Mayluna

66 EVIE

E VIE

That evening, after we’d spent the day at Tommy’s, I sat curled into Carter’s sofa, talking on the phone to you kids. We’d told you that I was going away on a work trip. I can’t remember where.

“Well, little bug, I’m not sure I can get all of that into my suitcase.” I saw the corner of Carter’s mouth turn upward as he walked into the room, overhearing the conversation. “Okay, I’ll bring you something, I promise.”

While Lucas talked, I looked toward Carter, sitting on the other end of the sofa.

He wore a pair of jeans with a plain gray T-shirt and a faded Dodgers baseball cap, an homage to Los Angeles, the other city he sometimes called home.

A five-o’clock shadow graced his chin. This wasn’t the picture of a rock star, a celebrity.

This was the picture of a man. Just a man.

A husband. A father. Not someone defined by his career or his lifestyle.

I saw the potential for lazy Sunday mornings, reading the paper side by side as we sipped coffee, my eyes buried into his shoulder while watching a scary movie.

An afternoon holding hands while we decided what to have for dinner or how best to rearrange the living room furniture.

Move the couch here, no, wait, over there, I’d say.

He would look up at me, exasperated, then smile and oblige my request. Simple things.

I saw what he might look like when he would begin to go just a little soft in the middle, with gray hair beginning to appear.

Imagined him teaching the kids how to play the guitar, with quiet patience and a soft voice, or talking about his favorite books. He was just a man. And I wanted it all.

I wanted it for him. I wanted it for all of us.

Sometimes I think there’s a place, in another life, another time, where this exists. It’s nice to believe this.

“You did? Really? The whole way up the tree?” I said, replying to Lucas.

Suddenly, everything I’d worried about over the years faded away, and I saw in Carter what I’d failed to see all those years ago.

I saw home. After ten years of running away and fighting the war within me, I finally stopped.

The ache of loving someone you cannot have twists a person from the inside, seeping into every moment and every day, making colors less vibrant, smiles less felt.

No matter how hard I tried to stop it, his face would always be the first thing I thought of in the morning and the last thing I thought of at night. That was no way to live.

“I collected some pretty stones—white ones. Maybe we can put them in a jar in your room. Sound good?” I asked. Carter stood and walked to the window, his back to me while Lainey took the phone and talked, with less animation than her brother but still telling her own tales.

I wanted something different for my life, and I wanted my children to see me happy and present in the moment. To spend the rest of my life making him feel loved, while giving him the daughter who should have always been his to love.

I wanted something different for your life, too, Lainey. I couldn’t deprive you of knowing him, either, this extraordinary person who was part of you.

But what if it was too late?

I hung up the phone, setting it beside me. My heart pounded in my chest as I knew the time had come, and I urged the words forward, collecting the courage I would need to tell him what I’d come to say.

“It’s nice hearing you talk to your kids.” He turned.

“I’ve never been away from them this long.”

“It must really be something, seeing you with them.” There was a faraway sadness to his statement. “Do you think maybe—”

“Carter, we have to talk.”

“I know.” He walked toward me. “You’re leaving Saturday. And I know you have a life and they need you more than I do. But I’ve been thinking, and Ev, I think we—”

“No, stop. You need to let me say this.” I hesitated, taking a step closer to him, my pulse throbbing in my head. “I didn’t come here just to spend time with you. There’s something you need to know.”

“Okay,” he said slowly.

“Lainey.” I paused, the word filling my throat. “Carter, Lainey is just a nickname. Her full name is ...” I swallowed hard, my mouth going dry. “Her name is Elaina.”

There was silence as the words hung there. It only took a moment before it registered on his face—his mother’s name. “Evie, are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”

I nodded.

“She’s yours. Named after your mother.” I smiled a little, my eyes filling. He went perfectly still, and when he didn’t say anything, I continued. “Do you remember, in New York, I’d been sick?”

His eyes flickered with flashing memories. “You had that bad flu.”

I shook my head. “I was pregnant.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you say anything?” His voice was low, measured, with something simmering beneath it.

“I tried for a while. Over and over in the weeks after I got home from London. Remember? But you had everything with the Grammys. You were getting ready for the tour. We were barely talking.”

“But we were together in New York,” he demanded.

“Right.”

“And you still didn’t say anything.”

“I’d planned to. But things—”

“You’d planned to?” His jaw clenched with anger.

“Carter, I—”

“No. No. This doesn’t make any sense.” He shook his head. “You and your husband, your kids.”

“I was already pregnant with Lainey when we married. We had Lucas later.” He walked to the other side of the room, resting one hand high against the wall with his back to me as he looked out the window into the backyard.

The evening sky was darkening with clouds, and the remnants of the day’s sun were just a hint of angry purple.

After a while, he turned, his face half in shadow and his eyes brimming with tears. “Why. Tell me. Why.”

“I didn’t intend for it all to work out this way. God, please believe me when I tell you that. But it just kept unfolding and unfolding, and eventually this was the path we were on, and I guess I felt like it was best for everyone to leave it be.”

“Best for everyone? Who were you to decide what’s best for everyone? You need to explain this to me, Evie. Why didn’t you say anything? How could you have done this?”

He was right. I knew he was right.

“It just all happened so fast.”

He shook his head, closing his eyes. “I knew something was wrong that weekend. I just thought if we could get back to London, it would be fine.”

“I was hoping for that, too, at first!”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? I’d have stayed, Evie! I never would have left you!”

“But don’t you see?” I could hear the desperation creeping up in my voice, begging him to understand.

“That’s exactly why I couldn’t tell you at first!

I knew you’d be torn and that you would never have left me by myself with a difficult pregnancy.

That you’d stay. That you would always want to stay.

Everything was happening for you and the guys. Everything you’d worked so hard for.”

“We could have figured it out.”

“Maybe. But at the time, it wasn’t any one thing.

It was all of it. There was that awful scene outside the hotel, and I was worried about the baby.

And then I showed up at the hotel room and it was a complete wreck and you guys looked like you hadn’t slept for days.

I could barely get five minutes with you, and I just panicked. ”

“I was calling you every day. You wouldn’t answer. We should have talked!”

“I know, but I almost lost her,” I said quietly. “And I got scared.” Tears brimmed, and I looked away. I thought of my sweet little girl and how fragile she’d once been as a new life inside me.

“What do you mean?”

I explained how sick I was in those early months and that I knew I couldn’t go with them on tour.

I told him about the cramping and bleeding that had started the morning he left but continued for the next several days.

My father had gotten me to the hospital, where they told me that the baby was in distress but okay.

When the relief poured through me, I knew that I’d do anything from that point on to protect her.

“That’s why I didn’t call you back right away. I was in the hospital. And I decided to wait to tell you. Just until the end of the tour. But by then I couldn’t reach you.”

“You could’ve tried harder.”

“I did! But I thought you’d moved on. And I wasn’t going to go chasing you around, me and my baby!”

“You mean our baby.” His voice was laced with such bitterness.

“And eventually, I thought maybe it was better for her to let things be. I wanted something more solid for her. I wanted her to feel secure. Not running around the world or having to fight for attention. And besides ...” I hesitated, afraid to give voice to the phrase that had haunted me for years.

“What.”

I exhaled and then shrugged. “You’d told me you never wanted to have children, Carter. What was I supposed to do with that? I felt like I was ruining your life. I felt like I was ruining everything you all worked for. And I didn’t want her to be raised feeling like that. Feeling unwanted.”

“I would’ve felt differently if I’d known you were pregnant, Evie! I would’ve wanted to have children with you. But you didn’t even give me the chance,” he interjected, his eyes filling again.

“I’m so sorry. I am. For everything. But think about it all. The way things were going at that time. I was just trying to do the right thing. Can you blame me?”

“For back then? No. I can’t. But for the other nine years? You’re damn right I do.” He was seething.

I winced, closing my eyes, and then sighed, wilting. “I did the best I could. It’s all I can say. I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me. And I wanted more than that for her.”

He shook his head and exhaled a breath, running a hand over his head. “So what? Is this where you tell me that Steve thinks Lainey is his? Because that would be really fucking priceless.”

“No,” I said.

He raised his brow.

“He was just a good friend trying to help me at first. My father had shown up at the hotel the morning you were leaving.”

Confusion crossed his face. “Your father? What does he have to do with any of this?”

The months that followed, and the way time carried on, played like a movie in my mind.

I explained that I’d told my dad that Steve was Lainey’s father, figuring it would get him off my back until I figured things out.

It was just a spur-of-the-moment fix. But then after New York, I didn’t have anywhere to go.

I’d already moved out of my apartment, and so I went back home.

Steve let me stay with him in Philadelphia for a while so that I could get my feet back on the ground and figure out what was next.

That’s when I started trying to reach Carter.

A little perspective and time made me wonder if things could work out, after all.

But when I didn’t hear back, I knew he was gone for good and I had to start over.

Kate was dating Steve’s best friend, and the four of us were all spending time together. It was a soft place to land, I guess.

Because of the timing of it—I’d seen Steve earlier that year at Christmas—everyone just assumed the baby was his, and he was willing to leave it that way. Eventually, life had taken over, and what was originally a temporary arrangement with a good friend grew into something real between us.

“Steve’s a good father,” I said after explaining all of this to him. “Carter, she’s had a good life. We both have.”

“A good father? As opposed to me. I see.” He laughed bitterly.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Sounds like you had it all worked out. Easy, huh?”

“No. It was never easy. Not a day went by when I didn’t think about you.

But I watched you from afar and celebrated everything along with you.

The world had you, just like it was always meant to be.

” Everything was for the best. It wouldn’t have been right to have kept him all to myself.

These were the things I’d told myself in the long nights.

He didn’t say anything but returned to his place in front of the window, arms crossed.

“Right. Except for one thing that you conveniently seemed to leave out.” He turned, looking at me with such harsh anger and pain in his eyes, I felt like I was looking at a different person.

My shoulders pinched as I shrank beneath his searing glare.

“She’s my daughter! I’ve missed nine years of her life.

And I’ve missed you , Evie. Both of you! She was my daughter!”

“I know. And I want you to know her,” I said through thick tears.

“Do you?” His eyes went dark. “Why now? Why the sudden change?”

I shook my head. “I was wrong to keep it from you as long as I have. I wish it could’ve been different. But we’re here now. She deserves to know you. And you deserve to know her.”

“I see.” He paused, and his voice turned low and quiet again.

“All this time, I’ve been killing myself trying to get over you.

To get past what happened with us. I’ve loved you, Evie.

I loved you so much that it nearly killed me.

And you were off living some half-life, quitting the job you loved, living in a suburban play. ”

“Half-life?” I was angry then. I may have made my mistakes, but I wasn’t going to let him tear me down.

“Is that what you think of me? Carter, I’m proud of the life I have.

It’s simple. It’s by no means fancy. But I’m proud of the children I’ve raised.

Just because I don’t have an entire world falling at my feet or have my face on the cover of magazines doesn’t mean that my life is less whole than yours.

You can be angry if you want, but I won’t let you make it sound like my life is a failure. ”

“Well then, good for you. I’m so glad you’ve been happy.” He grabbed a few things and went to the front door.

I went after him. “Where are you going?”

“I need some time.”

“Please don’t leave like this.” I reached out and took his arm, pleading, but he tugged it away.

I quickly went to my bag and pulled out an envelope of photos, handing them to him.

His eyes slowly turned to the image of his daughter, taken after her first recital, a proud grin and rosy cheeks, and the next, a baby picture.

“She’s really beautiful, Carter.” He stared at the photo, and I extended it farther, inviting him to take it. But he didn’t.

“Carter ...” He looked up at me, eyes full of pain, and then walked out.

I always knew that I could lose him in all of this, and my heart was breaking. But I still had so much hope for you, Lainey. Hope that he could eventually come to know and love you, even if he couldn’t forgive me.