relationship with eleven men would be something that you’d want for me. It seems like a crazy thing to even think and to be honest, I’m not sure I deserve them. How can I be enough for eleven men when I wasn’t enough to be your daughter? I ruin everything I touch, and I… I couldn’t bear to ruin things with my foster brothers. They want me to help keep them together, but there’s a big chance that I could do the opposite. There’s a big chance that my mouth will run away with me, and I’ll fracture my relationship with them and their relationships with each other. And the baby… the baby will love them, and I’ll be hurting the baby too. Don’t they deserve better? Don’t they deserve to go off and live their lives? To find a chance to fulfill their potential… the potential that you helped to nurture. They don’t need to be saddled with or forced to walk the path that I’m on. They didn’t ask to be daddies or for all the responsibility that comes with it.”
I sob into the tissue, my whole body shaking. “Just… you have to tell me what to do, Dad. You need to give me a sign, any kind of sign that this is my future. Is this whole thing just a temptation I should reject, or is this a test before I reach my prize? Please… just tell me.”
A breeze starts to blow, rustling the leaves on the trees that edge the cemetery. Overhead, a bird calls. A more faithful person than me might take those as signs, but I don’t have faith. It was squashed out of me when I was at a tender age, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back.
Behind me, someone clears their throat, and I almost jump out of my skin. When I whip my head around to see who it is, I find Gordon and coming up behind him, the rest of my foster brothers.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, swiping at my wet cheeks and scrambling to my feet. It’s mortifying that they’re seeing me like this.
“Walter told us you were here. We wanted to see you… we need to talk.”
“I… I can’t, okay. This isn’t a good time.”
“This is a perfect time, Maggie. I heard what you said. You think that you’re going to be a burden to us and that we somehow feel indebted to your dad. You think that we’re asking you to be with us because we pity you, and that isn’t right.”
Trey steps forward, his eyes meeting mine with more warmth than I deserve. “This isn’t about pity, Maggie. We’re not asking for you to be with us because we feel obligated. Yes, Dad wanted us to look after you, and we want that too, but don’t you understand that we’re being selfish? We want you for ourselves, and we’re not willing to let you go and make some other lucky guy happy. We want that happiness for all of us.”
“This thing between us, it’s better than we ever could have hoped for,” Logan says.
“It’s perfect,” John agrees.
“But what you said about Tristan…” I start to speak, but Hunter puts his hand up to stop me.
“Walter helped us to understand why you were talking to that asshole. We get it. You have a baby on the way, and you’re worried about providing for it. You were just being a good mom, and that’s okay. It just took us by surprise, and we’re sorry about how we reacted.”
“We should have done better.” Donovan’s face is truly remorseful, and he slides his hands into his pockets as though he doesn’t know what to do with himself. I don’t know either. So many eyes are on me. Hopeful eyes that must see my crumpled dress, red eyes, and smudged make-up and feel sorry for me. They say this isn’t about pity, but I feel pitiful. How can they view me any differently?
“I just… I read Dad’s letter. He told me about the promise you made to him, but there was nothing in there about us having a relationship.”
“He would never have come out and written it. He wouldn’t have wanted to put that kind of pressure on you, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t thinking it or hoping for it. All he wanted for us all was to be happy, and if this is what makes us happy, then I know we’ll have his blessing.” Harley shrugs like he doesn’t know what else to say. How many more ways can you speak for someone who’s dead?
I guess I’ll never truly know how Dad would have felt about any of the ways I choose to live my life. I’d like to think he’d be excited about being a grandad, even if he would want to punch Justin’s lights out. I like to think that me bringing love and joy to his foster sons would be a good thing in his eyes. After all, that’s what he’d tried to do for them by becoming the loving parent they never had. Maybe he had a different image of what my ideal life would be, but none of us is meant to tread the path of our ancestors. We have different hopes and dreams, different needs and wants. We have to spread our own wings and make our own journeys.
I don’t want to be the kind of person who’s trapped by the past. That’s what my mom has been like, and growing up enclosed in that never-changing bubble hasn’t been good for her or for me. My child deserves more. They deserve hope and joy and a mom that’s doing everything she can to fly.
“Whatever you decide… whether you want us to be your brothers or your lovers, we’ll be here, okay? The house is our home, a place for all of us, including the baby. Just come home, Maggie. We have something to show you.” Sean’s cheeks pink just beneath his eyes, as though saying all of that and wearing his heart on his sleeve is something that makes him deeply uncomfortable. I know exactly how he feels. All these emotions are hard enough to digest internally, let alone project out there in front of so many others.
Romantic conversations between a man and a woman are one thing. When there are twelve people involved, it’s definitely harder.
They have something to show me.
What could that be? I have no idea, but I want to find out.