Chapter 27
27
DAISY
“ I ’m sorry about all of this. And about your dad. You didn’t deserve any of it. I’ve cost you so much time.”
“Stop,” he tells me.
“I can’t. There’s more.”
He cuts his eyes to me at a stop light.
“I’ll wait till you’re parked. I don’t want to say it while you’re driving.”
“Holy shit, Daze,” he says, “how bad is it?”
“It’s not bad. It’s just surprising and it might make you madder at me than you already are.”
Benny drives a long time before he parks out by the water. I stare at the moon and its reflection both and wait for him to say something.
“Okay,” he says almost reluctantly. “What else do I need to know? Is he a twin?”
I roll my eyes at that, “I guess I deserved that but no. Just the one. And one on the way,” I falter, and meet his eyes expectantly.
“What?” he says in disbelief like he hasn’t heard me right.
“I’m pregnant, Benny. We have a chance to do this all over again the right way. Meaning I won’t panic and hide and you can know this baby from the moment they’re born. You won’t miss a second, I promise.”
His face is so bewildered. “You’re pregnant.” He repeats like it’s a foreign phrase. I nod.
“I didn’t plan it. I mean, obviously. I screwed up a lot, Benny. I know it’s unforgivable. I’m grateful to have a second chance at having your baby, at sharing that with you. But I understand if you want to only see Liam and the baby without me. It feels like a lot, having to deal with me when I lied to you for so long. I don’t want to make this any harder than it already is for you. And if it means anything at all, know that I love you. There’s never been anyone else, and there never will be. I love you, Benny Falconari. I’ll love you till the day I die.”
I choke on the last part. I fight back tears, look away from him and try not to cry. He deserves space and quiet to understand what I just told him. I lay my hand on my belly and take slow breaths, imagine peaceful waves of light wrapped around my baby. I’ll figure it out, whatever I have to do. My kids deserve to know their father and I will get out of his way as much as I can even though it breaks my heart.
“It was right after my dad got shot,” he says. It’s not a question. “You told me you were scared I was gonna die, and that you couldn’t handle me being in the Mob. I told you that you were being stupid and he was going to be fine. I was a jerk about it, and I didn’t think it would ever happen to me, and that you were just being dramatic. But you knew you were pregnant then—and I wouldn’t listen when you said you were afraid. That’s why you ran off, isn’t it?”
I nod. “But it wasn’t your fault. I made my own decisions.”
“No, I just didn’t act like I gave a shit if you felt safe or not. I didn’t ask how I could make things better. I just wanted you to drop it. To trust me and let me believe I was invincible.”
“I’m sorry,” I manage.
“I’m sorry, too. Because we both made mistakes.”
“That’s kind of you,” I say carefully.
“It’s not fuckin’ kind and you know it,” he almost growls. “Do you think there’s any world where I wouldn’t raise these kids with you? That I’d tell you to stay out of my face and only see them on my own and not want you, Daisy? How long have you known me?”
“All my life practically,” I say, tears spilling from my eyes. He can’t mean it. I must be imagining it. He can’t want me after all this.
“Come here,” he says and he reaches for me. I throw my arms around him, laughing and sobbing at once.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“We build a life together.”
“Just like that?” I ask. “Yeah, just like that,” he says, and he kisses me, a searing, deep kiss that makes me feel weak and trembling all over. “And I’m gonna marry you.”
“Oh, you are?” I tease.
“Damn right I am. I was an idiot not to follow you when you took off.”
“I didn’t want you to follow me,” I protest.
“No, but you sure as hell needed me, didn’t you, Daze?”
I shut my eyes for a second, overwhelmed by the idea of Benny Falconari catching up to me at a rest stop, climbing out of his truck in those worn out Levis and giving me a cocky half-smile. I would’ve tried to back away and get back in my car. But when he ate up the distance between us in two long steps and took me by the hand, I would’ve sobbed into his chest and thanked God that he found me in time before I burned down both our lives by running away. It’s dizzying, the realization that I’d take it all back, that I would have come home with him and none of this would have ever happened.
“I wish you had stopped me. Or really, I wish I’d stopped myself. I did need you, Benny. I do need you.”
“You have me. For better or worse.” “I made a lot of mistakes,” I admit.
“So have I. Now we can get to know each other for real.”
“I’d like that. Because more than anything else I’ve ever been, I’m Liam’s mom,” I say, my voice breaking.
“I can’t wait to see the two of you together, learn what that’s like. I always thought you’d be an amazing mom, fun and creative, and adventurous.”
I shake my head. “Maybe I could l have been, but I’ve played it so safe, and I’ve been bound up in the idea that if I take any chances I could be found out and lose him.”
“Who was this guy you were running from, Daze? Cause it sure as hell wasn’t me. Is there a story you imagined where I’d find out about all this and just steal our kid from you?”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I was so scared, and I felt backed into a corner and like I had to hide out. I was convinced you would snatch him from me to get me back for keeping him from you.”
“Even if you believed that of me, did you really think so little of yourself? To think that you would’ve been with any guy who’d do something like that? Give yourself some credit even if you didn’t give me any,” he says ruefully.
“I misjudged everything so badly, especially you. Liam has a right to know you, and you should know him. I want that more than –I have these—” I hold out the plastic grocery sack I brought with me. “I kept a notebook. I wrote in it like a diary and then I printed some pictures and stuck them in too. I did this one here while I was pregnant—the ultrasound is in it—you can see that he’s a boy. The next one, after he was born, that one has some cute pictures of him when he was all tiny and red and mad all the time. He was a screamer. He was not an angel baby,” I smirk. “He was so curious and so alert—when he started crawling, he was into everything. He never slowed down. From the second he started talking---look, in this one I tried to keep a list of every question he asked in a day—I filled both sides of the page and it says, 8:10AM I give up .”
I show him the battered composition books. “So, you kept a record of your lives out in Washington,” he says, taking them carefully like they are something holy to him.
“I think I was writing to you. For you. It wasn’t sweet and hopeful enough to be a baby book I’d ever pass down to Liam—it’s very personal and raw. If you don’t want to read them—in fact, you’d probably think I was crazy if you read them and you might rethink wanting to be with me,” I try to take the notebooks back on second thought.
“No way. I’m going to read every word of these. How did you have time to write in them at all? You had your hands full.”
“Around seven months he started sleeping four hours at a clip. That was like being reborn. I could think. I could wash my hair and get the dishes done every night. Liam was still a screamer, but he liked being outside, so I’d put him in the stroller and go to the park or the library most days after work, even when I was wiped out from being on my feet.”
“I wish I’d been there to take on some of that. You wouldn’t have had to work, or if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have been the one taking a long walk after you got home. This won’t be that way. We’re in this together.”
I want to bury my face in my hands and cry. Instead, I clear my throat, blink back tears and reach for him. “I want that more than anything. I want you more than anything, Benny.”