Brothers of Paradise Series

“Idiot,” Michael curses. The word hangs in the space and no one contradicts him. It’s laced with worry, at any rate, and not sincerity.

There’s a tug on my free arm. Little Jamie climbs up on the couch next to me. His wide, dark eyes, so like his father’s, look up at mine, questioning.

“Want a piece of the blanket? Here,” I murmur, spreading the one Emma and I are using.

He nods and settles against my side, turning back to the TV. “Is my uncle all right?”

I wrap my arm around him too, and with all my might, I pour conviction into my voice. “Yes,” I say. “He is going to be just fine.”

Did you hear that, Universe? I think. You owe me one.

The evening turns to night. Night turns to two sleepy children, and me staying in the guest bedroom, texting my mother to be careful if she’s out driving tonight. She’s in a town over, and she sends back a bunch of hearts. I don’t tell her about Parker. Not yet. Not as I lie in the dark, in Lily and Hayden’s guest room, and stare up at the ceiling.

And when I creep downstairs at two a. m. and find Lily and Hayden in the kitchen, her head against his chest, we don’t speak. She just pushes a cup of hot tea my way and meets my eyes with worried ones of her own.

When morning comes, and the rain has stopped, and there’s still no sign of a boat… My fear settles into a painful realization, one I can’t look at for too long. I care about someone that isn’t my mom, or Lily, or my daughter.

I love him, and it terrifies me.

“Will you let me know?” I ask Lily. “As soon as you find out?”

Lily hugs me tightly. She smells like shampoo from the shower she’d just taken, and I feel the outline of her spine beneath her T-shirt. “Of course. You too. Okay?”

“Yes,” I whisper, fear making it hard to speak.

All the things I hadn’t said. All the things I hadn’t dared to.

Emma has her hand in mine the entire walk back home. She’s been quiet, and I know I should ask her why, but I’m too scared to hear the answer. That she’s left afraid by this too. That she’s grown attached to Parker too.

I’m focused on her hand in mine, and the careful way she avoids the puddles on the sidewalk on Greene Street, and don’t see the person waiting in front of my mother’s house until it’s too late.

The tall shape. The dark hair. The backpack slung over a shoulder.

And under my breath, and within earshot of my daughter, I whisper the only thing that comes to mind.

“Shit.”

JAMIE

“There you are.” Lee’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes, not even as they drop down to Emma. “Hi, kid.”

She steps behind my leg.

Adrenaline erupts into a steady drumbeat beneath my skin, a second heartbeat, warning me to flee. He’s a black hole. I can’t let us get sucked in.

“Why are you here?”

“Hello to you too,” he says, and lets his backpack drop to the gravel path on Mom’s front yard. He doesn’t fit in next to Emma’s pink bicycle and my mom’s wind charms hanging off the porch. “You haven’t exactly kept in touch.”

“Neither have you.”

“I think we both needed time,” Lee says. “Some time to cool down and reflect on our actions.”

“I’ve reflected,” I say carefully. On how I could be so stupid as to let him into my life in the first place.

Lee nods. “I knew you would’ve, Jamie. Running away is beneath you. I’ve missed you this summer.”

“You have?” I ask. But he doesn’t seem to hear the disbelief in my voice, taking it for what it’s not. Hope.

“Yes. The apartment isn’t the same without you there. Without both of you.” Lee extends a hand to the house. “Why don’t you invite me in? We can have coffee and talk about us. It’s time you came home. Both of you.”

And I know I can’t do that. Can’t let him pour the poison into my ear, the slick reasoning, the slow breakdown of my arguments, of my self-worth. No one twists words better than he does.

“We don’t have a future,” I say.

His arm drops, and the smile turns into a frown. Brown eyes ice over. Disapproval, and despite the distance between us, despite the warmth, fear runs like a shiver down my spine. “Jamie,” Lee says. “We have a child together. Please be reasonable.”

I put a hand on Emma’s head. Her arm is around my leg, a solid, warm weight against me. I don’t miss Daddy, she’d told me.

Lee’s frown deepens and he looks down at Emma briefly, as if he doesn’t like what he sees. “Jamie, come to your senses. This has been a little experiment, but it’s come to an end. I’ll be here for as long I need to convince you I love you.”

“You’ll stay in town?”

“I’ve travelled a long way to get here.” He looks at the tree-lined street behind me, at the large houses. “You’re swimming in money now, it seems. I remember when you had to ask me just to buy groceries. Was it all an act?”

My breath whooshes out of me. I’d asked him because I hadn’t been working, because he hadn’t liked me working. Hadn’t liked the supervisor at the restaurant I’d waitressed at. He smiles at you too much.

But then Lee’s eyes soften. “That’s okay, Jamie. I forgive you. I can be very forgiving, you know. I might be open to taking you back and forgetting this old childish tantrum. Why don’t you unlock this door and let me sit down and have a beer?”

And I know, with a bone-deep certainty, that if I let him in he’s never going to leave.

“We’re not having this conversation in front of Emma,” I say.

Lee goes still. “What?”

“Today’s not a good time for me.”

“It’s not a good time?” he repeats, face paling. He never flushed with anger. He’d grown quiet, and white, all color leaking out of his cheeks. And he’d lash out with his words. “Why can’t you ask your trophy wife of a mother to watch the kid? She’s inside, isn’t she?”

I shake my head. “That’s not our house anymore. Mom sold it a few years back.”

“You sold it,” Lee says, and looks down at the child’s bike on the lawn. But I don’t let him call me on the obvious lie. I don’t let myself falter either.This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

“I’ll text you when there’s a better time. Stay at the motel in town.”

He rolls his neck, eyes on mine. He’s annoyed, but he’s also unnerved. I’m not reacting the way I used to. Any second now, he’s going to start the old barrage… that I’m useless, worthless, that nobody would want me anyway, that he’s the best I’ll ever get…

“Fine,” he says, and a smile sweeps across his face instead. “Text me tomorrow, then. I’ll see you. I’ve missed you, Jamie.”