Chapter 37 Aiden
Chapter 37 AIDEN
T he smile on her lips wasn’t the reaction he’d predicted. “Aiden. Hi.”
After everything, Aiden had expected her to greet him with anger, perhaps a slap on his face. Instead, he saw kindness in her eyes.
He scratched the back of his head as his heart tried to escape through his mouth. “Hi.”
“Can I offer you some tea?” she asked, twisting the braid that cascaded down her shoulder between her fingers.
“Just because I’m British, you—”
“Yeah, yeah. So, tea or not? Come in.”
He needed something much stronger than tea, but it would have to do. “Yes, please. Thank you very much.”
She opened the front door wider to let him into her peach and beige living room. Before his courage vanished, Aiden decided to speak. “Listen, I don’t even know how to start asking for your forgiveness.”
“You can start by taking off your shoes, or you’ll have no forgiveness whatsoever,” she said, looking disapprovingly at his chukka boots on her carpet.
Aiden smiled at this. Some things never changed. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” He bent down to untie his shoes and saw a small but noticeable bump in her tummy. He glanced up at her and detected the challenge in her eyes. “You look great, Kate. The years have been kind to you.”
“And you look like an old man.” She softened the quip with a small smile.
After a few minutes, sitting on a stool at her kitchen island, with the perfect tea in hand—looseleaf, milk, and two sugars; he truly didn’t deserve her kindness—Aiden’s courage faltered. How could he even begin the difficult apology he’d postponed for so long?
“Now please tell me what brings you to my door after so many years of radio silence.” Kate’s face was serious now.
Straight to the point, as always. Yesterday over the phone it had been so much easier to talk to her. Now, in front of her, he forgot the speech he’d rehearsed on the drive to her home. “I came to ask for your forgiveness. God knows I don’t deserve it, but I owe you at least an explanation. I—”
Her hand in the air interrupted him. “What you did was fucked-up, Aiden. On the same day, I lost my child and my partner. Do you have any idea how long I blamed myself for everything?” Her other hand, wearing an elegant ring, rubbed her tummy in what seemed an unconscious gesture. “It took years of therapy for me to understand it wasn’t my fault and that these things happen.”
No beating around the bush, then. Perhaps it was better this way. “I’m a tosser and a coward. I was so angry and hurt and lost that I thought only of myself. How I regret what I did to you... I left you alone when you needed me the most. I am so, so sorry. I hope you have it in your heart to grant me forgiveness, undeserved as it is.”
“Oh, Aid,” she reached out to hold his hand, “I resented you for so long, and that resentment was a festering wound that wouldn’t let me heal. I needed to move on. So, not for you, but for myself, I forgave you long ago.”
A tear rolled down his cheek, and he lowered his forehead to her hand. “You are indeed the bigger person here.”
“I hope you don’t mean the size of my belly.”
He raised his head and tried to stutter an explanation, but her loud guffaw took away the need. “Do you know...” he half-asked, unsure if he had the right to, pointing at her tummy.
“Yes. It’s a boy. Ethan.” She smiled and gave a fond pat to her bump, as she used to when she was pregnant with their child.
“Kate, this is so wonderful. You deserve this blessing.”
She nodded. “It took me quite a while to get up the courage to try for a baby. Sometimes I still have panic attacks, though, thinking everything can go south just like that.”
“It won’t. You’ve been through enough bad times; now only good things will happen to you.” He hoped. He truly wished for Kate’s happiness.
They spent the better part of the morning reminiscing and catching up. Kate had in fact kept up with his career, glad that his dream had at last come true—she’d been nothing less than supportive when he was starting out in LA. She updated him about her family, and he told her about Charlie. As he recounted one of his niece’s many antics, Aiden splayed out his left hand, and she stared at it.
“What happened there?” She pointed to the healing wound.
“Just an . . . accident.”
“Don’t tell me you were trying to learn how to skateboard again. Did you faint?” She tried to keep a serious face, but he could tell she was holding back laughter.
“Hey, it’s not funny to mock someone’s weakness.”
“There’s therapy for that. You should try it.”
Maybe he should, even if therapy would do him only half the good it did her. “Your husband is a lucky man.”
“I think so, too.” She smiled.
“Do I get to meet him?”
She laughed. “I might have forgiven you, but he most definitely hasn’t. He knows you’re here, but I think you should leave before he gets home from work.”
The chair made a loud scratching sound at his brusque movement. “Of course. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble than I already have. I doubt I could earn a second pardon from you.”
Aiden was halfway through the door when he remembered something. “Did you...” His voice caught. He cleared his throat. “Did you ever name her?”
“Yes. Do you wanna pay her a visit?”
An hour later, flowers in hand, Aiden approached his daughter’s grave. Fatima had offered to keep him company; he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the reason for the visit, so he declined. He had to do this alone. He followed Kate’s directions—she refused to tell him the name of their daughter, saying he should see for himself. He searched for his family name—instead, he found Kate’s.
I WILL SLEEP IN PEACE UNTIL YOU COME TO ME. EMMA LEARY
Aiden fell to his knees, crushing the flowers in the grass. He clutched the small headstone, resting his head against it, sobbing until his throat hurt. They had discussed a few names but hadn’t yet decided when Kate had the stillbirth. Emma had been on their shortlist. He had blocked it from his memory; now, his subconsciousness had brought it back. My Emma, my little girl. Forgive your papa. I love you .
He knew he was too late. He couldn’t make amends with the girl who lay under that headstone. But he could try to make things right with the woman who had extended him an olive branch.
“Mr. Elliott, if you tell me one more time to hurry, I swear I will park this car in the middle of the street and kick you out.”
Aiden had witnessed Fatima’s wrath before. He’d learned the hard way she wasn’t one to make empty threats. “Sorry, darling. You’re the best driver in town, I know you’ll do the impossible to get me there on time.”
“You’re damn right. Now sit tight and let the professional handle it.”
He forced himself to be quiet while he tried in vain to calm down. He had, by some miracle, bought a ticket through his phone—how’s that for a digitally illiterate man? At their current speed, though, he would miss the flight. But he couldn’t do anything but sit there and wait. Fatima hated it when he fidgeted while she was driving, and it was all he could do to keep his knee from bouncing. Nora was on the other end of the flight he was dangerously close to being too late for, and the mere thought of not seeing her as soon as possible did ugly things to his thoughts.
The traffic was unusually bad, even for a Friday afternoon, and as soon as Aiden got to LAX he realized why. It was the Friday before Thanksgiving. It wasn’t a holiday Aiden celebrated, so he hadn’t made the connection—and he suspected Fatima hadn’t said anything because she enjoyed seeing him squirm. Duffel bag in tow, he braved the throng to reach the check-in area, only to find out boarding for his flight had just closed. The crew was adamant about not letting anyone else board, despite his best efforts to convince them otherwise.
Desperate, Aiden decided to try his luck at the ticket sales desks.
“A last-minute ticket... today ? I don’t think so, sir. I mean—” the man looked up from his screen and did a double take. “Oh my God. You don’t happen to be Aiden Elliott, do you?” he said in a quiet voice, so as not to attract unwanted attention from the other passengers around.
Oh, no. He could do with not being recognized, at least for today. “Why, yes, I am. You?”
“No, I don’t happen to be him.”
Aiden let out a bemused laugh.
The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, I tend to make silly jokes when I’m nervous. It’s just that... my boyfriend is a huge fan! We were actually second in line for the first session of Indigo Eyes , and let me tell you, it’s by far your best work to date. We’ll surely watch it some twenty times more.”
That, for Aiden, was the best kind of compliment—almost the only one that mattered to him. Hearing how much people enjoyed his work gave him a satisfaction parallel to none. “Thank you, truly. You made my day. But I’ll be on my way—”
The clerk raised his hand, interrupting Aiden mid-speech. “‘Don’t give up and luck will find you’,” he said with a sly smile.
Aiden narrowed his eyes. He knew that sentence from somewhere. “Is that...”
“Oh, it’s from The NeverEnding Story . I have this habit of quoting movies, and I annoy a lot of people with it. But...” He typed furiously for a few moments, until he abruptly stopped and gave a small squeal. “It seems I’ve found you a miraculous seat to Nashville! Oh, but it involves a six-hour layover in Atlanta—”
“I’ll take it.”
“And it’s coach—”
“I’ll take it.”
“On a full flight—”
“Please don’t let anyone book it. I beg you!” At any other moment, Aiden would cringe at how desperate he sounded, but right then it didn’t matter to him at all. He produced his credit card as fast as his stubby fingers managed to.
“As if I would let Aiden Elliott down!” He collected the credit card and started typing again, doing it with such ease that it amazed Aiden. “My boyfriend would flay me alive. I really hope you don’t hate me once you’re inside the plane and you find the seat uncomfortable.”
All Aiden could do was smile. “I won’t. I can’t thank you enough.”
“What can I say, this will be quite the story to tell on Christmas. Or, really, any other social gathering, for the rest of my life.” Then he whispered, “Can I have your autograph?”
Aiden was grateful for all of his fans. Loved them, even. But he loved even more the old-school ones, who requested autographs instead of photos.
The boarding call distracted Aiden from the book he had been trying to read for the past hour, an acclaimed mystery novel by his now favorite author, Troy Atkinson. Soon the queue would form, everyone rushing to board the plane, perhaps in a vain hope of speeding up the take-off process. For once, he wished it would work.
To be fair, Aiden’s exposure, for all the anxiety it caused more often than not, sometimes brought good, unexpected things. The opportunity to be acquainted with a fellow actor or actress who turned out to be excellent company, like Jim Baylor, whom Aiden had met on the set of Indigo Eyes . The extra cherry on a sundae, courtesy of the ice-cream parlor owner who enjoyed one of his characters. And, of course, the quite surprising, and very much appreciated, last seat to Atlanta, which allowed him to catch his connecting flight to Nashville. Aiden had no false modesty. Probably the clerk wouldn’t have found his ticket if Aiden had the invisibility he craved. And he wouldn’t be going to Nora.
At last, it was time to board. With his duffel bag and a silly smile, he made his way onto the plane, his clean-shaven face and his reading glasses working as the perfect disguise. No one seemed to recognize him. Soon he would be right where he belonged, and all would finally be well.