Chapter Ten
? Isla ?
I understand Mom’s disappointment.
Hurrying out to find me fully dressed with my bag in hand can’t have looked good. My “itchy feet”, as Grandma Lee calls it, is an infamous joke within the family.
Grandma says I’m restless, searching for something. It happens to everyone my age.
Mom says I’m unreliable. A dramatic embarrassment, desperate for attention.
I used to think both can be right. Maybe I am trying to find something. Maybe that something is attention.
But then Nicolas threw it in my face.
Irresponsible and unreliable. Not fit to be a mother.
And maybe he’s right, too.
What do I have to offer a baby?
Part of me knows I have no business with something so pure and innocent. But a bigger, hungrier part knows I would be a great mom. I would give that baby so much love. All the love I have longed for my entire life. I would never abandon it or tell it that it was a mistake.
But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fuck up its life somehow. What if I do run? I wouldn’t mean to but what if I can’t stop myself?
Last night was proof I can’t be trusted even though I wasn’t running.
I was.
Just not away, but away enough. Only for the night. Just a few hours away from all the voices in my head. The temptation to do something I know I’m not strong enough to walk away from.
I knew if I stayed, I would go to the guesthouse. I would wait until the house was still with the gentle hush of everyone’s soft breathing, slip on my shoes and sprint across the yard. I would bolt up the stairs and crawl into their bed. No questions asked.
But I’ve already embarrassed myself enough.
I’ve done things, said things I can never take back and, while I don’t regret them, it’s hard looking Nicolas in the eyes knowing what he thinks of me. How little.
I also can’t further my humiliation after hearing him with my own ears that he doesn’t want me.
“I told you why it was a bad idea. Why she was a bad idea. Everything about her is chaos, Dom. She’s a walking hazard. Letting her into our lives will destroy everything.”
He couldn’t have been clearer. I almost appreciate that he was also honest straight to my face.
But I’m not going to chase a man no matter how badly I want him.
Dom may think we can make this work, but at the end of the day, I’m not getting in the middle of their relationship.
Dom may be stubborn and decided, but Nicolas is worse.
His head is a concrete wall once he sets his mind to something.
But that’s fine. I came here expecting nothing and I’m going to leave with a new lesson to add to all the other reasons I’m going to die alone. At this point, I’m not even fighting it.
???
I wake the next morning to a light layer of snow lining the earth. It clings to rooftops and has children running from their homes to roll across their yards. There’s just enough to give the illusion of the holidays.
A few years back, I lived in Michigan for a few months during winter and nothing will beat that snow fall. I almost thought we were going to drown in it.
I liked Michigan. Not the weather, but the people. After them, my tiny apartment overlooking the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles was a massive change. Everyone was always in such a hurry. So much noise and chaos. I was almost relieved when I moved to Connecticut.
Absently, I pick at the bit of skin on my thumb. It’s a nice distraction from the question humming in my skull.
Fifteen states in nine years.
There was nothing wrong with any of them. I was the problem every time and the people I disappointed needed a fresh start from me.
“You can’t always keep running,” Nicolas’s words cut through my thoughts.
It’s not that easy.
After leaving home, I moved to Oklahoma for a few months. I met Daryl. A big, burly man with big hands and kind, blue eyes. He was an equipment manager for an indie band. He’d been so kind. So warm and welcoming. Wouldn’t even pull my hair when fucking me because he hadn’t wanted to hurt me.
He was good.
Too good for someone who was ultimately going to fuck up his life. He was too blind to see what a mistake he was making.
I burnt dinner, filled the entire apartment with smoke thick enough to soak into everything he owned.
He reeked for a month. But he only worried if I was okay.
If I needed anything. He’d been so frantic and I realized I didn’t deserve that.
Eventually, he would come to see I was only a weight holding him down and he’d hate me.
He’d leave right as I let my guard down.
So, I left.
I packed my things while he was at work. I left him a note explaining how sorry I was for failing him and I vanished. I moved to Missouri. Started over.
Daryl may have called and texted. I’m not sure. I changed my number that same afternoon.
So, maybe Nicolas is right to keep me away from his life.
Away from Dom. He’s right to protect them from me.
I won’t bring anything good to the table.
I won’t stay. I know I won’t because why would they want me to?
Both are brilliant and successful. They have their lives together.
I have nothing to offer, except my womb.
But I know I will forfeit my life if I have to give them my baby and they want nothing else to do with me. I will leave this world before returning for another Christmas dinner and seeing the tiny life I brought into the world look at me like a stranger.
I take a long, slow breath.
It hurts but I’m glad last night happened. I’m glad I wasn’t able to wreck their lives.
Feeling no better, but telling myself I do, I leave my room. I pause at the door to make sure I haven’t left anything out before closing the door and padding along the hallway.
Halfway down the stairs, my phone chirps in my pocket. It’s a familiar ting of bells that once filled me with excitement but only baffles me now as I fish it out.
“Dad?”
The last time my dad called me, it was to inform me that he and his new family were moving to Europe for a year — England — and to send any Christmas present I had ahead of time.
Every year before that, I called. I visited.
.. briefly. Simone always had family coming over for dinner and my presence didn’t make sense.
So, either he’s moving back to England or someone’s dead.
“Hey, kiddo, we thought you were coming here this year.”
I went to their house last year.
“No, it’s Mom’s turn. I’ll be there next year.”
There’s a pause where I can just make out the faint hiss of conversation. I’m guessing he and Simone are discussing this information, although I can’t imagine why. The rules haven’t changed. Every alternating year.
I hit the bottom landing and shuffle slowly in the direction of the kitchen and the low murmur of chatter, but dragging my feet. Dad obviously has more to say and Mom gets moody when I talk to him.
“Isla, I think you’re confused. You’re supposed to be here. The boys have been so excited to see what you got them for Christmas.”
I pause feet from the kitchen and frown.
Simone’s two boys from her last marriage are spoiled little shits with no manners and the mental processes of a turnip. I love kids, but her two brats need therapy.
“It’s Mom’s turn,” I tell him flatly. “Nicolas and Dominic are here so I know it’s—”
“Is that why you’re abandoning your brothers? Because of those two?”
My cheeks warm at the implication. “No, but that’s how I know I’m supposed to be here.”
“As a big sister, it’s your responsibility to look after your siblings. Antonin and Louis look up to you. They’re just kids.”
Seventeen is hardly infants, but the way Simone babies them, they might be.
“I can come by after—” I attempt only to get cut off.
“It’s Christmas, Isla. We are much too busy to move our plans around to accommodate you.
You are being selfish. Obviously, this is your mother’s influence.
She never could raise you properly to understand the importance of other people’s time.
I honestly don’t even know why you’re over there, except to throw yourself at those two…
” he cuts himself off before he says the words he throws at Antonin and Louis when they act even slightly too feminine.
“I’m sorry,” is the only thing I know I can say that will calm him down.
“Well, that’s not good enough, is it, Isla? You have upset Simone and the boys, and frankly, I’m disappointed in you.”
I hate the hot well of tears that blurs the hallway and the figure standing in the open doorway to the kitchen. I blink and a single tear slips down my cheek, but it brings into focus the unforgiving slash of Nicolas’s face as he takes me in.
“Isla?”
It’s concern, the only way he knows how to show — with pulled eyebrows and bunched fists. Any other time, his stance alone would have made me chuckle, but Dad is still talking.
“You can’t go through life like this, Isla. You need to grow up. It’s no wonder you’re alone. You can’t do anything right.”
Fighting not to cry, to not let Nicolas see or hear the avalanche of truth, I turn my back to him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
The phone is pulled from my fingers. The last thing I hear before Nicolas claps it to his ear is, “It’s disgusting. Maybe you don’t see it because, like your mother, you can’t help yourself, crawling under any man who will have you, but abandoning your family just for some man to bend you over....”
I’m horrified by the snap of thunderclouds clashing across his beautiful face. The fire that lights his eyes even as they fall to mine.
“Nick,” I plead, and am ignored.
“Who the fuck is this?”
I hear my dad’s tirade break off. For only a second.
“Who is this?”
“I’m the guy who will find you and use you like a hand puppet if you ever talk to her like that again.”
My heart crashes in my chest as I stand frozen beneath his hulking presence. Every drop of spit in my mouth has vanished.
“Isla?” Dom joins us in our cluster, dark eyes moving from me to Nicolas. “What’s going on?”
Rather than answer, Nicolas hits speaker on my screen and Dad’s outrage unspools through the silence.
“I don’t know who you are, but this is a family matter and you have no business in how I speak to my daughter. Put Isla back on.”
“That’s not going to happen. I don’t give a shit who you are, you’ve been warned.”
He disconnects the line and drops the phone back into my trembling palm.
“Why did you do that?” I demand.
Nicolas never so much as blinks when he closes a step between us. “Because I could hear the things he was saying to you from across the goddamn hallway, Isla. If he’d been standing in front of me, he wouldn’t have any teeth.”
“He’s my dad!” I snap back.
His head dips so our faces are inches apart. “You think it makes it okay for him to say those things to you?”
My finger shoots up and stabs him in the chest before I can stop myself. “So, you can tell me I’m worthless, no better than a whore and will be an unfit mother, but no one else can talk badly to me. Is that it?”
“What?” Dominic’s head jerks from me to the other man with outrage. “Nick?”
Nicolas exhales and straightens, but whatever he’s about to say is interrupted by Mom coming out to see what all the commotion is about.
“Nicky, your coffee is getting cold.” Her blue eyes find mine. “Are you trying to leave again?”
I draw in a slow breath. “I was on the phone.”
As if that’s code for my father, Mom’s eyes narrow. “What did he want?”
I stuff my phone into my back pocket to give my hands something to do.
“He thought it was his Christmas.”
Mom bristles. “He had you last year.” Her fists punch into her hips.
“He doesn’t even want you there. He’s just a cheap bastard who wants other people to bring that woman’s spawn gifts so he doesn’t have to.
” She huffs and turns to the boys. “Isla doesn’t appreciate the things I do for her, but I have never asked her for anything and she still sneaks off in the middle of the night.
” Something seems to occur to her and her slitted eyes snap to me once more.
“Were you trying to go back to him? Is that what you were doing yesterday?”
“No!” I protest, but she’s not listening.
“Isla, if you want to go to your dad’s, you can go. You don’t have to sneak off. I’m hurt you can’t be bothered to spend one Christmas with me, the one person who gave up everything for you. But go.” She waves a shaky hand at me. “I’m used to being alone.”
It’s taking everything in me not to take her words seriously. To not turn and just walk out. But not to Dad’s. I want to go to my apartment, pack my bags, get in my car and drive. I want to put the country between us. I want to keep going until I hit the ocean. I don’t care which one.
Just standing here, surrounded by watchful eyes, judging my lack of worth, my blood roars between my ears. Tears turn to sharp knives at the back of my throat. The air burns going down my lungs.
But Mom isn’t done.
“I just don’t know what you want from me. I’ve done the best I can. I just... I feel like nothing I do is good enough for you. You are honestly so selfish most days.”
Useless.
Selfish.
Irresponsible.
Unreliable.
Unwanted.
Replaceable.
A terrible mother.
Stupid, stupid fuck up.
I’m shaking so hard, my bones hurt. My insides gnaw on themselves. Everything inside me bleeds, forming a fist sized ball deep in my throat I can’t breathe around.
“That’s enough.”
I didn’t see Nicolas move to stand between me and my mom, but his broad back blocks the light. Blocks me.
Shields me.
“We’re going to go get the tree. We’ll grab coffee on our way.”
I’m forgotten as Mom focuses her attention on him.
“Oh, there’s no need for that. I have a thermos…”
I don’t wait to hear the rest. I don’t care as I turn and hurry... away.
Not upstairs.
Not out the front door.
I reach the corner between the two when Dom catches me.
His long fingers curl around my wrist and I’m pulled into his chest.
“I got you,” he murmurs into the top of my head.
And something in that gentle whisper, in the arms he closes around me, breaks me. I dissolve into tears. Everything I usually carry with me until I’m alone untangles in a mess of gasping heaves that soak his top.
I know I shouldn’t. I know I’m making a spectacle of myself, an embarrassment, but it has been so long since anyone has held me. Just the unyielding weight of his hold squeezing my broken pieces together is enough to pull me under the waves.
In my ear where the currents roar, he continues to whisper words I can’t hear. They’re followed by the gentle strokes of his fingers through my hair.
Beneath his hold I’m burning. Heat wafts up through my sweater and turns my skin clammy. I don’t know if he can feel it, too, but he’s not pulling away.
Not even when my jagged sobs slow to hiccups.