60.
Riley
The door shut behind Danny with a whisper, and Lisa looked at me. Her eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, her face nearly white. She wrapped a hand around the safety rail, the way Danny had wrapped his a short time earlier.
“What does he mean?” she asked. “It won’t be because of him?”
“He whispered that he won’t tell Harry. The cop.”
I saw the tension dissolve from Lisa’s body and she lowered her head to her hands. For a moment she didn’t speak. When she lifted her head again, she wore a sad smile. “I feel like I’ve been given a last-minute reprieve,” she said.
“You have.”
“I feel terrible for him,” she said. “He’s so hurt.”
“I know.” I nodded. “His life’s been hard.” I gingerly touched the spiky stiff hair on the top of my head again. I’d need to ask for more painkillers soon, but the last thing I wanted right now was to dull my thinking. “Is Celia with you?” I asked.
“She’s giving us some time alone,” she said. “I’m sorry she went to see you last night. I never wanted that.”
“I’m glad she did,” I said. “I needed to know the truth. Even though I’m not sure how I’m ever going to live with knowing he was my father … and everything that happened.”
“Oh, Riley, I know!” She reached for my hand. She smoothed her fingers over my skin, and her touch felt like no other I’d ever known. I felt the love in it. “I was never an angry sort of person,” she said, “but when I walked into our living room and saw you on Steven’s lap, I lost it. I absolutely lost it.” She squeezed my hand. “I still feel sick when I think about it. Everything about that day … everything that happened afterward … it’s my nightmare.”
I didn’t want to hear any more about that day. I didn’t think I’d ever want to know more details—the details my nearly two-year-old self had managed to block out. They could stay that way forever, as far as I was concerned.
“I’m sorry for getting so upset with you last night,” I said. “Talking to Celia really helped. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t come over.”
“I’ll thank her for that,” she said, “if I ever get over being mad at her about it.”
“Don’t be,” I said.
Lisa looked toward the window, a small, mystified smile on her face. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said, turning her head toward me again. “I’m actually sitting here with my baby girl.”
“I can’t believe it, either,” I said. “I wondered how different our lives would have been if you hadn’t left. If we’d actually grown up in the same family, we probably would have moved in such different circles because of our ages. We never would have really gotten to know each other.”
“Oh, I would have known you,” she said. “I would have had my eye on you every waking minute.”
A wave of pain ran through my head and it must have shown on my face. She tightened her hand on mine. “Want me to get the nurse?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “I don’t want the interruption.”
She nodded.
“I talked to a friend of yours,” I said. “Grady.”
She sat back in the chair, mouth open. “What? How could you have known about—”
“It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to talk about Sondra Davis’s blog at that moment. “I’ll save it for another time. But he said to say hi if I ever found you.”
She shook her head, a look of wonder on her face. “Flash from the past,” she said.
“It must have been terrifying, leaving home like that without knowing a soul in San Diego. Starting your whole life over, knowing you’d never be able to see your family again.”
Her eyes filled and I knew that I’d tapped a bottomless well of sorrow in her. She let go of my hand to press both of hers to her face. I touched her knee through her jeans, sorry I’d upset her. This is my mother, I thought. I couldn’t believe she was right here. That I was actually touching her.
When she lowered her hands, her cheeks were red. “It was so hard,” she said, “but I thought it was my only choice. I knew they’d tear apart every word I said in a trial. I was afraid I’d end up in prison forever.”
“Daddy didn’t know the truth?” I asked. “That Steven Davis was my…” I let the sentence trail away.
“God, no,” she said. “I didn’t want him to ever look at you differently. He thought it was Matty, like everyone else, even though I swore up and down it wasn’t. And Matty never had a clue what was going on. He was my best friend, but even he didn’t know I’d had a baby.”
I was relieved now that I hadn’t been able to reach Matthew Harrison. I would have involved another person in the deception. He might have been the one to knock over the house of cards Lisa had so carefully constructed.
She gripped my hand again, more firmly this time. “Please, Riley,” she said. “Don’t think about it. Don’t dwell on it. Your father was a nameless, faceless boy I met in Italy. It’s better that way.”
I nodded slowly. For now, at least, she was right. “I want to be in your life, Jade,” I said, determined to use her chosen name.
She wore the first full, genuine smile I’d seen on her. “It makes me unbelievably happy to hear you say that,” she said.
“Is it possible, though?” I asked. “Is there some way we can make it work?”
She looked thoughtful. “I think it’s up to you,” she said, after a minute. Then she tilted her head. “Are you willing to live a lie?”
I thought about the question, knowing it was an invitation to step into her world and leave mine behind. It was a world of deceit, but it had my mother in it, and that was all that mattered.
I nodded. “Whatever it takes,” I said. And I meant it.