Finally, she manages to continue. “I don’t see why you need to take Alex from her that way,” she whispers in a hoarse voice. “All her memories of him as her father.” Her tears fall freely, and she wraps her arms around herself protectively.
“He’d always be her uncle,” I say, voicing Rebecca’s very words to me from a few weeks ago. “They’d always have that bond. And he would always be her adoptive father. That was legal and nothing’s gonna change the way that was.”
“I don’t want her to lose him,” she tells me, a resolute strength falling over her like a mantle.
“I can’t believe you’re arguing to keep this secret,” I say, my voice sharp.
“She should know you’re her mother,” I insist. “She needs to know that, Laurel. Not so you can…change the shape of our family—”
“I wouldn’t want to.”
“But so she can understand how it all fits together. Her place in this family. That’s the only way she can ever be completely okay. The only way we all can, I think,” I say. “She can’t keep this up, going around calling me Michael, feeling like an orphan. She’s got both of us. She should know the truth.”
“I don’t want to be her mother,” she says, staring over at the lighthouse. “I can’t be her mother, Michael. In a strange way, I don’t think I really am her mother. She had you and she had Alex…that didn’t leave a place for me.”
“But there’s a place now,” I suggest gently, touching her face. “A big place is left in her life.”
“For Rebecca,” she whispers, the tears fresh in her eyes. “You’re making a life with Rebecca.”
“That’s part of why I’m here,” I answer softly.
“You plan to marry her.”
“I hope so.” I hesitate, laughing ruefully since before we can marry, we’d have to actually be a couple again. “But well, we’ve got some problems.”
“Because of me?” Laurel asks.
“Nah, Laurel,” I say. “Because of your brother.”
She smiles—a gentle, sympathetic smile. “Rebecca is special,” she says. “Very special.”
“She’s definitely that. It takes a special person to walk into a mess like the one we’ve all managed to make, to enter it and embrace us with an open heart.”
“You’ll marry her,” she predicts, her expression serious. Something about her words feel prophetic—beyond this moment even.
I give a silent nod of agreement.
“And if you marry her, Michael, there’s no real place for me,” she continues matter-of-factly. “Not as Andrea’s mother. Not if we really want Andrea to be happy and adjusted and to have the family she deserves.”
“That shouldn’t be how we reach this decision, Laurel.”
“I decided it a while ago, Michael. I know that with all the confusion she’s had, all that she’s lost, she doesn’t need me to be her mother. I need to be Aunt Laurel,” she explains. “I need to be a constant. A given. Someone she can rely on.”
“Oh, Laurel. You’re already that.” Without hesitating, I draw her close into my embrace. And we hold each other, there on the rocky point, feeling the spray of salty ocean, hearing the cries of gulls and surfers and wind.
Pulling away from me, she makes an agitated gesture, twisting a lock of her hair in her fist. “When?” she asks, swallowing. “When do you plan to tell her?”
“Soon. Not yet, but soon,” I explain. “I want to talk to her counselor first. But I need to know you’re okay with it.”
Wiping at her eyes, she gives me a bittersweet smile. “I’m afraid,” she admits. “So afraid, Michael. But somehow…my heart tells me it’s safe.”
I give her hand a quick squeeze. “It’s never safe to love.”
The most vulnerable feeling in the world is to be a parent. She knows it and so do I. The only comparable emotion is giving your heart away, like I’ve done with Rebecca, and like I once did with Alex. Love is all about the risk, and very rarely about the guarantees.
I stare out at the waves, hearing the familiar shouts of the surfers from down below us, charging their boards across sunset-dappled ocean beneath the fading sky.
“It’s never safe to love, Laurel,” I say, “but I’ve come to think it’s always worth it.” And I can almost feel Alex right beside us.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Rebecca
I’m late for a three p.m. production meeting, hurrying between bungalows when I hear a familiar voice. “That Armani suit still looks killer on you.” I turn to find Michael Warner behind the wheel of a golf cart, grinning up at me.
I keep walking. “Hi, Michael.”
He slows the cart to match my pace. “Of course, you know how much I like you in black,” he continues, his voice upbeat, flirtatious. He’s pretending nothing’s changed between us—that I haven’t spent the past weeks since we broke up in Malibu avoiding all of his phone calls.
I counter with my Cool Girl attitude, giving my hair a sassy toss over my shoulder. “What’s going on, Michael?”
He rakes a hand over his short, spiky hair—shorter than when we were together. “Other than me checking out that suit?”