Chapter 30
thirty
Lachlan
R ose went to Becky’s so I could say goodbye to Ainsley alone. I didn’t want Rose to see the aftermath.
The two girls hugged and promised they’d see each other soon, while I worked on packing Ainsley’s car.
Now Ainsley and I are standing outside her driver’s door.
Ainsley speaks first. “Before you say anything stupid, I want to say something.”
“Okay.”
“I love you. I’ve loved you my entire life, or at least it feels that way. I know you think I have big dreams, and I do. I won’t lie and say I haven’t worked toward those, but love is a dream for me too. To have a man who would do anything for me, love me the way I want and need in my life, is also something I’ve hoped for.”
I’m that man.
I love her so much that I’m willing to let her go. For her.
She inhales and then speaks again. “I’m going to New York today because it’s my job and I need to take care of things, but I’m coming back.” Ainsley steps closer, placing her hand on my chest. “I’m coming back to you. I chose you, Lachlan. You’ve always said that no one ever chose you, well, I’m going to show that changed the day you let me fall in love with you. ”
I wish that I believed that.
I would give anything to be a different man. One who hasn’t seen the truth of the world and how things change.
“I will never be the reason someone gives up what they want,” I tell her. “I can’t be that person.”
“And you’re not asking. You’re not encouraging me to give it all up for you, are you?”
“No.”
“Exactly.” She leans in and kisses me. “I have to go. I’ll be back, so if you could, don’t fall in love with any random reporters who might show up.”
Then the beautiful woman gets in her car, waves, and drives off, taking my heart with her.
It’s been two days, and already the smell of her shampoo is fading from the pillow. All her little hair ties are gone, and I miss them. I miss her.
We’ve spoken every night, she’s read to Rose on video calls, and I’ve hung up, feeling so fucking alone.
Today she has a big meeting where she’ll see whether her story made the print edition, and she promised she’d call afterward.
I hear the ping of a text and I look down, but it’s not her.
Everett
So, you let her go?
Miles
What do you think he did?
Killian
And they wonder why women think we’re stupid.
Miles
Oh, he’s stupid for sure.
Fuck off. All of you. She has a life and it’s not here.
Everett
They have these new things called planes. They go up in the air, really high, and then come down in a new place. I hear they even go to New York City.
Killian
I’ve been on one. They’re very fast and efficient.
Everett
That’s right! You go to Boston.
I exhale through my nose, trying to remember why I like my friends.
And what about Rose? Do I leave her? Make her quit cheer so we can travel to New York so I can be with her? Did any of you think about my daughter?
Miles
Did you ask her? Rose is a smart kid who loves her father, and she loves Ainsley. I think we often forget they have wants too. I’m not saying you leave it up to her, but I’m pretty sure she misses Ainsley as well.
I know she does. She’s had no issue expressing how much she wishes Ainsley was here, and she loves her.
This isn’t cut and dry.
Killian
Nothing in life is. It hasn’t been easy reconnecting with my son who hates my guts, but I’m out here, making the hard decisions.
Everett
None of us think it’s easy, we just think it’s right.
Advice heard. See you at practice tonight.
I go back over the paperwork on my desk and try to figure out why the town denied my request for new gear. I’ll never understand these denials, and I also get why the previous chief told me I would regret leaving my truck.
This is all politics, and while the pay is much better, the headache is much greater. I miss the jokes in the barracks, the nights we played cards.
My phone rings, and I’m like a goddamn teenager frantically reaching for it on my desk.
Although it’s the wrong MacKinley’s name on the screen.
“Hey, Cas.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Okay, I see he talked to his sister.
“Not sure what you mean.”
“Not sure what I ... you’re a fucking idiot.”
I sigh. “I can only imagine what you heard.”
“Heard? About what?” The surprise in his voice catches me off guard. Maybe he hasn’t spoken to Ainsley.
“Nothing. Clue me in on what I’m an idiot about.”
“Your dad.”
I’m a little shocked at that one, since he’s no freaking better when it comes to parental relationships, but I’ll bite.
“What about my dad? ”
“You saw him. You saw the garden and you’re still pissed at him?”
One of the things about my friendship with Caspian that I’ve always respected is the ability to call each other out on our shit. Today, I’m not admiring that. I’d like to punch him in the face for it.
“And how are things with the Admiral? Did you stop by after Ainsley and I left?”
“Fuck off. We’re talking about you.”
“I’d rather we talk about you, since you brought it up.”
“I bet you would. How about we talk about the fact that you ended it with my sister?” he offers.
“Let’s focus on my father instead.”
He snorts. “I see. You know, I think we’ll talk about Ainsley instead. See, I’ve always respected you. I thought, that guy has his shit together. You walked away from football for Rose. You bought that house, have a great job, got promoted over and over again. You’ve lived smart and always put Rose first. So I’m curious, when the fuck are you going to do that for yourself?”
“I am doing that.”
“Really? Because I talked to Ainsley. She told me all about her brilliant plan, which I’m one hundred percent sure you’re not worthy of.”
“I would agree. I’m not.”
“Right, well, she’s on her own path to proving her love for you, as though anyone with eyes could miss it, and my thinking is that you’re going to push her away. Since that’s what you always do when you’re worried someone might get hurt.”
If he was in front of me, he’d be on the ground for that one. “If you were anyone else who said that ...”
“Yeah, but I’m not. I’m not going to lie and tell you some lame shit you want to hear. You’re the one who pushed me to go to Nashville. To put myself out there, try, work hard, fight for what I want. I swear all those words came out of your mouth.”
I did. Caspian is talented as fuck, and he can make it in music. He just would’ve never done it if people hadn’t pushed him. He lived under the Admiral’s thumb, always doing what he was told and never stepping out of the box he was made to sit in.
When we got to college, he was fucking miserable.
I loved every damn second of it, while Cas just wanted to hang at the bars with the musicians.
“This isn’t the same thing.”
“No shit. This time it’s about you.”
I grumble. “Did you call to yell at me?”
“Pretty much.”
“Are you done?”
“Not even a little bit. You and Ainsley will figure your shit out. I have faith in her to fix your ass, but ... I’ve let this shit with your dad go because I get it. Fathers and sons are complicated. Lord knows my relationship with the Admiral is fucked, but your dad cares, dude. He’s tried and wants a relationship that isn’t about making you into the son he always wanted. You already are that. Also, he loved your mother, and I know that you went through absolute hell, but what if you’re missing something? What if you don’t know the whole truth, Lachlan? What would happen if your entire foundation has been built on sand instead of concrete?”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil, for your unsolicited advice. I appreciate what you’re saying, but I have a tractor trailer’s worth of issues regarding my father.”
“Then it’s time to unload, Lachlan, because you’re carrying too much weight.”
The fucker hangs up before I can say another word.
I’m sitting in my truck outside my father’s house, not even sure what the hell possessed me to get my keys, call Delaney to stay with Rose, and head here.
I take that back. I know what possessed me—Caspian.
However, after we hung up, I cursed him to hell. I thought about the absolute shit he said to me. I’m not a fucking kid. I was there. I saw her spiral and waste away.
Then I thought about the possibility that he was right. What if I don’t know everything?
What if with everything I’ve done my entire fucking adult life, I was missing something, and now I might miss everything?
I kept circling the fact that I assumed Ainsley would be like my mother if she gave up anything for me. That she’d be unhappy, in a place she doesn’t want to be, wishing she’d chosen another life.
The only person who can answer any of this is sitting in the living room, reading in his chair.
I knock twice, and my father opens the door, stepping back with wide eyes when he sees me.
“Lachlan. Is everything okay?”
“Why did Mom give up and choose not to fight the cancer?” I spit the words out before we can talk about the weather or Rose or anything else.
My dad’s hand is gripping the edge of the door. “Is that really the question you’re asking?”
“I need to know why she gave up. I need to know how she could just think her life was worthless and the people around her weren’t going to suffer because of it.”
His hand drops and he steps back, opening the door more. “Come in.”
I haven’t been in this house since the day she died.
I look at the wood floors that I walked on for most of my life. The fifth floorboard on the right will creak if you step on it. All the memories, the way she’d laugh and chase me around with whipped cream on her spoon, the stain still there from the spot we missed.
My feet cross the threshold, and I follow Dad into the kitchen.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“I’m good. ”
He nods once, and then we both sit at the table.
“Before we get into things, I wanted to thank you for bringing Rose over. It meant a lot to me.”
“She liked talking about the ships.”
He smiles and laughs a little. “You used to like talking about them too. She’s a lot like you, at least in the short time I got to spend with her. There were similarities.”
“She reminds me of Mom.”
Dad’s eyes mist over a little. “As do you. Remind me of your mother, that is.”
I sigh, looking away, feeling uncomfortable. “I need to know the truth, Dad. Caspian seems to think there’s some missing information that I wasn’t privy to.”
My father shifts and then laces his fingers on the table in front of him. “Your mother, despite all her struggles, didn’t just choose to give up. I know you saw it that way, and, honestly, I did, too, for a long time. She didn’t want to be sick, and I thought she had a real simple solution to it—fight.”
“That was the damn solution!”
“Yes, but not to her,” he says, leaning back. “I pleaded with her. I offered her a million things if she’d just try it. She’d touch my face, tell me she loved me, but that she wasn’t going to prolong a life that was not going to be anything like she lived.”
“But she’d live.”
“Would she?” he tosses back. “Your mother who loved to bake cakes, dance around this kitchen with her horrible music blaring, spend hours in that garden trimming? Because she wouldn’t have that life anymore. She’d be tired all the time, be stuck in her room, be afraid of getting sick because it could be what ended her instead of the cancer. That’s how she saw it.”
I push back, anger starting to fill me. “She lived that life too, Dad. Because of you.”
“Yes. I know that I did that to her.”
My head snaps to meet his gaze. “What?”
“She did. She went into her horrible depressions where life wasn’t worth getting out of bed some days. Before a deployment I’d watch her day by day start to sink. No matter what medication we tried, therapy, or anything else we could do wouldn’t stop it. I had to get on that ship, knowing that my wife and son were going to fall apart. Sure, I would ask the Admiral and Ms. MacKinley to check on you both. I even hired someone to come help her when you were young, but she fired her and sent me an email cursing me out.” He smiles at that. “She didn’t like anyone telling her what to do. I don’t know if you remember when I decided to leave the military?”
I shake my head.
“You were maybe thirteen. We’d just moved here a few years before, and I was on shore duty, so things were good, but then they explained I’d need to go back to a ship again. I’d gotten special permission to stay on an extended shore duty because your mother was struggling. When I told her, I explained that I was done. I wasn’t going to leave her again. She lost it.”
I lean back. “What do you mean?”
“She lost it, Lachlan. I’m talking full-blown freak-out. I’d never seen her so angry at me. I had several years left before I could retire, and she told me she’d divorce me if I didn’t finish out my time.”
“So you stayed?”
My father sighs heavily and nods. “I couldn’t lose her. If you think I didn’t love your mother, you know nothing. That woman was the reason I breathed, and when she found out she was pregnant ...”
I can’t explain it, but something feels strange. “When she found out she was pregnant, what?”
“We knew your mother’s mental state when we married. I loved her, and I didn’t care that she struggled. We were going to struggle together. We grew up in nowhere Nebraska, and I wanted a better life for us. So we discussed it and decided to join the navy. She, well, she just didn’t ever want to be a bad mother. It was a huge surprise when she got pregnant. ”
I sit back, feeling the breath leave my lungs. “But she was the best.”
“She was, but she was terrified. She didn’t think she should ever have a child, and leading up to your birth were some of the worst times in her life. She had to come off her medication, and it was hard, but she loved you. Before she met you, she loved you, wanted you, was willing to fight every battle to have you, even though we both agreed we never should’ve gotten pregnant. At your birth she had her tubes tied because she knew she couldn’t endure another pregnancy.”
My father’s eyes are distant, and I can see the weight of this on him.
My mother never once made me feel like she regretted having me, nor did she ever say she didn’t want to have kids. She loved my father and me. I knew that, but I don’t understand why she wouldn’t let him retire early. Why did she always have to put herself in pain to help others?
And when I ask myself that simple question, it’s as though someone just turned the lights on inside me.
It’s the same shit I do.
I look at my father, feeling for the first time in four years a sympathy for what he must’ve felt on the other side of her decisions.
“She wouldn’t let you give up your career for her. She wouldn’t let you protect her because she was so damn busy doing it for everyone else.”
My father nods. “When she got sick, she lied for months. Months and months she told me the doctors didn’t find anything. It wasn’t until she collapsed that she confessed. I only had a year left until I was fully retired, and she knew I’d go AWOL if that was what I had to do to be there for her.”
And here my father was willing to do the same for her.
“Why didn’t you push back?”
He chuckles and sighs. “I pushed with all I had, but she was tired. She wanted to live out the rest of her days in the garden, pulling weeds or watching us do it for her. She wanted to see Rose, you, and everyone else without tubes and wires everywhere. When she told me that this was her choice, I felt as though someone ripped my heart out. It wasn’t my choice, Lachlan. I would’ve chosen one more day, one more hour, one more minute with her. There is nothing in this world I wouldn’t have done to keep her with us. I know you blame me. I know you think it was my fault that she gave up, and while some of it might have been the exhaustion from battling her mental illness, it was her choice to live out the rest of her days how she wanted.”
All this time I’ve assumed that it was because my father didn’t ask her or show her how he could finally be there. The years that he left her alone, I thought was his decision because of his career choices.
I saw my mother suffer time and time again as he’d leave.
A tear falls from my eye, and I swipe it away.
“You made leaving look easy,” I say, my throat growing tight.
“Easy?” Dad huffs. “It was never easy, son. Leaving you and your mother was horrible. Even if she wasn’t sick and I didn’t know how things were going to happen, I would’ve hated it. However, knowing that she was going to suffer and I couldn’t stop it was absolute agony. I spent six months out to sea, sick to my stomach. I’d call every chance I could. I emailed ten times a day. I sent things so that she’d have to get out of bed and had Denise come check on you both. There was no joy in my deployments. I didn’t go sightseeing when we were in a port. Instead, I found somewhere quiet to video chat. Every single time, I asked her to please just let me leave the service and I’d figure it out. Her answer was always the same ... do it and I’m gone.”
It’s funny how I’m basically doing the same thing, only in reverse.
“I think I fucked up, Dad.”
“With?”
“Ainsley.”
He leans back with a smile. “Let me guess, you told her she couldn’t leave her job for you? ”
I nod.
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t take her choice to love you away. Don’t make her choose, Lachlan. Just be her choice.”