Chapter 39
Devyn
M ake no mistake, if there was something shady done behind my back where both parents were involved all those years ago, my big brother, Knows-What’s-Best-For-You-Dustin, knows every bit about it.
And if I’m correct, he’s just the person to get Dad to change his mind and help us.
I adjust my hair into a long braid down one side of my body. This way, I feel every bit the brave knight, set out on her hot-pink steed to save the princess from the fire breathing dragon, or in this case, the custody hearing. Which feels uniquely similar.
There’s a metaphor there I’ll explore when I have the time, but now I’m feeling the sweet taste of victory as the gravel crunches beneath my tires in Dustin’s driveway. This time, there’s no heels to click and clack across his perfect suburban walkway. I really can’t help but stare in awe over my brother’s entryway herb boxes, though. Gosh, it’s so cute.
I shake my head. There’s no time for marvels of wonder, Devyn. It’s showtime. I march up his stoop and whip the screen door open only to find—
“Shana?”
“Devyn! What are you doing here?” she spurts, red-faced and stumbling down the stoop, backing toward her car that I didn’t notice parked on the curb until just now.
“What are you doing here?” I counter, but before I can get an answer, she’s shoving her body into her car and shouting something about stupid pancake recipes and new pointe shoes.
“What?” I practically shout over the loud screech of her old clunker. But she’s off, leaving dust in her wake.
Odd.
But then I turn back around and see another surprise guest. Suddenly, anything involving Shana and the pancakes is put on the back burner.
“Mom?”
My mouth gapes. My hand stills on the door handle. I don’t know if I’m supposed to cry, or run, or smile…so I just freeze .
“Sit,” she says. She’s smiling, and something about that feels off. I try to remember a time I saw it look the way it does right now.
Genuine.
And she wants me to sit. Beside a woman I haven’t seen in a ghost of time.
Stinging droplets dance around the domes of my eyes while we do nothing but stare at one another. Her smile is wide and her eyes crinkle in an unfamiliar way.
Lovingly.
“What have you done to our mother?” I call out to the kitchen without breaking eye contact, hoping Dustin will hear and come save me. The last words I ever spoke to her ring loudly through the room. So loud, I squint at her in question.
Can’t you also hear how loud it is?
But she can’t, of course.
That’s how trauma makes you crazy.
“ I’ll never understand how God could let someone like you be a mother, but take that away from someone like me.”
“ That’s because even He knows you aren’t worthy.”
That’s what she’d said back then.
I lean away, examining the woman who looks like a different version of my mother. A cleaned up, polished version. One with thoughts of others. Kindness. The one who only let herself out in glimpses when we were children.
She seems different now.
“Sober,” she says, as if reading my mind. I shoot her a glare, and she just winks, patting the sofa for me.
But I don’t sit.
Until I do.
“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you, Dev.” Dustin walks in from the kitchen, out of breath and wiping what looks like flour from his hair and shirt. I eye him suspiciously, but he shakes his head at me, sending white powder peppering my dress.
“Mishap with the KitchenAid when I was training my new hire.” He finishes brushing off his shirt and wipes his fingers on the towel in the pocket of his apron. “What are you doing here, Devyn?”
I huff, turning to Mom, who is…still smiling in a genuine way that freaks me the fuck out, to be frank, but okay, I’ll allow it. I turn back to Dustin and crank my neck to the side, blocking the Alien-Abducted-and-Replaced-By-An-Imposter-Mom from my vision, because that’s too much to confront right now, and I direct my attention to my brother, who is acting equally weird today.
I need to get on with this. I don’t have time for weird family reunions where everyone smiles deceptively. I have a marriage to consummate.
I mean, well, we did that part. Can’t ignore the little markings that are barely noticeable to anyone but myself along the soft parts of my wrists and forearms from the rope last night. I realize I’m blushing physically and mentally, and snap myself back to the present.
“Did either of you know about Dad giving Hunter money after the crash and making him swear to push me away?”
Dustin’s eyes widen, as do my mother’s, and both their jaws drop as they look between one another. And that confirms it. Everyone was in on it.
“Okay, so that’s a yes, then.”
“Look, Dev. You were almost killed. And you were depressed. And Hunter was…Samuel and Hunter’s family were going through some times. We needed you in a safe place where you could heal. Not here where you’d spiral again.”
“Oh, so you guys decided without me? Just shipped me off with Dad to an all-girls school on the coattails of the crash, the death of my baby, and Mom and Dad’s divorce, and hoped it would be Princess Diaries and Happily Ever After? That I’d just go on winning pageants and making a new life for myself away from it all? Packing it into boxes and stacking them so high I’d never see through the bullshit?”
I stare at Dustin and Mom as their faces twist. Going from something of judgment to a place that suggests, dare I say it, sympathy. And damn it, I’m latching on while they seem to be listening for once.
“My baby had just died . Hunter’s and my child . A child we prayed over each night from the moment we realized what we’d gotten ourselves into, holding hands in a crying bathroom stall at the very high school you drive past each day. Your core memories of it might be from rodeo championships or class elections, maybe even just the boring bits like study hall or exams, but mine are from whispered rumors behind locker doors, too snug gym tops, and a pink plus sign on a plastic stick, in a dimly lit bathroom stall of the second-floor ladies’ room that Hunter was never meant to hold me in. He and I needed each other. And we always will. You understand that, right?”
“I do now.” Dustin tugs me into a big brother hug that feels snug and protective, just right.
“You smell like my brother,” I say, laughing.
“You don’t use that line on your husband, do you?” he teases, and I swat his shoulder and shove him away.
“Call him my husband one more time and I’ll vomit in a bag and mail it to you,” I tease back, raising an eyebrow. “I’m still waiting on that package, bro.”
Dustin laughs, offering up a coffee to Mom and me. We both decline in the same way, a soft toss of the air with our hand. It’s kind of a bitchy move now that I’m seeing it in action.
No wonder! I want to tell her she’s the reason I’m a bitch, but I think that might make me, also, a bitch. So, I’m evolving. I smile, keeping my newfound knowledge to myself and effectively breaking the cycle.
As soon as Dustin settles into a spot on the chair beside me, I let it all out. I manage to explain why I need their help to convince Dad and his lawyer buddies to legitimize the certificate before tomorrow’s hearing, but it’s actually Mom who surprises me.
“Devyn, I wasn’t a great mother to you. I won’t apologize. But I will say this.” She scoots to the edge of the sofa and leans into us. “Before I cleaned myself up, I was blind to how lucky I was to be a mother. Especially to the two of you. And you will make great parents who listen and put others first one day. Both of you.” She nods at me and Dustin, perching on the edge of the loveseat. “That being said, I know about Eleanor. I have watched Hunter raise her for many years now. He always said he’d be better than I was, than his dad was. And you will be too, Devyn. You have always shined brightly. I just couldn’t see it past my own darkness.”
I force a smile and nod. It’s not totally fake, but I’m also not going to throw myself around her and tug her close from that alone. It’s not enough for me to say we’re okay. It’s not an apology that encompasses the years of pain her actions caused me.
So, I don’t say okay.
But that doesn’t mean what she said doesn’t warm places in my heart that I believed were frozen for good. Ones a sad little girl carved out of herself and shoved in a shoebox, to hide from the world. From her own self.
My mother’s words, whether I want them to affect me or not, open that box. They may not be enough to heal the carved-out parts of me that took years to break, but they are a start.
So, I do take her hand, and I give my mother what I can offer.
I nod.
She nods back.
But we do not cry.
“Let’s call your dumbass father, now,” she finally manages, and Dustin and I share a look that tells me we agree on one thing. That sounds a lot more like the mom we remember.
Dustin dials up Dad and puts him on speaker on the coffee table.
“Son,” he clips, short and forced. Mom rolls her eyes immediately, and I chew my bottom lip to avoid laughing. She hates that man insurmountably. “Do you need something?”
“Yeah, Dad.” Dustin sighs. He hates talking to our father, and he avoids it like the plague. You can tell by the shake in his voice. Anyone who deals with Dad on a regular basis knows not to wobble. He hates a weak backbone if he perceives one.
I wince, sensing the lash-out coming before it even does.
“Well, spit it out!” he booms through the phone, and I puff a deep gust of air from my cheeks impatiently, which has Mom rolling her eyes again. Anymore and they might fall from her head.
“Dad, let’s cut the crap,” I finally say, because I can’t stand the incompetence. No offense to Dustin and all, but I’m sure Dad appreciates my clarity more than this shuffle of false pleasantries. “I’m gonna send you a marriage license on a napkin and you’re gonna get your friend Randy to approve it over some cocktails at Morgana’s in three hours, okay? I already made the reservation. Please, Dad?”
Dustin shakes his head and rolls his eyes, unable to hide the smile pulling across his lips when his eyes meet my mom’s and they both break out into a low snicker at my antics. “ Daddy, pwease,” Dustin whispers in the background, sending Mom bent over in silent cackles and slapping her thigh.
I struggle not to laugh at myself. It is a little ridiculous that I can still pull out these kinds of stops, but if I must use the Daddy’s Girl card, I will. Ellie’s placement is on the line. I’ve done it for new stilettos; I’ll do it for this.
“Dad, I really need you to help me. I’m in love with Hunter, and if we don’t get this filed, he could lose his daughter. Just have Randy sign it and put it through on his little court laptop we’ve all seen him toting around the country club, and all will be well.”
Silence. My heartbeat picks up. He needs to agree to this. I don’t have a plan B. I groan, looking over to Dustin for help, but he just shrugs, unhelpful as ever. I scoff at him and turn to Mom. Thankfully, for once in my life, she offers me a smile and a firm nod of camaraderie.
“Gotta be firm with your father,” she’d always told me when I wanted something as a kid. I have to say, at least they prepared me not to be a pushover in life, whether that kind of thing is healthy for a developing child’s psyche or not.
Be firm it is.
“You can cut the bullshit, Dad, because I know all about you helping Hunter and swearing him off way back when, and don’t think I’m not going to circle back to that once I know this marriage thing is straight.”
He sighs, deep and heavy…contemplative. Mom taps her foot on the tile, as Dustin keeps eyeing the kitchen.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I shout, surprising everyone around me. “I’m a grown-ass woman! Let me make my own damn decisions and stop worrying about my future. I’m worried about right now. And right now, nothing matters but a little girl I can’t fathom living without, who needs a paper you won’t give me.”
“I’m trying to keep you from making mistakes I made. You can be anything in the city, Devy. You’re in a box out there. You’re my little girl.”
“But, Dad, I can’t be anything in the city. You can, but there’s one thing I can’t be there. I can’t be happy. And that is the most important thing of all, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you moved yourself out there and followed your own dreams?”
“Yes, but being a parent to a child who isn’t yours could be…”
“Magnificent. It’s magnificent , Dad, and it’s exactly what I want.”
I try not to be affected by my mother sitting across from me for the first time in ten years, with tears of happiness flowing down her face…for me.
“All right,” Dad says, “I’ll get Randy to sign it. We’ll upload it to the court site, but it won’t show up as filed until the clerk updates the listings next week.”
“That’s not soon enough, Dad. The hearing is today.”
He sighs, the creak of his desk chair sounding through the phone. He types something out on his keyboard and a few clicks later offers a satisfied grunt. “Randy’s got an online notary. I’ll send you a certified PDF to print. Give me an hour.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I breathe a huge sigh of relief.
“Don’t mention it,” he says gruffly. But he lingers on the line, a question clearly on the tip of his tongue. “Devyn? Will you tell him something for me?” He groans again. “Your husband.”
A smile spreads across my face, my cheeks giant shining bulbs at how happy I feel to finally have my father’s approval, after all these years. I look at Dustin, who is also unable to keep his teeth hidden for this moment, and he nods at me, too. So does Mom.
“ Please tell him I’m proud of him. Of both of you. I thought, you know, as your father…you never want to see your baby girl the way I saw you suffering. I was supposed to guard you from these things, the dark parts of your life, but they found you anyway. On your own time. And for that, my child, I was wrong.”
“Dad, stop. You don’t have to—”
“No.” He cuts me off. “I do. You will be the best mother, Devyn Lynn, because you have the biggest heart. You shine, not despite the darkness, but all the way through it. Go, win this. And fight for that little girl.”