Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)

I didn’t get Leah’s pretzel. I got back in my car, drove to the beach and sat on the sand looking out at the water. Leah called me five times, but I sent the calls to voicemail. Saturday was two days away. She was probably a mess. She always was when there was a big life change on the horizon. I rubbed my chest. It felt so heavy.

I watched the couples for a long time, walking hand in hand along the water. It was too late to swim, but some kids were playing in the surf, kicking water at each other. In a few weeks, I’d have one of my own. The thought was frightening and exciting — the way you felt before getting on a roller coaster. Except this roller coaster ride would last eighteen years, and I wasn’t sure if my riding partner really wanted to be a mother. Leah tended to like the idea of things more than the actual things.

Once, when we were first married, she’d come home from work cradling a Collie puppy in her arms. “I saw him in a pet shop window and I couldn’t resist,” she’d said. “We can take him on walks together and get him one of those collars with his name on it.”

Despite my skepticism about the duration of the dog’s stay in my house, I’d smiled and helped her pick out a name — Teddy. The following day I’d come home from work to find the house filled with dog supplies — squeaking hamburgers, stuffed toys and tiny, florescent tennis balls. Aren’t dogs colorblind? I remember thinking, picking one up and examining it. Teddy had a fluffy bed, a rhinestone studded collar and a retractable leash. He even had food and water bowls with his name on them. I studied this all with a sense of dread and watched Leah measure out half cups of food into his dog bowl. For two days she bought things for our new puppy, yet I never once remember seeing her so much as touch him. By day four, Teddy was gone. Given to a neighbor along with his florescent balls.

“Too much mess,” Leah said. “I couldn’t housetrain him.”

I didn’t bother to tell her that it took longer than three days to housebreak a puppy. And so Teddy was gone before we could ever go on a walk with him. Please God, don’t let a baby be another puppy to Leah.

I stood up, dusting the sand off my jeans. I had to get home — to my wife. That was the life I chose, or what was chosen for me. I didn’t even know anymore where my choices started and ended.



Saturday. I told Leah that I had errands to run. I set out early, stopping at the liquor store for a bottle of scotch I knew I’d need later. Tossing it in the trunk, I drove the twenty minutes to my mother’s house. My parents lived in Ft. Lauderdale. They bought their house from a pro golfer in the nineties, something which my mother still bragged about to her friends. When Robert Norrocks owned this house…

She opened the door before I could knock.

“What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”

I pulled a face, shook my head. She made a show of looking relieved. I wondered who taught her to make a performance of every emotion she felt. Both my grandparents had been pretty stoic people. As I walked past her into the foyer, her hand fluttered to her neck where her fingers absently found the locket she wore. It was a nervous habit I’d always found endearing. Not today.

I walked into the living room and sat down, waiting for her to follow.

“What is it, Caleb? You’re scaring me.”

“I need to talk to you about something,” I tried again. “I need to talk to my mother about something. Can you do that without being…”

“Bitchy?” she offered.

I nodded.

“Should I be afraid?”

I stood up and walked to the window, looking out at her precious roses. She had every shade of pink and red. It was a mess of thorns and color. I didn’t like roses. They reminded me of the women in my life; beautiful and bright, but if you touched them they made you bleed.

“Olivia is getting married today. I need you to talk me out of going to the church and stopping her.”

The only indication that she’d heard me was the slight expansion of white around her irises.

She opened her mouth and then abruptly closed it.

“I’ll take that as your blessing.” I strode toward the door. My mother jumped up and blocked me. She was pretty stealthy in heels.

“Caleb, honey … nothing good can come out of that. You and Olivia are-”

“Don’t say it.”

“Over,” she finished. “That was my non-bitchy version.”

I grimaced. “It’s not over for me.”

“It’s obviously over for her. She’s getting married.”

She reached up and cupped my face in her hands. “I’m so sorry you’re hurting.”

I didn’t say anything. She sighed and pulled me down on the couch to sit next to her. “I’m going to put aside my extreme dislike for that girl and tell you something that you might find useful.”

I listened. If she was putting aside her dislike, I potentially had mind-blowing advice coming my way.

“Three things,” she said, patting my hand. “It’s okay that you love her. Don’t stop. If you turn your feelings off for her, you might turn everything off. That’s not good. Second, don’t wait for her. You have to live your life — you have a baby on the way.” She smiled at me sadly as I waited for the grand finale. “And finally … wait for her.”

She laughed at the confused expression on my face. “Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. Love is mean, but it’s good. It keeps us alive. If you need her, then wait. But, right now she’s getting married. It’s her day and you can’t ruin it.”

Love is mean.

I loved my mom — especially when she wasn’t being a bitch.



I jogged down the stairs to my car. She watched me from the doorway, tugging on her locket. Maybe she was right. I wanted Olivia to be happy. To have the things that were taken from her as a child. I couldn’t give her those things because I was giving them to someone else.

I drove aimlessly for a while before eventually pulling into a random strip mall. Florida was a maze of peach-colored strip malls. Each one bragged a fast food chain front and center like the mast on a ship. Flanking the token McDonalds or Burger King was always a nail place. I pulled into a spot in front of Nail Happy. The shop was empty except for the workers. When I got out instead of a woman, they looked disappointed. I pulled out my phone, leaning against the door. It was cool outside — not cool enough for a jacket — but Florida cool. My thumbs lingered over the keyboard.



I love you

Delete

If you leave him, I’ll leave her

Delete

Can we talk?

Delete

Peter Pan

Delete



I pocketed my phone. Punched a tree. Drove home with bloody knuckles. Love was f*cking mean.





The day after I barged into Leah’s, she got a restraining order. If I go anywhere near my daughter, I’ll get arrested. I was almost arrested that night. The cops had me handcuffed when my brother showed up. He spoke quietly to Leah for a few minutes before coming over and taking off my cuffs.

“She’s not going to press charges, little brother, but she’s going to have us file a report, and tomorrow she’s going to get a restraining order.”

“Was that your idea?”

He smirked at me. We didn’t exchange any more words. I just got in my car and drove away. Leah filed a report. She claims that I kicked down the door, threatened her life and woke Estella up in the middle of the night —drunk. She is also back to claiming that I am not Estella’s father. I wonder if she lied to Olivia to torment me. I don’t know what goes on in that woman’s head. Or what went on in my head for so many years. Either way, Leah’s woken the beast. Olivia directs me to an attorney that deals primarily with twisted family issues like mine. She says she’s the best in the business. Her name is Moira Lynda. Ariom — I like that one. After listening to me speak for ten minutes, Moira holds up her hand to stop me. She has a tattoo on her hand, on the skin between her thumb and pointer finger. It looks like a four-leaf clover.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says. “The woman finds out that you want a divorce and tells you that the child you’ve been raising for six months isn’t yours — and you believe her? Just like that?”

“I didn’t have any reason not to. She didn’t want a divorce. At that point, it would have only benefited her to let me believe Estella was mine.”

“Oh, Caleb.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “Didn’t you see what was happening? You came out and dropped a couple bombs on her, and at some point in that conversation she decided that she didn’t want you, she wanted revenge. And that’s exactly what’s happening.”

I stare out her window at the traffic below and know it’s true. But, why hadn’t I had the sight to see it? If someone other than myself were telling me this story, I’d laugh at their stupidity. Why do humans have such a hard time seeing their own shit clearly?

“She has you by the balls here, Caleb. There is no proof of what happened that night. But, there is proof that for the last three years of that child’s life you haven’t seen her, paid child support or fought for custody. Leah has you at abandonment. And now that she knows that, she’s come back to let you know that Estella is yours, and she has the power.”

God.

“What do I do?”

“You get a court-ordered paternity test. That’s going to take some time. Then we ask for visitation. It’ll be supervised at first, but as long as you comply with the rules and show up to see Estella, we can push for joint custody.”

“I want full.”

“Yeah well, I want to be a swimsuit model. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m chubby and ate a cheeseburger for dinner last night.”

“Okay,” I say. “Do what you need to do. I’m in it. Whatever it is. Is there a way for me to see Estella?”

It’s such a stupid question, but I had to ask. There is no way Leah is going to let me anywhere near my daughter. I have no proof, but I’m already thinking of her as my daughter again. Have I ever stopped?

Moira laughs at me.

“No way. Just sit tight and let me do my thing. We’ll have you back in her life soon enough, but it’s going to be a bit of a fight to get there.”

I nod.





I leave her office and go right to Olivia’s. She’s in shorts and a tank top when I get there, mopping the floors and looking annoyed. I lean against the wall and tell her what Moira said while she works. She’s cleaning with gusto, and when that happens I know she’s trying to distract herself. There is also a bowl of Doritos on the table, and she keeps walking over to it and pushing chips into her mouth. Something’s up, but I know even if I ask, she won’t tell me.



“Do whatever she says,” is all Olivia tells me. There are a few minutes where we don’t speak. Her crunching dominates the room.

“She didn’t seem sorry,” Olivia says, finally. “It was the strangest thing. She just showed up at my office to tell me all of that. She knew I’d tell you. Seems sinister.”

“She’s up to something,” I agree.

“Maybe she’s out of money and she figures she needs to hit you up for child support.”

I shake my head. “Her father built an empire. That company was a small portion of what he was dipping his interest into. Leah doesn’t need money.”

“Then she’s out for revenge, Moira is right. What are you going to do?”

I shrug. “Fight for Estella. Even if she wasn’t mine I’d want to fight for her.”

She stops mopping. A piece of her hair has slipped from the messy pile on her head. She tugs on it then slides it behind her ear.

“Don’t make me love you more,” she says. “My clock is ticking and you’re talking baby.”

I grind my teeth to keep from smiling.

“Let’s make one,” I say, taking a step toward her.

The whites of her eyes explode around her pupils. She hides behind her mop.

“Don’t,” she warns me. She reaches for the bowl of Doritos without taking her eyes from me, and finds it empty.

“Do you think we’d have a boy or a girl?”

“Caleb…”

I take another two steps before she dips her mop in the bucket, and whacks me in the stomach with it.

I stare down at my dripping clothes with my mouth open. She knows what’s coming next because she drops the mop and runs for the living room. I watch her grab onto furniture as she slips and slides across the wet floor. I go after her, but she’s such a cleaning addict she can practically ice skate over wet marble. Amazing. I fall flat on my ass.

I stay there, and she comes out of the kitchen carrying two glass bottles of Coke.

“Peace offering.” She extends one toward me.

I grab the bottle and her arm and pull her down on the floor next to me.

She slides around until we are sitting back to back, leaning on each other, our legs extended outward. Then we talk about nothing. And it feels so damn good.





My daughter was born on March third at 3:33 P.M. She had a shock of red hair that stuck straight up, like those toy trolls from the 90s. I ran my fingers over it, smiling like a goddamn fool. She was beautiful. Leah had convinced me we were having a boy. She’d stroked my face and looked at me like I was her god and practically purred, “Your father produced two sons, and your grandfather had three sons. The men in your family make boys.”

I secretly wanted a daughter. She openly wanted a son. There was a Freudian element to our gender preferences, which I didn’t express to my wife as she bought and decorated the nursery in greens and yellows “just to play it safe.” Though she wasn’t playing it safe when I noticed a teether in the shape of a dump truck appear in the mounds of baby things, or the tiny baseball-inspired onesie. Since I played basketball in college, the baseball selection could only have been a salute to her father, who never missed a Yankees game on TV. Her lying, playing it safe ass was cheating. So, I cheated too. I bought baby girl things and secretly hid them in my closet.

On the day she went into labor, we were planning on going for a walk on the beach. She wasn’t due for another few weeks, and I had read that most first-time pregnancies went past the due date. Leah was climbing into her side of the car when she made a noise in the back of her throat. Her hands were tan; I watched them clutch her stomach, the white fabric of her dress bunching between her clawed fingers.

“I thought they were just Braxton Hicks, but they’re getting closer together. We might want to go to the hospital and save the beach for another day,” she panted, closing her eyes.

She leaned across the center console, started the car and positioned all three air conditioning vents at her face. I’d watched her for a minute; unable to comprehend that this was actually happening. Then I ran inside and grabbed her hospital bag from the bedroom.

I was shocked when the doctor loudly announced “Girl” before tossing her onto her mother’s chest. Not shocked enough to keep the stupid grin off my face. I named her Estella from Great Expectations. That night when I went home to take a shower, I pulled a box from the top of my closet. It had shown up in the mail a month earlier, with neither a note nor a return address attached. I was baffled, until I opened it.

I sliced the tape open with scissors and pulled a lavender blanket out of the box. It was so soft; it felt like cotton between my fingertips.

“Olivia?” I said softly. But, why would she send me a baby gift? I shoved it back in the box before I could overthink things.

I stared at it with a smirk on my face. Had she known Leah desperately wanted a boy and sent a girl gift to spite her? Or had she remembered how much I wanted a daughter? You could never really get a firm grip on Olivia’s motives. Unless you asked. But, then she’d just lie.

I carried the blanket with me to the hospital. When Leah saw me with it, she rolled her eyes. She would have done more than roll her eyes if she’d known where it came from. I wrapped my daughter in Olivia’s blanket and felt euphoric. I am a father. To a little girl. Leah seemed less excited. I chalked it up to the disappointment of the missing boy child. Or maybe she had the baby blues. Or maybe she was jealous. If I’d said the thought that my wife would be jealous of a daughter hadn’t crossed my mind, I’d be lying.

I held Estella a little tighter. I’d already wondered how I would protect her from the ugly things in the world. I never thought I’d be wondering how to protect her from her own mother. But, that’s the way of things, I thought sadly. Leah’s parents were emotional black holes for most of her childhood. She’d get better. I’d help her. Love fixed people.

She was in better spirits when we drove home from the hospital. She laughed and flirted with me. But, when we got to the house and I handed her the baby for a feeding, her back stiffened like she’d been punched between the shoulder blades. My heart dropped so deeply in that moment, I had to turn away to hide my expression. This was not what I had hoped for. This was not what Olivia would have done. For all of her decorated hardness, she was kind and nurturing. With Leah, I always thought there was good in her … somewhere beyond what her parents had done to bring out the bad. Maybe I thought she was capable of more than she really was? But as it was said, if you had faith like a mustard seed, one could move mountains … or soften hardness … or love someone into healing. God. What had I done?