Ding!
We both jolt.
“Probably Gina,” I mutter, but when I look, it's Leo.
You free now? I'm in Nashua.
He types an address. I map it.
“He says he's free now,” I murmur, surprised.
“Then let's go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Andrew.”
“You're sure.” I text José, who replies immediately that the car will be ready in five.
She's bereft but determined, soft but firm. “He's my father. He wants to see me. How could I not?”
And then she slips her arms around my waist, leaning in, muttering into my chest. “And wanting to protect me is sweet, but if you go all alpha like that again and cut me out of my own decisions, I'll just end up hating you.”
“I would die if you hated me.”
And then she weeps into my shirt until José appears, the front door open, his face changing as he sees us.
He slips out quietly, ready when we are.
When you hear the words halfway house, what do you envision?
We pull up to a large, white home with black shutters, two doors off a porch indicating it's a duplex of some kind. I realize I expected something seedier.
This looks like a pleasant nursing home on a quiet side street.
Except there are five men in folding chairs, all smoking, all looking ragged and worn out.
“Andrew,” Amanda says, clutching my arm. We're in the Tesla Model X. On second thought, I didn't have José drive. This is too personal, too raw. We need to be alone.
I text Leo.
The oldest of the men on the porch, a guy in a Red Sox ball cap, checks his phone. Then he looks up and stares at our car.
“That's him,” she gasps.
I see the resemblance, but barely. Amanda's got big eyes, brown and warm, with a face that's confident but sweet. She used to change her hair color frequently, but with the pregnancy she's gone back to her natural color, a soft brown that suits her.
Leo's a gaunt man with gray hair, bags under rheumy eyes, and a hangdog, closed-off expression that makes it clear he's lived a hard life.
But man, does his face transform when he sees us.
When he sees Amanda.
“Mandy!” he calls out, taking off his baseball cap and waving it in the air, his smile warm, eyes eager but damn scared. Over the years, I've acquired a finely honed ability to sense fear in other men, and to use that fear in negotiations. His fear has nothing to do with competition or domination.
It has to do with rejection.
How does a father get to this point? Reeling from the thought, I have to hog-tie my emotions and get them in check fast, because this isn't about me. I’m about to be a parent, and my brain fast forwards to a time when our twins will be Amanda's age–what would it take for me to be like Leo?
I can't even imagine it, because the gap between who I am and what I'd have to do is so vast.
Maybe Leo thought that, too, when Amanda was born. Thought he'd never be a father who wasn't there.
“Dad?” The question in her voice makes my heart crack in half, because I've never had that tentative, timid tone when it comes to my father. James McCormick is a deeply flawed man in so many respects, but he was always there.
I don't just smell the fear of rejection on Leo.
I smell it on my wife.
And that enrages me.
Leo walks up to us and halts, uncertain, his body language respectful and eager at the same time, the hand waving the cap moving it to his head, the other patting his thigh, fingers twitching. He wants to hug her, but Amanda is a statue. A big-bellied stone statue who is frozen beside me, her hand in mine, crushing my bones like I'm her only way to prevent being sucked into a black hole.
One centered over her heart.
Politeness dictates that I offer my hand to the guy, shake in connection. When you meet your father-in-law for the first time after being married to his only child for three years, isn't that how it should be?
I don't move.
I just stand here, holding Amanda's heart in my palm.
“You, wow–you're so grown up!” he says, eyes jumping all over, once in a while catching mine for a split second, the corners of his wrinkled mouth going up. He smells like drugstore aftershave and dryer sheets.
Tobacco, too.
Amanda shrugs, eyes wider than normal, her throat working double time to contain emotion. The pressure on my hand lessens and irrationally, I worry she'll float off into the ether, as if decades of not seeing Leo have turned into helium that will carry her off like a balloon.
“May I hug you?” he asks, so softly that I feel it in her before the words click, her foot taking a step toward the guy, her hand releasing mine.
Maybe something in me needs to be tethered, too.
When they embrace, Leo leans forward, pulling his lower half back, her giant, twin-filled midsection impossible to avoid. He closes his eyes as I watch him, his chin on her shoulder, her arms under his, head nodding slightly.
“It's good to see you again, Dad.”
At the word Dad, he winces.
“Whoa!” he calls out suddenly, backing up, the spell broken as she giggles. “What was that?”
“One of the babies kicking,” she says, turning to look at me as if to assure me she's fine.
Because that's what she does. Amanda checks in, makes sure her people are okay, and she fixes problems. Leo's a thorn in her side for the same reasons all estranged parents are, but it works overtime for her, because he's also a problem she can't solve.
This time, I'm checking in on her.
As if he finally realizes I'm there, Leo turns to me, shoulders higher, jaw firmer. He reaches out a hand for a shake. “Leo Warrick. You've gotta be Andrew.”
I take the man's hand. It's sandpaper pretending to be a palm.
“Yes.” I hold back the sir that rises in my mouth. “Good to finally meet you, Leo.”
The finally makes Amanda blink rapidly.
“You, too.” He lets go, then goggles at Amanda. “How many you got in there? A baseball team?”
The word baseball starts a sequence inside me, a flash of images based entirely on Amanda's story about the last time she saw her father, when she was five. He took her to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park and lost her.
Lost her.
Then got into a wretched car accident, leaving poor Pam to think her daughter had been thrown from the car, dead in the weeds where the rescue workers couldn't find her.
My wife was a precocious five, though, a kid who wandered the streets of Boston until she found a police station and asked for help finding her dad.
Joking about baseball doesn’t just leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
It leaves me out for blood.
“No,” Amanda answers simply. “Just two.”
“Two? I didn't–I knew you were married,” he says, cutting me a nervous look that says we all know how he knows. “But children?”
Amanda just smiles.
“Your mom must be pleased as punch. Pam always wanted more kids.”
A pale, shaky look washes over Amanda's face, and I move closer to her side.
“She's happy to have grandchildren,” Amanda says softly. I can feel the thousands of questions she has for him, but also the restraint, the terror of being told no, of being dismissed, of being pandered to.