37. Cliff
Chapter 37
Cliff
I think I black out for half a second. Blurry dots crowd my vision. My knees nearly collapse. The only thing keeping me upright is Michelle’s palm, but even her fingers are now shaking against my lips.
“What did you say?” Michelle breathes.
My daughter might be pregnant .
My mind is swimming. Drowning.
Emily might be pregnant.
I have a half-second thought of, I’m going to murder Josh and string him up in the square, Middle Ages–style.
But once that fantasy is out of the way, I hear Emily shakily asking, “I … I think … you aren’t mad, are you?”
My daughter is scared. She’s as scared as Tracy was when we were her age. Terrified of a different future than the open path available to her now. She doesn’t even know what she wants to go to college for—or if she even wants to go. She’s barely considered the future before losing it for another one.
I push off from the wall, and Michelle drops her palm from my hand. I turn the corner. Michelle steps back to give me room. My body crowds the doorway, my shoulders nearly touching either side of the threshold.
Emily’s eyes widen so big that I can see every edge of the white surrounding them.
“Dad,” she breathes.
My heart is pounding. I can’t tell if I’m angry or sad or scared.
Scared. I’m definitely scared.
But when Emily’s bottom lip shakes, I know she’s more scared than I am. Being scared isn’t my job right now.
“Em,” I say, keeping my tone as even-keeled as possible. I don’t know how to have this conversation. So, I default to business. It’s my only option if I’m going to stay sane right now. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. I’m late on my period.” The words rush out. She hasn’t averted her gaze from mine, as if she’s frozen on the spot.
I nod to myself. “You were using protection?”
“Dad, I’m so sorry?—”
“Were you using protection?” I repeat, closing my eyes as tight as they can.
“Y-yes,” she says back.
I open my eyes, and she’s clenching and unclenching her fists. I reach out to grab her hand, gingerly unfurling the fist with my fingers. Immediately, she entwines them between the grooves of my own.
“Good. And, hey,” I whisper, “it’s fine. I’m not angry.”
“You aren’t?”
“No.”
How could I be? It would be hypocritical to be angry over something I did myself. I’m far from angry. I’m concerned, yes. But angry? No.
Emily swallows and amends, “Well, one time, we couldn’t find a condom and …”
I groan. “Em.”
“You said you weren’t mad!”
I could laugh at how quickly her attitude turns on. I can’t tell if she gets it from me or her mother, but then the thought of her having a tiny version of herself baking brings me back to reality.
“I’m not,” I say through an exhale. “I’m not, kiddo.”
“I … what do I do?” she asks.
What do we do?
Footsteps creak slowly up the stairwell. Emily jerks her head to the hall. Maybe it’s a guest, or maybe it’s Lisa. She’s discreet. But I know Emily wants nothing more than to keep this to herself.
Herself and Michelle.
She came to Michelle for this.
She trusted Michelle enough to have this conversation. A small piece of my punctured heart mends even a little.
A guest rounds the corner, gives us a smiling wave, which the three of us somehow manage to return, then disappears in the room at the opposite end of the hall.
“Have you taken a test?” Michelle whispers over my shoulder.
I raise my arm higher up the doorway, allowing Michelle to duck beneath and join our circle.
Emily quietly shakes her head. “No.”
“Okay,” I announce quietly, looking between Emily and Michelle.
Both their jaws are set, like they’re ready for battle.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna drive out of town and pick up a pregnancy test. And then we’re gonna try it out, okay? No reason to be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Emily counters.
But her words don’t match her heavy breathing. It feels like yesterday that I held her in my arms with the same labored breaths between ear-splitting cries. Her arrival into this world was with kicks and screams. I know my girl. She doesn’t do anything without a little ferocity.
Michelle claps her hands together, as if to end this conversation. “All right! Em, want to help me set up the guest room next door?”
She silently nods, peering at the room behind Michelle and me. “I can help with this one too. I didn’t mean to stop you.”
Michelle shakes her head. “It’s finished. Don’t worry.”
Emily squints. “But you just said—” She swallows, and maybe she doesn’t connect the dots, or maybe she doesn’t want to right now, so she stiffly nods once more.
Michelle slides past me, gliding a small, reassuring hand along my waist as she does, and walks to the hall closet. Emily, in a distant haze, follows, but not before glancing back at me once more. I give a wan smile.
“I’ll be back,” I say.
Her lips pull up at the corners, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thanks, Dad.”
Michelle, Emily, and I lie, arm to arm, on Michelle’s mattress. I stare at the popcorn ceiling as the fan above whirs in slow whooshes. If I stare at it too long, it looks stuck, like a broken record.
“Has it been ten minutes?” Emily murmurs.
I look at my watch. “We’ve got seven more.”
“It’s only been three minutes?”
“No, it’s two. I didn’t want you to worry.”
All three of us pull in a deep inhalation and let it out slowly. The silence in the room is sending shocks of nerves through my heart, pounding all the way down to my fingers.
Emily licks her lips. “What happens if I am … you know?”
She can’t even say the word pregnant . I remember Tracy couldn’t either when she showed me the stick with two pink lines. We were both at a loss for words.
I reach my arm up and over Emily’s head, twirling her long blonde strands between my fingers.
“Then, you are.” I assure her, “And you’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be mad?”
It’s the fiftieth time she’s asked me that, and at this point, I huff out a laugh.
“Of course not.”
“Or mad at Josh?”
I exhale heavily. Josh—his Swiss roll self—wouldn’t be the worst option for her. I almost smile. Not many people could handle Emily. But he can.
“No,” I answer. “I won’t be mad at Josh.”
“What happened when you found out? You and Mom?”
“We were scared,” I confess. “Then, very quickly, we were happy. Because it led to you.”
She groans. “Dad, I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Michelle shifts on the opposite side of Emily, letting out a shaky exhale. I wonder if she’s nervous too.
“Michelle, did you ever … go through this?” Emily asks slowly.
“No,” Michelle answers honestly, then laughs lightly. “I was too uptight in high school to have a boyfriend.”
A short, giggly laugh bubbles out of Emily. “As if. I bet you were bangin’.”
“Far from it. You should have seen my prom dress. Very poofy.”
The two of them laugh together, and a delayed chuckle escapes me too.
“You went to prom?” Emily asks. “I thought you said you didn’t date.”
“I didn’t. I went alone.”
My heart sinks.
I wonder what Michelle was like in high school. I would have asked her to prom. Something about her built-up brick walls have me begging to look through the cracks. How come nobody else sees that?
I’ve always considered the possibility of Emily getting pregnant. It was less about the act and more about her having to grow up too fast. I don’t want that for her. She’s my girl.
The moment she told me about her first boyfriend, my stomach plummeted down and has never really found its way back up. I always assumed it would be Tracy on the other side of her, talking through this with her with compassion. But it’s Michelle instead, and the way Emily lets out a funny laugh when Michelle talks soothes the ache in my soul.
When the laughter settles down, Emily audibly gulps. “What if Mom finds out?”
“Well,” I say through an exhale, “whenever you start to show, I imagine she’ll figure it out.”
Emily groans, as if that wasn’t in her list of possibilities. “I forgot about the whole belly thing.”
“You’ll be fine.”
Then, in a silence that lasts too long, Emily whispers, “What if I’m like Mom?”
It’s a gut-wrenching sentence. I stiffen and sigh. It’s long. It’s steady. It’s there to fill the loss of words.
“Your mom is a wonderful woman,” I say.
“She doesn’t like me.”
“She loves you,” I correct.
“She left us.”
“She was here at this moment sixteen years ago,” I say, poking the mattress. “And she knew she’d love you, no matter how it changed her life. She loves you like you wouldn’t believe. Life is complicated, Em. She had dreams, and she needed to go find them. But that doesn’t mean she loves you any less.”
Tracy is complicated. Flawed. But she spent fourteen years cherishing Emily. The first time she bounced Emily in her arms—the way her face lit up with happiness—is a memory I wish I could revisit countless times. It would be easy to fault her for leaving if I didn’t know how much she adored her children.
Her leaving and our divorce was inevitable. We had gotten married so young with factors beyond our control. It was a time when shotgun weddings were the norm, not the exception.
The mattress shifts as Michelle reaches her arm up, finds my hand, and hooks her pinkie in mine. I have a theory she can read my mind, and she has yet to prove me wrong.
“I wonder if I’ll be a bad mom,” Emily murmurs.
“Impossible,” I say.
“Michelle, you were lucky,” Emily says. “You had Birdie.”
Michelle grows quiet. I squeeze her finger with mine.
“My mom was kind and generous, but sometimes, it was complicated. All child-parent relationships are. She was … sad when I was younger. Very sad. And when she came out of it, she tried very hard to fix what she could.” Michelle exhales. “She did try.” The words sound as if she’s realizing them the same time she says them. “She tried her best.”
The three of us listen to the ambient sounds of Bird & Breakfast. The clattering of flatware from the dining room. The creaking and thumping footsteps above our heads. The TV in the parlor, playing a 3rd Rock from the Sun rerun.
I look at my watch again. We’re past the ten-minute mark.
“All right,” I exhale. “You ready?”
Emily’s chest expands quickly, and she shakes her head. “No. You look. I can’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t,” she repeats, turning her head to face me with worried eyebrows.
I release my hand from Michelle’s and cup the top of Emily’s head. I kiss her forehead, then swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. I stare at the two of them for a few moments, watching Michelle thread her fingers through my daughter’s stringy hair cascading over the bedspread. Emily scoots closer to Michelle.
My heart pounds as I walk into the bathroom. The small stick is resting half on the counter and half over the sink. I feel like I’m the bridge between Emily’s old life and potential new one. Earlier this month, we were playing in the snow. Now, I’m next to a toilet, covered in pink shag, and reaching for a pregnancy test.
If she is pregnant, it will be another wonderful person added to our family. It will be fine.
All will be fine.
I pick it up, inhale, and flip it, and looking back is one single pink line.
A single line.
I close my eyes and finally break out into an exhausted laugh.
A single fucking line.
“What?” Emily asks, scrambling to the side of the bed. “What, what, what?”
“It’s negative,” I announce.
The air in the room rushes back.
In one smooth motion, Emily’s eyes roll to the back of her head, and she falls backward onto the bed with a giant, loud, exhaled groan. “Oh, thank God .”
I can see the weight fall from her shoulders. Michelle shakes them with a grin.
“I never want to do that again,” Emily groans. “That’s it. No children for me. Ever.”
“Music to my ears,” I tease.
She grins at me, but it falls quickly. “We can’t tell Mom.”
My stomach twists.
Impossible.
“No,” I say.
Emily’s eyes widen.
“Sorry, kiddo. She deserves to know.”
“Why?” she whines.
“She’s your mom. It wouldn’t be right. But how about this? I won’t tell her while she’s here, okay? That way, you only have to deal with her over the phone.”
Emily exhales. “Okay. Deal.”
She jerks out her palm, and I roll my eyes, shaking it.
“Deal.”
“Good.” I clear my throat. “Now, back to business … where is Josh?”
She tilts her chin down. “Dad.”
I playfully hold up my palms. “I want to talk to him?—”
“Dad,” she warns again, a sliver of a smile on her face.
“Me, Josh, and a machete.”
“Dad!”
Suddenly, she breaks into laughter, and I do too. Then, I’m hugging her again and kissing her forehead even though I get more whines of protest.
“Love you, kiddo.”
“You love Josh too?”
I snort. “I’m heavily indifferent.”
“Who wants a cinnamon roll?” Michelle asks, breaking the tension.
“ Please ,” Emily groans.
Emily hops off the bed, rushing to the doorway. I gesture her through, peering over at Michelle, who is grinning ear to ear. I can’t stop smiling either. It’s the nerves of the whole situation pounding through me. The thought that we went through this together. Michelle was here for my daughter when she needed her. And Emily did need her.
The unspoken truth rings through my head, as it has for weeks now.
I love Michelle.
I love her, and I’ll have to let her go.
Michelle’s face falls. Mine must have too.
It’s all going to end.
Emily stops short of the threshold, spinning to face us. She points a finger between me and Michelle, breaking our eye contact.
“You were in the guest room together,” Emily states.
My stomach knots.
“Are you two …” Her words fade, as if she’s expecting an answer, but I don’t know what response to give.
Are we dating? Are we in love?
There’s no clear-cut answer to our complicated problem.
I exhale out a nervous laugh, clapping Emily on the shoulder. “Our business is between us, Em.”
A smirk slides over Emily’s face so slowly and sinisterly that it could rival the Grinch. “But there is business?”
I lightly shove her back into the hall. “Get out of here, kid.”
Emily bites her bottom lip and snickers.
But when I glance at Michelle, her eyebrows tilt in too. I reach back and drift my fingertips over hers at the same time she reaches for me. We exchange a weak smile, then walk into the kitchen behind Emily.