My gaze snaps up to Emma. To the phone in her hand, and the apology in her eyes.
“I had to make the call,” she murmurs. “You sent him to sleep, Luke. I had to call.”
Luke
“Welcome back, Mr. Hart.” Her honor, Judge Florence Abram sits atop her throne and looks down on me with disappointment blazing in her eyes. “We’re seeing each other a little sooner than I anticipated.”
My mom stands beside me, much like last time. My lawyer on my other side. And my stately judge sits at the front of the courtroom, robed, and fucking pissed.
“You just couldn’t stay out of trouble, young man?”
I reach up and fuss with the tie that threatens to choke me to death.
“You need to shut your piehole,” Jess hisses beside me. “Don’t speak. Not a single fucking word, or I’ll let them send you to prison.” She flattens the slight wrinkle in her skirt, stands tall, and meets the judge’s venomous eyes. “Your Honor. Please, if you’ll allow me to explain.”
Ally
My dad is in town.
Those words, even though I don’t say them aloud, still manage to make my stomach swirl and tingle.
My dad.
My dad.
I moved out of my hotel room weeks ago. I said goodbye to Sonia and Calla, Nora and Galileo, Darcy, and the rest of my new friends in the small town just an hour from here. I finished up my time at Sonia’s office a little early, but she promised to sign off on all my hours on the provision I send her my final paper for her to read before I submit it.
And so, to give myself enough time to finish it, and to give her time to read it, that’s what I’ve been doing these past few weeks.
I’ve been writing a paper on Jason Donnerson – my dad.
It’s funny how, all of my life, the very few times I’ve asked about my biological father, my mom called him Jerry. When I was born, I was given her maiden name – Moore – which is the name her father took when he ditched town and all things Rivera, and because of my insane need to be independent, I never looked into who he was. In my mind, he was a punk teenager who ran away from responsibility.
To be fair, that’s not what my mother told me. She never once spoke ill of him. But I made assumptions, and as the years went on and he remained gone, my resentment grew. And so, I was too stubborn, too mad to go searching for more.
All of those stories Jason told in Sonia’s office about his Maria were about my mom. My peace-loving, trouble-making, picket-protesting, wild nights and high-school-suspension-receiving mom. And so now, it makes sense that I kept coming back to him for more. I wanted to learn more about Maria, I wanted to know where her story led, because his love for her made me love her.
He’s still so in love, it’s a complete tragedy that they were ever separated. A tragedy caused by two sets of parents who thought they knew better, who refused to take their children’s thoughts or feelings into consideration when changing the course of three lives.
“So, what was Stan like?” Jason-Jerry-Dad walks into my bedroom one Saturday afternoon several weeks after we left behind that old town and came home. He sits on the foot of my bed and hitches a leg up, and turning to me, he smiles past his black eyes and a nose that sits slightly askew despite receiving medical assistance. “Tell me all about him.”
“You need to stop.” I select a pen from the collection pooling beside my thigh, and toss it at his chest. “You were gone. It had been years, and Stan was a really nice man. You’re gonna have to get over it.”
“But I had dibs,” he teases. “Now this other dude thinks he can come in and marry my girl, raise my daughter?” He shakes his head. “I wish he were here.”
“Why?” I drawl. “So you could duel?”
“Exactly! I would fashion a sword from a stick I found in an enchanted forest, infuse wasp stings into the end, and then take care of business. May the better man win.”
“You realize you’re speaking of my deceased stepfather, right? I actually loved him. Like, a lot.”
He smiles and looks down into his lap. “I know.” He leaves his head low, but glances up between his lashes. “I’m actually not mad. He took care of you guys when I couldn’t, and no matter how many times or ways I ask about him, I’ve never heard a bad thing about him. He’s a patron fucking saint inside this home.”
“He was really cool.” I push my laptop aside and sit up so my spine arches back in the direction it should go. “Stan was like… a bear,” I explain. “But a cuddly kind. He never got mad, he never raised his voice, he never not smiled. He worked hard, and helped us create memories. We never gave gifts, but rather, experiences. Dinner dates, movies, vacations. We made memories all the time, like he knew his time was limited. And then there’s the fact he never felt the need to lie about his name to get our attention.”
“Ugh.” Jason pokes a finger into his mouth and mock-gags. “You’re making me have feelings for the dude. I’m trying to like him, because he’s special to my girls. But let’s not forget he slid into my seat when I wasn’t watching. If he was alive, we’d have beef. You know that, right?”
“So you’re here to sweep her off her feet, huh?” I roll my eyes and cast a glance over to my computer screen, to the dash that flashes on and off, on and off, and awaits my final touches before I send the document away to Sonia.
I’m stuck on the final paragraphs. The final words where I declare what I’ve learned about human behavior, about the brain, and emotions, and love, and loss. I’m stuck, and it annoys me, because I know what is blocking me.
“I’m here to reclaim what’s mine,” he explains. “To wow your mother, to remind her why I was always who she thought of. And when she’s being a little less fucking stubborn about it, I’ll probably marry up and lock her down.”
“Wow.” My eyes widen, and I introduce him to something Luke learned long ago: sometimes, I don’t genuinely mean wow. “That sounds charming and all that, but I wouldn’t lead with those words if I were you.”
“The locking her down thing?” He wrinkles his lips – the exact same way I do – then hisses when he remembers it hurts.
“And the bit about her being stubborn,” I laugh. “Perhaps she is, and maybe she even knows it, but it would be a rookie mistake to say so.”
“So start with flattery?”
“Always.”
I draw a deep breath until my lungs stretch, then let it out again. I’ve been curled up and cramped on my bed for hours, staring at that flickering line and waiting for inspiration to hit so I can be done with this paper. Ten thousand words – the first nine and a half thousand flowed from my fingertips like water from a hose. But the last little bit, the final touches… they elude me.
“So…” Jason smiles, and it bothers me to realize his smile is the same as mine. Mine is the same as his. For more than twenty years, half of my genetic makeup has been missing. But now he’s here, and I see it. I see the way his lips curve – mine do that. And I see the way he does this noncommittal shrug when he doesn’t want to answer a pointed question. My shoulders do that too. “You done pouting yet?”