Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty
Fall
“ Y ou don’t have to come in,” Mia said, tapping her fingers in the steering wheel and staring out the windshield at the doors of the church. Gabriel had been working hard on trying to get out of the house more for weeks, but she’d still been caught off guard when he’d announced he wanted to come to church with her for her father’s birthday celebration.
“Did you tell them that I’d be there?”
“I said you might be there, but I wasn’t sure if you’d change your mind, so I didn’t make any promises.”
He was silent for a moment as he looked out the window at the small building with its faded brick and old windows. He smiled, faint and ghosting across his face so quickly she almost missed it. “This doesn’t look anything like the church my mother took me to as a kid, or the place Richard preached when he wasn’t at the school with us. This place looks comfortable and those were big and cold and impersonal. Hundreds of people in expensive clothes hoping to pay their way to forgiveness.”
“We don’t have any of that here,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve seen videos of Richard preaching and it looked more like a football stadium in there.”
“It did,” he agreed, and she knew he was acknowledging that on some level things were different here than what he’d feared. “I don’t know that I’ll ever believe what you do, but I’m coming with you, at least this time.”
“If it gets to be too much—” she began, but he leaned across the console and caught her mouth in a quick kiss.
“I’ll let you know,” he said simply.
“Okay.” She tugged him in for another quick kiss before she opened the car door, trying to show as much of gratitude and love as possible in a few fleeting seconds. There would be time for more later, but for now that would have to do.
He was pale as he followed her inside, but the hallway was empty as she led him past the entrance to the chapel with its tidy rows of pews and then the little kitchen where they did their preparations for picnics and parties like this one. She paused by the meeting room and brushed a dark curl off his brow. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he insisted. He was clearly fighting the urge to bolt, and his hand was cold and clammy where it gripped hers. “I can do this for you.”
She pulled him in for a quick kiss, her lips brushing his as more of a suggestion than a caress as guilt of kissing her boyfriend in church warred with her desire to comfort him. Somehow knowing what they did when they were alone in their apartment seemed worse when he was with her than it had in the all the time she’d been coming here alone.
“We’ll do our best to make sure you’re comfortable,” she promised.
He nodded and gave her a ghost of a smile as he followed her into the room. Heads turned but he stayed by her, holding her fingers in a death grip as she searched the crowd for her father.
They found him talking to a small group of parishioners and bouncing a toddler on his hip.
“Mia!”
“Hey Dad,” she gave him a quick hug. “Just wanted to let you know we’re here before we find a place to sit down.”
“I’m glad you came.” He shook Gabriel’s hand and gestured to the rows of tables laden with bowls and trays. “There’s still plenty of food so make sure you grab some once you’re settled.”
“We will,” Mia promised. There weren’t many seats left but she finally found an empty section and turned to ask Gabriel if he’d like to make a plate only to find him staring curiously back at her father.
“Your dad’s good with children,” he mused.
“Hmm,” she acknowledged. “He loves kids, always wanted grandkids.”
“Has he?” Gabriel asked quietly.
Mia met his eyes, heat rushing to her cheeks. “Sure, eventually. Maybe. Someday. Not right away or anything probably …”
“We never really talked about that, did we?”
“No,” she agreed. The closest they’d come was the first day he’d gotten out, when she’d told him she wasn’t on birth control. That was something she really should have taken care of by now, but there always seemed to be something else that was more important. “Everything seemed so far away, even after we found out it was possible and then it happened so fast.”
He nodded and drummed his fingers on the fancy white tablecloth. “Do you? Want a family?”
“Yeah,” she said, watching her dad hand back the squirming toddler before glancing at Gabriel. “I’ve always wanted kids.”
He didn’t flinch away from the revelation like she’d feared he might, and his face was pensive as he considered her words. “Me, too,” he said finally. “I wasn’t always sure I would—not with the way things were with my parents and after what happened to Brittany—but I think … I think I might want to try. Someday. I don’t know if I have what it takes to be a good dad but …”
“You’re going to be a great father,” she said. “How could you not be?”
“I’m still pretty messed up,” he said and as much as she loved him, as much as she knew he would love his child, she knew he was right.
“Law school takes a while so maybe by then things will be more settled,” she said lightly, lifting her shoulder in a shrug “And if not … well, I would like to be a mom but not having kids isn’t a deal breaker for me.”
“Do you have a deal breaker?”
“Hmm,” she said, tapping her chin and pretending to think it over, desperate to erase the look of sadness and self-condemnation in his eyes. “Maybe if you start to snore really loudly? Or male pattern baldness?”
He blinked at her for a moment before he cracked a small smile and ran a hand through his hair, tugging on the thick black waves. “Hey, don’t even mention male pattern baldness.”
“You never know …”
Gabriel opened his mouth, but Mia was spared his retaliation as Kennedy made her way to the table and slid into a seat beside Mia.
“There you are,” Mia said. “I wasn’t sure you were still going to come. Sorry Alison couldn’t make it. Is she feeling sick?”
Kennedy glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “She’s not actually sick. We broke up earlier this week and she moved out of the apartment.”
“What?” Mia looked around when she realized how loudly the question had been when it exploded out of her.” She lowered her voice and leaned in closer. “Why didn’t you say anything? Are you okay?”
Kennedy smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m actually the one that ended it.”
“Really?” Mia squeezed Kennedy’s hand as she tried to remember if there had been any signs that things between the two of them were strained.
“I loved her,” Kennedy explained, “but we just … We got together so fast after everything happened with my parents. One day I was living with them and couldn’t even be open about who I was and the next I was in a committed relationship. I never thought about what I wanted out of life or if we had the same goals, wanted the same things. When I did start to think about it, I realized I couldn’t answer that question because I didn’t know what I wanted.”
It reminded Mia of her feelings about James so long ago and how caught up she had been in what she had thought she was supposed to want. It had been painful to examine whether she might want something else instead.
“We’re still friends,” Kennedy continued. “I don’t think she was heartbroken or anything. Maybe we had both been slowly figuring out that we weren’t a great match for each other romantically.”
“You have plenty of time,” Mia said. “Take as much of it as you need to figure out who you are and what you want to do.”
“I know it isn’t too late but I’m only just now realizing how much what my parents did set me back in life. I had to learn to love myself, figure out who I actually am, so I can be ready to love others.”
“We’ll love and support you while you figure it all out,” Mia promised.
Kennedy picked at her plate as her eyes roamed over the crowd. “I see you finally got Gabriel here, but where’s Mrs. Newberry? Or did he already run her off?”
Mia rolled her eyes. “She’s on vacation. I’m as glad as anyone that she’s gone but of course she’d choose to be gone the first time Gabriel decided to come.”
“If it was possible, I’d believe she did it on purpose.”
Mia would have believed it, too, but truthfully, as much as she wanted Mrs. Newberry to stop making snide comments about Gabriel’s lack of attendance, she didn’t want him exposed to her cruelty. It was undoubtedly for the best that she wasn’t anywhere near him. Especially when she realized he’d gotten up to get another drink and hadn’t come back. If Mrs. Newberry had been there, she would have cornered him before Mia knew he was missing.
She found him outside, alone and isolated as he leaned against the wall and looked over the small flower bed with its fading summer blooms. Undeniably handsome in his crisp white shirt, he still gave every impression of a man that was on the verge of bursting at the seams. He’d been restless since he got out, understandably so, but it had gotten worse since the arrival of the letter from Lilah.
She’d forgotten about it entirely the night it had arrived, hadn’t had time to read the name before Gabriel had tossed it onto the table and it had been out of sight, out of mind. His lips had been pressed into a thin line of rage when she’d found him sitting at the table the next morning with his coffee in one hand and a letter from his mother in the other. “It’s from Lilah,” he’d said flatly, waving around the unopened envelope.
“Are you going to open it?”
He’d shaken his head and ripped the thick cream paper, filling their small kitchen with the sound of condemnation. “Where was she,” he asked, “when I needed her most? All my life she gave me money instead of time, instead of support or forgiveness or even love. Fuck my mother.”
Mia had only nodded and curled up in his lap, her hand resting over his pounding heart, but his anger—already a problem for them as he tried to adjust to his new life—had only gotten worse, as had his nightmares.
As much as Mia had always wanted Lilah to be the mother that Gabriel deserved, she had begun to wish that the letter had never come. Far from being helpful, it seemed to be making everything worse. Another challenge was the last thing that they needed right now. Gabriel’s trust fund had taken the material worries off their shoulders, but it would have been a lie to say that the money had been enough to make anything easy for them.
Gabriel was the partner of her life and the love of her heart, but he was far from healed.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Mind if I join you?”
He shook his head and made room for her at the railing. “I wasn’t hiding,” he said, “I was just …” He waved a hand at the party inside. It was a scene of love and laughter and community …one that he still didn’t feel like he was truly part of, she knew. He probably wasn’t, truth be told, because he’d lost so much time while the world went on without him.
She sighed and stepped closer, nudging at his arm until he opened his embrace for her to curl into. “Are you ready to go home?”
“I’m sorry …”
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “You tried and I can’t ask for more.”
He stood and held her for another minute, and she didn’t think that she imagined the wistfulness of his sigh. He wanted to stay, wanted to be a part of life, but it remained stubbornly just out of his reach.