Page 150 of Go Find Less
“I’m sorry.” I shake my head, stepping forward. “You chosenowto support your son?” Fitz’s hand on my back presses a bit, and Oscar opens his mouth to say something, never one to back down, but it’s Melissa that cuts in.
“We were supporting him long before you came around.”
“And we were there long after you abandoned him,” Alex hisses. God, this is why this woman is my best friend.
“Abandoned him?” Liz’s voice is sharp, and she wraps an arm around her son’s shoulder, which nearly hits her waist now. Fuck, that shouldn’t hurt, but it does. All the years I’ve missed with these kids, who should have been, could have been, hearing the best stories from his best friends, instead of the pick and choose truth from these people in front of us. “That’s rich, coming from the woman who couldn’t be bothered to show up at his gravesite.”
In front of me, Kayla steps back until she’s flush against her mom’s legs. She may be young, but she’s old enough to know what’s going on here.
“But I see,” Melissa starts, eying the hand Fitz has on my back, “that it hasn’t taken you long to move on.”
“No, it didn’t,” comes Bethani’s voice, and in a flash, I see Alex lunge next to me, Nolan wrapping an arm around her waist to hold her from ripping out one of Bethani’s bad hair extensions, an Alex Calloway signature move.
And everyone is screaming, curses are flying, Tyler and Brett are in each other’s faces in a heartbeat, Nolan is physically restraining his wife from lunging at Bethani, at Kelsie, at anyone daring to say anything, and I look back at Fitz, who’s just taking it all in with raised eyebrows.
“I can’t believe Nolan married trailer trash like you,” Melissa snaps at Alex, who cackles.
“Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black, or should I say,racist?” I nearly cringe, but she’s not wrong - small towns aren’t exactly known for their diversity, and Paulsville, Kansas is no different.
“You left him,” Penny’s saying to Liz, squared up, though Penny is at least half a foot taller. “You all left him because you couldn’t get through your thick heads that-"
“Enough.” Alex looks my way, even Nolan, but the screaming is still happening. I take another breath, and then dial it up to Delmonico level. “Enough.”
Everything goes still, and beyond our group, several conversations cease as people look at us. I swallow, taking another step forward, away from Fitz’s hand, his embrace. From the corner of my eye, I see him move back, next to Carla.
“We are not doing this here.” My chest is rising and falling much faster than I want it to, giving away my stress level. My watch buzzes on my chest, I’m sure to tell me my heart rate is high again. “We are not doing this in front of them.” I glance pointedly at Kayla, at Michael and Mickey, my nephews, god, my nephews that I baked cookies with every Christmas, that I spent years letting into my heart. My nephews who I didn’t get to see grow up, because these people were too damn selfish to see past their own delusion.
Kayla looks up at me, and hell, I see it. I see the way her gaze is the same as Mickey’s, the way her smile tips up at one side like his does. Did. Like hisdid. I’ve seen it for years, known it for years, that there was always a possibility that she was actually Mickey’s. That this family had railroaded Kelsie back in the day, the same way they later railroaded me, throwing the truth out with the bath water.
Silently, I squat down in front of her. She looks up at her mother, and then back at me, eyes wide. “Kayla, right?” She nods, her fingers gathering in the skirt she’s wearing under the same ugly neon shirt as the rest of us, about three sizes too big for her. “I’m Piper.”
“Piper?” she repeats. I nod back. “You were…” Her eyes find Melissa’s. “You kept Daddy away from us.”
Again, the wind is knocked out of me, like a punch straight to the chest. I’m pretty sure I hear a sob from behind me, unsure whether it’s from Alex, from Penny, from my mother, hell, from Nolan, at this point, because the only time I’ve ever seen that man cry was at his best friend’s bedside the day he died, and at his funeral watching shit hit the fan. Everything was - is - out of his control.
I give Kayla the best smile I can muster. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Your daddy and I…” I swallow. “I love your Daddy very much, and I want you to know that.” I tilt my head toward Nolan. “I bet if you ask your grandma, she can show you some pictures of Nolan and your daddy when they were your age.” I try to smile conspiratorially. “He and my friend Alex just had a baby, do you want to know her name?” Kayla nods. “Her name is Mikayla, but we call her Mickie.”
Her eyes widen as she looks up at her mother, and I can’t tell whether Kelsie is furious, or sad, or uncomfortable. Or all of the above. Because as much as my gut told me then that this woman was trying to make a quick buck off a dying man, there’s always been a lingering feeling that she may have been telling the truth from day one, and things got so messed up that I couldn’t wade through the muck fast enough to tell heads from tails.
Leaning forward, I pull the hat off my head, smoothing out my ponytail as best I can. I hold it out to Kayla. “This is one of your daddy’s favorite hats,” I start, pointing to the Jayhawks on the worn blue fabric. “I held onto it, but I think it’ll look better on you. What do you think?” Kayla and I both look up at Kelsie, asking the same permission, and she nods down at her daughter. I see the tight swallow she makes as I look back down at the child in front of me where she’s sliding the hat over her head. It’s one of the last items of Mickey’s I kept, and now, just like that, it’s her’s.
She could be his. She could be his, could be the child of my husband, and I never even got a chance to know her. Will probably never get the chance to know her. And none of that was my choice, my doing. Those choices were taken from me by the lies Mickey and his family spun at every turn until the only truth I knew was that I loved him, and I clung to that, clung to it like the last shred of my dignity, and they’d taken that too.
“It looks great on you.” I tap the bill, and she giggles, and God, the way my heart hurts for this little girl, who doesn’t know what’s going on, just knows that I’m the mean lady that kept her from her Daddy.
I pop up from my squat, nearly losing my balance, and before I can fall Fitz is back at my side, taking my hand and steadying me. I see Liz staring at the places we’re making contact, see Melissa’s look of disgust - genuine disgust, not the playful, loving kind that Alex and Frannie hurl at us - and the last thread inside me snaps.
And I’m about to let her have it, let them all have it, when Fitz squeezes my hand, and looks back down at Kayla, who I realize is watching us with a huge smile on her face. She doesn’t know. She has no clue that I was married to her father - or, father figure - because his family never acknowledged it, much less celebrated it. She’s just seeing a man being chivalrous, being loving, and she’s happy about it. Hell, I’m happy about it too, despite the underlying pain radiating through my body at the way I’m restraining myself, holding back all the things I really want to say.
I take another calming breath, and let my face slide into the cool, collected smile I haven’t used in weeks, not since I was at AllHearts, pretending everything was fine. It’s the same smile I wore at Mickey’s funeral, at his burial. It feels like a mask, like a frosted window sliding shut over me so you can see the outline of who I am, but no clear details.
They don’t deserve the details. Don’t deserve to know any more about me, about my life. They ruined enough of it already.
I step away from Fitz again, and let the emptiness, lacking his touch, fuel my words.
“I am going to say this once, and I’m going to say it as kindly as possible because I have more respect for these children than I do for you all.” I raise my brows, gesturing to the group of adult-sized toddlers all glaring at me. “You were my family. All of you.” I give Kenny and Bethani a pointed look, and see Ken shrink back. “But the second Mickey decided to do something you didn’t like, I became the problem. Not your son, not the way he -“ I catch myself, trying to watch my language. “Not the way he messed up. I was the problem.”
Melissa opens her mouth to speak, and at the same time I hold my hand up, Nolan says “Let her say her peace,” and Alex seethes “Shut. Up.”