“The truth about Georgia,” I said. “The truth about Owen.”
“The pictures,” he said.
Then, I remembered the black and white photos he’d dropped earlier. They were the pictures I’d taken after Owen raped me. The pictures I had taken for Jake, to fuel his hatred of Owen.
It was fitting for Jake to be the one who found them. I should have just been brave enough to show him all those years ago. We wouldn’t have been waiting for news if my daughter was dead or alive if I could have just sucked up my fucking self-pitying bullshit and told him everything.
“Yes.” There was no more denying. No more reasons to keep it to myself.
“When?”
“The night you left.”
Jake sucked in his breath.
“I went to lock the storage unit for Reggie. I wanted to walk. Owen showed up near the boat house. He dragged me down to the beach under the bridge.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to. I wanted to. I was going to. But when you came back, you were so fucking angry at me. No one had trusted me my entire life, Jake – no one had ever taken me seriously, never believed in me. No one but Nan. ”
“I didn’t trust you either, did I?” Jake pulled me off the couch and into his arms. He sobbed into my hair and spoke between gulps of breath. “I was such an ass. Willie Ray had come up to talk to me when I was filling the bike at the station. I bought you flowers. He asked who they were for. I was practically giddy to see you again. Never felt that way in my whole life. I told him they were for you. There was no point in denying us. Most of them already knew about us anyway. I wanted everyone to know you were mine.” Jake squeezed me tighter. “That’s when he told me he saw Owen coming out from under the bridge with his zipper down, his hair a mess. Willie Rae asked him what he was doing. Owen told him he was down there with you.”
“He was, just not the way you thought.” I tried to be strong as I told him. “I put up a fight. I swear I did. He was so strong, and I was barely conscious....”
“I know you fought him, Bee. I know you did. And I wasn’t fucking here for you. It’s all my fucking fault.”
“No. If you hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have kept her. I would have known she was Owen’s, and I would have gotten rid of her because of you. I was so close to doing it anyway. But since I had nothing and she was already such a survivor, I kept her. I needed her because I didn’t have you. It was such a fucking selfish reason, but she was the good that came out of you leaving. As much as it hurt, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I should have told you everything after Frank’s funeral, on the very first day you came back.” My thoughts were back with Georgia, wondering where they’d taken her and how long it would be before someone let us know how she was. “I just can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I let it happen.”
“We can’t blame ourselves right now. We have to be strong for her, for our little girl.” Jake tucked a stray hair behind my ears and kissed my forehead.
We both jumped when the same nurse from earlier came into the waiting room. She had no news for us. She just needed my permission to give Georgia a transfusion and to ask what our religious preferences were.
“Religious preferences? For what?” I asked.
“Just in case ma’am,” the nurse answered politely. I sank down on the floor while Jake talked to the nurse. Their conversation was a muted blur.
Bethany had come back in. She’d been taking up a seat in the corner. I could see the horror in her face over what her son did. It was mixed with genuine fear over Georgia’s condition. She was tortured, just like us. She stood up anytime she heard the sound of shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
It wasn’t until the sun rose high above the windows of the waiting room that the doctor finally came in and addressed us. We all stood at attention. He looked past us as he spoke. “She’s awake now but won’t be for long. Her little body has been through a lot, and she’s going to need a lot of rest.”
“But how is she?” I demanded.
“It wasn’t a direct hit, just scattered buck shots. Miraculously, none of it hit any major arteries or vital organs. There were a few fragments that narrowly missed her spine, but we got them out. She lost a lot of blood during all of this, so we gave her a transfusion.” I couldn’t believe we were discussing my little girl in terms like these. “Barring any unforeseen circumstances, and even though it’ll take a little time, it looks like she’s going to make a full recovery.” Jake caught me before my knees gave out, and I almost fell to the floor. We’ll keep her for a few nights in the ICU under observation, just to make sure everything stays as it should.”
Full recovery. Georgia was going to be okay. She was going to live. “Can I see her?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes, but only for a few minutes. And just one person, please. Also, I don’t want her upset because you are upset so stay calm in front of her. We need her relaxed and comfortable. She’s a little loopy from the pain medicine, but you can go in.”
I bolted past the doctor and left him explaining something to Jake. I realized I didn’t ask what room in the ICU she was in, so I found a nurse I recognized from earlier, and she pointed the way. When I got into the room, there was a white curtain pulled around the bed; on the left was an IV drip and a dozen flashing and beeping machines.
I pulled the curtain back, there in the bed, looking so tiny and frail, was my little girl. She was pale, dark blue circles around her eyes, but she was alive and she was going to be ok. I had to keep reminding myself of that or I was going to break down right in front of her.
I put my hand over hers and felt the place where her IV was connected to her hand.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Hi, Mama.” Her voice was weak and scratchy, but it was the best sound I’d ever heard.
“Hi, baby girl.” I felt the tears coming, but I held them back and showed her nothing but calm confidence.
“What happened?”
“You had a little accident, baby girl, but you’re okay now. You’ll be home very soon.”
“Is Daddy here?”
I suddenly realized how much that word meant, and exactly who it referred to. There was only one man who fit that description. “Yes, baby girl, he’s here. You can see him after you get some rest.”
“Wanna hear a secret, Mama?” she asked me, her eyes now closed.
“Sure, baby.” I lay next to her on the bed, careful not to squish any of the wires or tubes. “Tell me a secret.” I held her to my side without moving her. I needed her to feel me there, to know she wasn’t alone as she drifted off to sleep.
“Jake lets me call him Daddy when you aren’t around.” Even with her eyes closed she was smiling.
“Oh, does he?”
“Yeah. He says I can call him Daddy in front of you only when you say it’s okay.” I leaned down and kissed my sweet girl on her cheek. “Is it okay, Mama?” It came on a shallow breath. She was asleep before I could answer.
I smoothed down her hair and whispered to her, “You get some sleep now.” I was finally coming to accept that there were some things in life that were just meant to be. Not all of them are good. But Jake being Georgia’s father was meant to be.
Two souls who bonded because of love, and love alone.
My parents didn’t choose me. They ended up with me after my mother got pregnant. They’d never wanted children. They reminded me every day what a burden I was to their drugged-out lives. I never felt anything even close to love.
Then, Nan came and showed me that someone could truly care about me and love me for who I was and what I was. She took me in because I was her flesh and blood, but she loved me because she wanted to, not because she had to.
Then, there was Jake and Georgia. They had chosen one another. It hadn’t been all that long, but they already knew they wanted to be a family, and regardless of what my feelings were initially, they knew it was meant to happen.
A family by choice, not chance. A choice to love, and to be loved in return. A choice to take care of and enjoy one another, not to put up with or to suffer through one another.
It was the best kind of family. A family on our own terms.
I whispered to my baby girl— my entire world, the centerpiece of the family we’d all chosen to be part of. “You can call him Daddy.”
***
Bethany was the only one in the waiting room when I came back out. She was sipping from the tiny straw of an orange juice box.
“Where’s Jake?” I asked.
“The nurse with the attitude came back in and asked for blood donations.” She showed me a small round Band-Aid on the inside of her arm. “He’s in there now. How is she?”
“She’s tired. They’ve got her on a lot of meds, but she’s going to be okay.” It felt good to say it, and after seeing her, I truly believed it. My legs suddenly felt very heavy and weak. I plopped down next to Bethany.
“I’m so sorry, Abby.”
I saw the tears fill her eyes, the quivering of her lip. “Stop, Bethany.” I made a move to put my hand over hers. It burned, but I ignored it. I needed to comfort her, and that was far more important than my own pain. “You gave birth to him. You didn’t put the gun in his hand, and you didn’t tell him to pull the trigger. Just like you didn’t make him rape me.” It was so odd saying it like that, so bluntly, to the woman who helped carry me back to Jake’s apartment after it happened. She was probably as much a victim of her son as I had been. “You made a lot of mistakes, but we all have. I don’t blame you—for any of it. So stop apologizing.”
Jake interrupted us when he stepped back into the waiting room, escorted by a nurse wearing purple scrubs. His face was pale. He was clutching a juice box in one hand and a cookie in the other. He sat on the couch and drained the juice in one long pull. “Well, that sucked,” he said. I almost laughed.
The man who danced with the devil got woozy while giving blood.
The nurse motioned for me. “You’re next, honey. What kind of blood you got for me? Your little girl’s got that rare O we always be needing, so that’s what we are looking for today. But I’ll take anything your veins will give me. Lord knows we need it all.”
How could I refuse a request like that?
I wasn’t at all light-headed afterward like they warned me I could be—like Jake turned out to be—but I sat back in my reclining chair and drank my juice as the nurse instructed. The nurse came over to me with a card with four drops of blood on it. “You ain’t got that O, darlin’...you’re just standard ol’ A.” She flailed her arms when she spoke and flipped a long black braid over her shoulder. “But your tall, blonde and sexy baby daddy out there got the good stuff, so we tapped into that real good.”
“Oh, he’s not her biological father.”
“Oh? Well, since your baby girl’s got the O and you don’t, the biological baby daddy got to have it. So when you talk to him you send him on up to Miss Karla so I can put that liquid gold on tap!” Miss Karla loved her job way too much. “This biological daddy of yours got baby blues like him over there?”
“No, he has green eyes like my daughter,” I said. “It isn’t possible for two blue- eyed parents to have a green-eyed child.” It sounded so rehearsed... probably because it was a conversation I’d had in my head a thousand times.
“Oh, sure they can. My friend Marni, her husband Brian, has got emerald-green eyes, and both his parents got eyes as blue as the waters of the Caribbean.”
“Then your friend Marni needs to tell her husband to check the eye color of the mailman because his parents are lying to him,” I snapped. I think Miss Karla detected our conversation was much more serious than the light banter she initially thought it was.
“I ain’t making this shit up, honey. Freeman,” she shouted, without turning around. A technician in a lab coat, who had previously been sitting in a corner absorbed in a comic book, swiveled around in his chair. “Freeman studied genetics at some fancy college up north.”
“What’s up?” he asked, pushing up the bridge of his thick black framed glasses.
“Can two blue-eyed peoples make a green-eyed baby?”
“This is dumb. I have to go.” I stood to leave, but Freeman’s answer stopped me in my tracks.
“Yeah, it’s pretty rare, but it does happen. I’ve seen several cases.” He turned back around to his comic.
“Mmmhmm... that’s what I thought,” Karla said, declaring victory over my stupidity.
I thanked her and politely refused her offer to assist me to the waiting room.
“Miss?” Karla called to me.
She just couldn’t let it drop. “Yeah?”
Her volume dropped, and suddenly she was discreet. “I know it ain’t none of my business, but if you ain’t sure about who yo baby daddy is, we can do a test. Just bring that fine-ass man back in here, and I’ll do it up right.” She winked, and I knew she was trying to help. Then, she grabbed a pamphlet from a dozen different colored papers crowding the wall. “This is about blood types. Yours is easy to figure out. Your girl has O and you have A, so the daddy has to have O. It’s that simple.”
I thanked her and took the pamphlet, slowly making my way back to the waiting room as I looked at it. I wanted to get back in to see Georgia as soon as she woke up, but nurse Karla’s words haunted me.
Was there really a chance that Jake was Georgia’s father?
More importantly, did it really matter anymore?
I slid down next to Jake. He had his head back on the cushion, but he put his arm around me and pulled me close. “You did better than I did, Bee.” He handed me a cup of coffee from the table. It was exactly what I needed.
I had one question in my head, just one little question, and I could put all of this behind me.
“Bethany?” I asked.
“Yeah, sugar?” She put down her magazine and took off her reading glasses.
Then I asked her the question I almost didn’t want to know the answer to. There was only a small chance... was it really worth me breaking my heart all over again?
“Do you know Owen’s blood type?” I glanced at Jake as he tensed beside me, though Bethany didn’t seem to notice.
She thought for a second.
Please be anything other than O, please not O.
“He’s either A or AB. I always get them confused. Why?”
“He’s not O?”
“Not that I know. There are no O-types in the family at all, actually,” she said. “Why are you asking this, Abby?” She turned her attention to the hallway where I’d just come from. “What happened in there?”
Jake was as eager to hear my answer as she was. “Because, Bethany,” I smiled and took Jake’s hands in mine, “Owen’s not Georgia’s father, after all.” Once I said it, he smiled, too – genuine happiness on his face.
I just smiled back and gazed into those beautiful teary pools of sapphire blue
The eyes of my daughter’s father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GEORGIA WAS SLEEPING PEACEFULLY in her room after a six-day stay in the hospital. We had brought her home just a few hours earlier. During the day, I’d watched Jake’s eyes darken as the sun faded into the horizon, and I knew he was preparing himself for what he needed to do.
I had no intentions of stopping him.
I sat on the seawall, my legs dangling over the edge, staring into the darkness. The sun had set hours ago. A blanket of stars lit up the sky. Jake sat next to me with his arm around my waist, holding me close. I could live in the strength of his arms.
“She’s okay,” he whispered. I had a feeling he was reassuring himself as much as he was me.
“We’re all going to be okay,” I said. For the first time in my entire life, I believed it. “I need to move, though. I got a letter in the mail from the property management company. It said something about the investor deciding to use the house for himself personally. I have thirty days. I didn’t even know they could do that. I guess I should have read the lease more carefully. You want to take him out?”
“It depends,” he said, smiling down at me.
“Oh, I thought this was a ‘no questions asked’ kind-of request, but I’ll bite. What does it depend on?”
“On whether or not you want me to kill myself.” He handed me a white envelope with a cashier’s check inside for nine-thousand six-hundred dollars. “It’s all the rent money you’ve paid.”
It all clicked. “You’re the investor. You bought Nan’s house.” It wasn’t a question. “When did you do this?”