Chapter 13
L isa pulled the SUV into the driveway and parked it on the edge, opening the back door for Abby as she scooted over from the middle. She held out her hand to Abby and they walked to the house with Diane in front of them. No one came out to greet them since they weren’t expecting them for another twenty minutes and she opened the door hoping this worked out right. They headed through the entryway, and she saw her two of her brothers standing in the family room. If they were there, then the others were too.
“Anyone home?” she called, keeping Abby behind her as they moved towards the room.
“Lisa!” she heard her mom say brightly and her head appeared in the doorway, stopping in surprise to see Diane there with her. “Diane, what are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you.”
“I came to be here for Lisa,” she answered honestly moving into the room as Elaine stepped back inside. Diane stopped and Lisa moved to stand in the doorway, Abby beside her out of view and her hand tightened around hers. She gave her a squeeze back as she smiled at the group.
“Good, everyone’s here. Diane, this is Corey,” she said when he stood up. “This is my mom’s cousin Diane.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said shaking her hand when he reached them. “You look beautiful baby.”
“Thank you,” she stated taking a moment as the room stared at them. “You all might want to sit down,” she warned and waited until her mom was in a chair, her brothers refusing to sit before starting. “Okay, there’s no easy way to do this so…you all want to know what’s going on with me, why I’ve been how I’ve been right?”
“Yeah, we’d like to know why you’re such a self-centered pain in the ass who only bothers to answer her family when she needs something,” Gerald replied.
“Watch how you speak to your sister Gerald,” Diane stated, and she couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s alright, Diane. I’m used to it,” she told her as her brothers glared at the closeness between them. “As I said there’s no easy way to do this, so…there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” she added taking a step further into the room bringing Abby with her. “This is Abby—my daughter,” she said as Diane stepped aside.
“Holy mother of god,” Kirby said staring at them as their mother gasped loudly.
“Jesus effing Christ Lisa!” Gerald shouted.
“How?” Ashton said but she didn’t answer as her eyes were on her mother and Corey.
“ This is what you were hiding? No—you couldn’t have kept this a secret,” Corey stated moving back over to her. He looked down at her and tried to figure out how she could have kept it from him—from everyone. “How old is she?”
“She’s thirteen,” she told him stepping away, pulling Abby over to the middle of the room as she held her to her side. “Yes, she’s really mine. Yes, I really hid being pregnant from you all. Yes, I’ve been lying to you all for years.”
“Thirteen…that would mean you were pregnant your sophomore year…how did we not know?” her mom asked, looking between her, Abby, and Diane.
“You weren’t expecting it, weren’t looking for it, and I hid it well. She’ll be fourteen in April.”
“April—Spring Break,” her mom said as her jaw parted slightly. “When you went to California on Spring Break you had her—and left her with Diane?”
“Yes, I did. I went back that summer and stayed with Diane and Abby when you all thought I was at cheer camp. When I went to school for college, I lived with them. The only time I’ve been away from Abby was when I was finishing school here and when I was in New York, the rest of the time we were together,” Lisa added leaning her head against Abby’s feeling the support she gave her.
“What in the hell were you thinking?!” her father demanded. “If you get pregnant you don’t hide it and the child from your family for thirteen, nearly fourteen years! My god Lisa…why?”
“Don’t yell at her,” Abby said shooting a glare back at him.
“Watch your tongue, young lady,” he countered. “This is a discussion between Lisa and us, and you will show us respect while in this house.”
“Stop it!” Lisa said shaking her head as she stepped between him and Abby. “Don’t raise your voice to my daughter. I don’t care how angry you are, she has nothing to do with the choices I made, choices that I would make all over again. If you really have to ask why I kept her from you then you obviously don’t see how differently you’ve always treated me versus the boys. They could back mouth, yell, curse, and ignore you and your orders all they wanted, and you never once cared—but if I went against anything I was grounded or yelled at to show respect. If I had told you I was pregnant back then, you wouldn’t have let me keep her. You wouldn’t have wanted to face the town and let them know that your daughter got knocked up at fifteen.”
“That’s enough Lisa,” he stated.
“No, it’s not—admit it, you wouldn’t have wanted me to have her or raise her, would you?” she demanded. “Come on Dad tell the truth—that’s what this is all about.”
“No, we wouldn’t have let you keep her. That is the biggest mistake of your life, and you’ve had plenty of them, haven’t you?” her father stated showing her exactly why she’d kept Abby from them.
“The biggest mistake of my life is thinking my parents would support me. Having my daughter, letting Diane watch over her while I was forced to live here, was the smartest choice I ever made because it kept her from having to live with you all. This was a mistake—to come here thinking it would change anything. Come near my daughter, try and hurt her in any way , and you will never see either of us again,” she told him pulling Abby back into her hold, putting herself between Abby and the room, as she started to walk them to the door.
“Lisa Gracelyn Branson, stop right there,” her mother stated, and she paused to look back at her.
“No, I won’t sit here and listen to him, and the guys treat my daughter the way they’ve treated me. I won’t do it,” she replied letting Diane move over to Abby and wait at the door for her. “Every day of my life, you acted as though you had no right to say anything, to make any type of a choice and you honestly wonder why I left here—why I refuse to listen to anything anyone here says? Look around us Mother, no family that actually cared about their daughter would have been unaware that she had a daughter at sixteen—had been living with her except for four and a half years of her life. You do what Dad says and that’s it. I’m sorry I have a mind of my own. I’m sorry my choices don’t fall in line with your perfect ideal version of who I should be, but I won’t stick around here and let them do what they did to me to my daughter. I loved her enough to protect her from this—what can you say you did for me?”
“I loved you no matter what you did, what others said, or how you treated me,” her mother replied lifting her hand up to her cheek. “I was not a perfect mother, but I will not lose you. I will not let you walk away from me. You are the only daughter I have, and I love you. I wish you had come to me when it happened, when you knew you were having a baby, because there are some things only a mother can help her daughter with—some things a man can never understand. Once you have discovered a tiny little life growing inside you, things change. The first time you see their form on an ultrasound, hear their heartbeat, feel them move your heart becomes bigger, fuller, and there is nothing that can take that feeling away from you. You may think I would have sided with your father on this, but you are wrong. I would never, never turn away my child or grandchild. She would never have been sent away, given up or gotten rid of—not as long as there was breath in my body,” she added surprising her entirely.
Lisa’s heart stalled seeing the look in her mother’s eyes, the unconditional love she gave Abby staring straight into her.
“No matter what you do, no matter what you say or feel, I love you. I have always loved you and I will always love you. Perfection is impossible to achieve—happiness isn’t, and love certainly isn’t. You are not going anywhere my girl, not like this. Not upset and angry, not when there are two people here who want nothing more than to love you, anyway you are, because you are always in my heart. I push because you do, and I refuse to lose you from my life entirely. I will never give up on you. I will never stop trying with you. You don’t see that I love you completely because you refuse to let yourself love you completely. You stepped between Abby and your father, the same way I stepped between you and nosy biddies in this town, but you never saw it. See it now, Lisa, see how much I love you—the way you love your daughter,” her mom pleaded, and Lisa felt the tears slip down her cheeks.
She gave in, letting her mom pull her in for a hug that tore down the first wall she had surrounding her. Her mom stepped back and lifted her hands to wipe away her tears before sliding a hand onto her back as she looked at Abby and Diane.
“Come here sweetie…you are so much like your mother,” Elaine said as Abby reached them after her nod, “so beautiful and strong and scared to open up too much. Diane thank you for caring for my girls.”
“They’ve brought nothing but light and joy to me. I will always be here for them, no matter what.”
“I’m sorry but this is insane,” Ashton stated interrupting them. “Who keeps a kid from the rest of their family for thirteen years?”
“Someone who’s scared of being hurt,” Corey replied seeing beneath Lisa’s bravado and strength. “I missed what was right in front of me, didn’t I?” he asked, moving over to her. “The times when you were working late at the office—why you wouldn’t just bring the work home, you were talking with Abby, weren’t you? You weren’t really at the office still, you were at your place, talking to her.”
Lisa nodded, drying her eyes more, turning to face him. “Yeah, we’d call or Skype. I’d be checking her Facebook page making sure she was okay…”
“Why didn’t you just bring her to New York with you?”
“The hours I was working—she’d be with a babysitter more than me. If she came with me, she’d be leaving all of her friends behind, changing schools in the middle of the year. In California she had stability, she had Diane and her friends…”
“What part of that changed because she was in Chicago with you, wasn’t she?” he asked. “That’s why you said you were so busy with work.”
“I missed her too much. I didn’t want to be without her anymore.”
“And when did that notion come around? When you heard about your father’s heart scare?”
Lisa glanced away for a moment and shook her head meeting Abby’s gaze.
“No,” she admitted before turning back to him. “The call that came at three a.m. that day wasn’t about my dad…it was from Diane telling me that she couldn’t find Abby. My heart…I thought I was going to lose it. I went back to my apartment to log in to her Facebook page—see if there was anything there that would explain what was going on, but when I got there, Abby was there. She had a key to my apartment and had taken the bus from California to New York.”
“You what?” her mom said, looking at Abby in shock.
“Mom grounded me for a month and made me promise to never do it again,” Abby said looking a little sheepish. “But if I were back in that place, I would do it again even with the grounding.”
“I realized that I couldn’t do what I wanted to—pretend that my life was normal because it wasn’t, and I couldn’t put Abby on the backburner. She has been the most important part of my life since she came into it. I would do anything for her…to protect her.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me about her? Do you think I care that you had a baby when you were sixteen?” he asked lifting her chin to meet her gaze. “I love you. The morning after we met, I knew I would do anything to find you and get you back. I knew you were meant to be mine and I tried to get you to see that too. I didn’t want to make the choice for you, just for you to see that it’s the only choice that will make us happy, baby. Abby doesn’t change that. She’s part of you—part of your heart and that’s all I need to know. You can tell me anything and I won’t care.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she said softly lowering her chin. She closed her eyes as he dropped a kiss onto her forehead and lifted her face back to his. “I didn’t tell you because I was scared. I didn’t want things to change between us and I knew they would because I knew you’d find out the truth.”
“What truth—that you have a daughter and didn’t tell your family? You’re forgetting I’d already seen you with them in this town baby. I would have understood.”
“I didn’t want to risk it so I broke up with you, tried to be as cruel as possible so you’d stay away from me, and nothing would ever come out.”
“Only I couldn’t stay away from you and found you in Chicago last month…bringing us all here.”
“Something like that,” she said with a shrug.
“Don’t do that Lisa, please don’t start putting walls back up around us,” he said staring at her. “What haven’t you said then? The night in the bar, the bartender thought you were missing someone; it was me, wasn’t it? You never wanted to break up; you just didn’t want to deal with this scene, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I was missing you. Have been missing you from the moment I pushed you away. Not even a month in Europe being hit on by dozens of men could make me stop missing you. I forced myself to stop thinking about you because I had this giant piece of my heart that was missing, and I hated that you could do that to me. I wanted to call you, just to hear your voice, and when Gerald found me in Chicago and said you looked like hell, I wanted to go back and have you hold me again.”
“Gerald found you in Chicago?” Kirby asked, looking at him in surprise. “You said you didn’t.”
“When did you go to Chicago?” their father added.
“I found her, but she was her normal ‘don’t bother me, I’ve made my life my way, my decisions, so go to hell.’ I told her to call Mom and let her know she was at least alive and then went home so I didn’t strangle the ungrateful brat.”
“Stop calling her names,” Abby said glaring at him. “You have no idea what’s she’s done with her life, so just stop it.”
“It’s okay sweetie,” she told Abby as her daughter came over to stand beside her.
“No, it’s not. I don’t care how old you were. I’d rather have you as my mom than half the others I’ve seen and met. You were always there for me. You’ve always told me the truth no matter how much you didn’t want to and after what happened with David and the rest…it’s not okay.”
“Who is David and what is she talking about?” her father questioned.
“Her name is Abby, not she, and it’s none of your business,” Lisa replied.
“Is David her father?” Gerald asked.
“No.”
“Who is then?” he continued.
“No one is,” she said as her back straightened further.
“You sleep with someone, get pregnant and then don’t tell them they have a daughter for thirteen years…we want to know who and why,” her father demanded.
Lisa tried to bite back the words, but they’d been her defense for so long, she couldn’t, “Go to hell.”
“Who is David and what has been going on?” Corey asked her gently, giving Abby a smile.
“David is Jazz’s father—she’s Abby’s best friend in Chicago. David and I had a disagreement, and Abby went over to Jazz’s to give him a piece of her mind. As she left…” Lisa stopped, trying to forget the terror and horror of that day. “As she left to get on the bus, she rounded a corner and a car trying to get away from the police chasing them jumped the curb and hit her.”
“Oh my god,” her mother gasped as Lisa dropped a kiss onto Abby’s forehead.
“I’m fine; I’m back in one piece. I got the cast off my leg Friday,” Abby said with a smile. “Honestly, I’m fine. I don’t really remember it happening, just waking up in the hospital and Mom being there with me. She’s the best medicine in the world for me.”
“I love you sweetie, so much,” Lisa said cupping her cheek as she gave her a smile.
“So we can see—but you still haven’t told us the name of the jerk who got you pregnant,” Ashton said, and she closed her eyes with a huge sigh. “Who’s her father?”