Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)

I was in bed an hour later, turned toward the ocean, even though it was too dark to see it. I could hear the waves rushing against the surf. The ocean was choppy tonight. Fitting. Noah was watching television in the living room; I could hear CNN through the walls. CNN was a lullaby to me at this point. He never came to bed when I did, and every night I fell asleep listening to the drone of the news. Tonight, I was grateful to be alone. If Noah looked too carefully — which he often did — he would see through my hollow smiles and pretend illness. He’d ask me what was wrong and I wouldn’t lie to him. I didn’t do that anymore. I was betraying him with my rogue emotions. I had the penny clutched in my fist, it was burning a hole through me, but I couldn’t put it down. First Leah had come to me, throwing those deed papers in my face. Papers that, until that moment, I knew nothing about. Now, him. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? Ten years was a long time to grieve a relationship. I’d paid for my stupid decisions with a decade. When I met Noah, I finally felt ready to put my broken love to rest. But, you couldn’t put something to rest when it kept coming back to haunt you.

I stood up and walked to the sliding glass doors that led to my balcony. Stepping out, I walked lightly to the edge of the railing.

I could do this. I kind of had to. Right? Exercise the ghosts. Take a stand. This was my life, damn it! The penny wasn’t my life. It had to go. I lifted my fisted hand and felt the wind wrap around it. All I had to do was open my fist. That was it. So easy and so hard. I wasn’t the type of girl to back away from a challenge. I closed my eyes and opened my fist.

For a second my heart seized. I heard my voice, but the wind quickly took it away. There. It was gone.

I stepped back and away from the railing, suddenly cold. Backwards I walked to my bedroom, one step, two steps … then I lurched forward, throwing myself against the railing to peer over into the space between me and the ground.

Oh my god. Had I really done that?

I had, and my heart was aching for a goddamn penny. You’re an idiot, I told myself. Until tonight you didn’t even know he still had the penny. But, that wasn’t really true. I’d seen inside his Trojan horse when I’d broken into his house. He’d kept it all those years. But, he had a baby, and babies had a way of making people throw out the past and start new. I walked back to my bedroom and shut the door. I walked back into my bedroom and shut the door, and climbed into bed, and climbed into my life, and cried, cried, cried. Like a baby.



The next morning I took my coffee out there. I was dragging, and I told myself the fresh air would be good. What I really wanted was to stand at the site of where I murdered my penny. God, would I ever stop being so melodramatic? I was halfway to the balcony with my coffee clutched in my hands, when my foot passed over something cold. I backed up a step, looked down, and saw my penny.

Gah!

The wind. It must have blown it back toward me when I threw it. I didn’t pick it up until I was through drinking my coffee. I just sort of stood there and stared at it. When I finally crouched down to retrieve it, I knew. You couldn’t get rid of the past. You couldn’t ignore it, or bury it, or throw it over the balcony. You just had to learn to live beside it. It had to peacefully co-exist with your present. If I could figure out how to do that, I could be okay. I took the penny inside and pulled my copy of Great Expectations off the bookshelf. I taped the penny to the title page and slid the book back in. There. Right where it belonged.





I kiss her as I slide my hand up her skirt. She pants into my mouth and her legs tense as she waits for my fingers to push past her panties. I let my hand linger at the place where the material meets her skin. I enjoy the chase. I don’t have sex with easy women. She says my name, and I tug at the material. I’m going to have sex with her. She’s beautiful. She’s funny. She’s intelligent.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do this.”

I pull away from her and drop my head in my hands. God.

“What is it?” She scoots closer to me on the couch and puts an arm around my shoulders. She’s nice. That makes it worse.

“I’m in love with someone,” I say. “She’s not mine, but this still feels like I’m cheating on her.”

She starts to giggle. My head jerks up to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, covering her mouth. “That’s pathetic and a bit romantic, yeah?”

I smile.

“She in America, this girl?”

“Can we not talk about her?”

She rubs my back and pulls her dress down.

“It’s okay. You’re not really my type. I’ve just always wanted to bang an American. Like in the movies.”

She gets up and wanders over to my fridge. “This is a nice flat. You should buy some furniture.” She takes out two beers and carries one over to me. I look around the room guiltily. I’ve been here for two months and the only thing in the room is a couch the last owner left behind and a bed I purchased the day I got here. I need to make some purchases.

”We can be friends,” she says, sitting down next to me. “Now, tell me her name so I can Facebook stalk the girl who cockblocked me.”

I run a hand across my face. “She doesn’t have a Facebook. I don’t want to say her name.”

“Caleb…” she whines.

“Sara.”

“All right,” she says, standing up. “I’ll see you at the gym then. Call me if you want to get drinks. No sex attached.”

I nod and walk her to the door. She’s a nice girl. Even nicer to take that whole situation with such good humor.

When she’s gone, I pull out my computer. I order a kitchen table, a bed, and a living room set. Then I go through my emails. Almost everything in my inbox is work related. My mother emails me daily, but I’ve yet to respond to any of them. When I see my father’s name, I start. My mother must have told him I was back in London. I click on his name.



Caleb,

Heard you were back in town. Let’s get together for dinner. Call me.



That’s all he wrote to the son he hasn’t seen in five years. Eh. Why not? I pull out my phone and text the number in the email. Might as well get the reunion over with. Maybe he’d surprise me and be less of an a*shole than the last time I had dinner with him and he spent the entire two hours texting on his Blackberry.



He texts back almost immediately and says he’ll meet me at a local pub tomorrow night. I wander over to my bed and fall into it, still dressed.



My father hasn’t changed much in the five years since I’ve seen him. He’s greyer … maybe. And what gray he’s chosen to keep is probably as planned out as his tan — which I know has to be spray because he turns bright red in God’s sun.

“You look like me!” he says, before embracing me in a man hug.

I pat his back and sit down, grinning. God, I hate this bastard, but it’s good to see him.

He acts like we’ve been together every day for the last five years. It’s all an act. My father is a salesman. He could make a terrorist feel at home in an electric chair. I let him do his thing and drink heavily.

Finally, he gets down to why I’m here.

“It’s right up your alley, actually,” I tell him. “A woman I wanted who didn’t want me, and a kid I wanted to be mine and wasn’t.”

He grimaces. “That’s not up my alley, son. I get the women I want.”

I laugh.

“She must have had quite an effect on you to chase you out of your beloved America.”

I don’t answer that.



Suddenly, he sobers up. “I wanted to see my granddaughter. When I thought she was my granddaughter, that is.”

I watch his face for lack of sincerity but find none. He’s not blowing smoke up my ass or saying something to be polite. He’s aging and getting a taste of his mortality. He genuinely wanted to meet Estella.



“I heard your ex-wife is worst than my first ex-wife.” He smirks. “How did you manage that deal?”

“I’m the same type of fool as you, I guess.”

He smirks.

“Come over to the house for dinner. Meet my new wife.”

“Sure,” I say.

“She has a younger sister…”

“Ugh. You’re so sick.” I shake my head and he laughs.

My phone rings. It’s an American number. I look at my father, and he motions for me to take the call. “I’ll be back,” I say, standing up. When I answer, I immediately recognize the voice.

“Moira,” I say.

“Hello, my dear. I have news.”

“Okay…” My mind is spinning. I glance at my watch. It’s around two o’clock stateside.

“Are you sitting down?”

“Out with it, Moira.”

“When your ex-wife took Estella into the clinic to get the blood work done, she used Leah Smith on her paperwork instead of Johanna. There was another Leah Smith in the database-”

I cut her off. “What are you saying?”

“You got someone else’s results, Caleb. Estella is yours. Ninety-nine point nine percent yours.”

“Oh my god.”



It turns out Leah was in the process of getting another test when the clinic found their mistake. She hadn’t wanted me to think Estella wasn’t mine. That would ruin her long-term plan of making me battle her in court for custody, all the while looking like I abandoned my daughter. And I had abandoned her. I hadn’t fought to know the truth. I had been so blinded by my hurt that I never looked at the situation hard enough. I hate myself for that. I’ve missed so many important milestones in her life, and why? Because I’m an idiot.

Since I’m living in another country, Moira tells me I won’t have to be there for all the court dates. I fly back anyway. Leah looks genuinely surprised to see me in court. I fly back three times in three months. I signed a one-year contract with the company in London, or I would have moved back already. When the judge sees me appear at all three hearings, he grants me three weeks a year, and since I am living in England, he will allow Estella to spend the time there as long as she is accompanied by a family member. It’s a small victory. Leah is pissed. Three weeks. Twenty-one days out of three hundred and sixty-five. I try not to focus on that. I get my daughter for three uninterrupted weeks. And the year is almost over. Next year Moira will go for joint. I just have to finish out my contract and I can move back. It’s settled that my mother will fly with Estella to London. When I ask if I can see Estella before I fly back, Leah says she has the stomach flu and it would be too traumatic for her. I’m forced to wait. I fly home and start getting things ready. I buy a twin bed and put it in the spare bedroom. I’ll only get her for a week the first time, but I want her to feel like my flat is her home. So, I buy little girl looking things — a duvet with ponies and flowers, a dollhouse, a fluffy pink chair with its own ottoman. Two days before my mother is scheduled to fly in with her, I fill my fridge with kid food. I can barely sleep. I am so excited.





I spend forty minutes in a toy store trying to decide what to get Estella. In the movies when parents are reunited with their children, they have a pastel-colored stuffed animal in their hands — usually a bunny. Since a cliché is the worst thing a person can be, I browse the aisles until I find a stuffed llama. I hold it in my hands for a few minutes, smiling like a fool. Then I carry it to the register.

My stomach is in knots when I climb onto the tube. I take the Piccadilly line to Heathrow and mistakenly get off at the wrong terminal. I have to double back and by the time I find the correct gate, my mother has texted that the plane has landed. What if she doesn’t remember me? Or if she decides not to like me and cries the entire trip. God. I am an absolute mess. I see my mother first, her blonde hair in a perfect chignon even after the nine-hour flight. When I look down, I see a chubby hand attached to my mother’s slender one. I follow the length of the arm and see messy, red curls bouncing excitedly around a face that looks exactly like Leah’s. I smile so hard my face hurts. I don’t think I’ve smiled since I moved to London. Estella is wearing a pink tutu and a cupcake shirt. When I see that she’s smeared lipstick all over her face, my heart does the most peculiar thing: it beats faster and aches at the same time. I watch my mother stop and point toward me. Estella’s eyes search me out. When she sees me, she pulls free of her grandmother’s hand and … runs. I drop to my knees to catch her. She hits me with force — too much force for such a little person. She’s strong. I squeeze her squishy little body and feel the ducts in my eyes burn as they try to summon tears. I just want to hold her like this for a few minutes, but she pulls back, smacks both hands on either side of my face, and starts talking a mile a minute. I wink at my mother in greeting and direct my gaze back to Estella, who is recounting a detail-by-detail version of her flight while clutching the llama underneath her arm. She has a forceful little voice, slightly raspy like her mother’s.

“And then I ate my butter and Doll said it was gonna make me sick …” Doll is what she calls my mother. My mother thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. I think she’s just relieved to have escaped the normal “Granny” or “Grandma” monikers that would make her feel old.

“You’re a genius,” I say while she’s taking a breath. “What three-year-old speaks like this?”

My mother smiles ruefully. “One who never stops speaking. She gets unfathomable amounts of practice.”

Estella repeats the word “unfathomable” all the way to baggage claim. She gets the giggles when I start chanting it with her, and by the time I pull their luggage from the belt, my mother’s head looks ready to explode.

“You used to do that when you were little,” she says. “Say the same thing over and over until I wanted to scream.”

I kiss my daughter’s forehead. “Who needs a paternity test?” I joke. Which is the absolute wrong thing to say, because my small person starts chanting paternity test all the way through the airport … until we climb into the cab outside and I distract her with a pink bus that’s driving by.

During the cab ride home, Estella wants to know what her bedroom looks like, what color blankets I got for her bed, if I have any toys, if she can have sushi for dinner.

“Sushi?” I repeat. “What about spaghetti or chicken fingers?”

She pulls a face that only Leah could have taught her, and says, “I don’t eat kid food.”

My mother raises her eyebrows. “You’d never need a maternity test,” she says out of the corner of her mouth. I have to stifle my laughter.



After taking them to my flat to drop off their things, we head out to a sushi restaurant where my three-year-old consumes a spicy tuna roll on her own, and then eats two pieces of my lunch. I watch in amazement as she mixes soy and wasabi together and picks up her chopsticks. The waiter brought her a fixed pair, one with the rolled up paper and the rubber band to keep the sticks together, but she politely refused them and then dazzled us with her chubby fingered dexterity. She drinks hot tea out of a porcelain cup, and everyone in the restaurant stops to comment on her hair and ladylike behavior. Leah’s done a good job teaching her manners. She thanks everyone who passes her a compliment with such sincerity; one elderly lady gets teary eyed. She passes out on my shoulder in the cab on the way home. I wanted to take her on the tube, but my mother will have nothing to do with dirty underground trains, so we hail a cab.

“I want to ride the twain, Daddy.” Her face is pressed into my neck and her voice is sleepy.

“Tomorrow,” I tell her. “We’ll send Doll off to visit friends, and we’ll do lots of gross things.”

“All wight,” she sighs, “but Mommy doesn’t like me to do…” and then her voice drops off and she’s asleep. My heart beats and aches and beats and aches.



I spend the next week alone with my daughter. My mother visits friends and relatives, giving us plenty of time to bond and do our own thing. I take her to the zoo and the park and the museum, and upon her request, we eat sushi every day for lunch. I talk her into spaghetti one night for dinner, and she has a meltdown when she drops the noodles on her clothes. She wails, her face turning as red as her hair, until I put her in a bath and feed her the rest of her dinner sitting on the edge of the tub. I don’t know whether to be amused or mortified. When I get her out of the bath, she rubs her eyes, yawns and falls asleep right as I get pajamas on. I’m convinced she’s half angel. The half that isn’t Leah, of course.

We stop by my father’s house one evening. He lives in Cambridge in an impressive farmhouse with stables out back. He carries Estella from stall to stall where he introduces her to the horses. She repeats their names: Sugarcup, Nerphelia, Adonis, Stokey. I watch him charm my daughter and feel grateful that she’s a continent away from him. This is what he does. He gets right down on your level — whoever you are — and shines his attention on you. If you like to travel, he’ll ask where you’ve been, he’ll listen with his eyes narrowed and laugh at all your jokes. If you’re interested in model cars, he will ask your opinion on building them and make plans to have you teach him. He makes you feel like you’re the only person worth having a conversation with, and then he goes a year without having a conversation with you. The disappointment is vast. He will never build that model car with you, he will cancel dinner plans and birthday plans and vacation plans. He will choose work and someone else over you. He will break your charmed, hopeful heart time and time again. But, I’ll let my daughter have today, and I’ll protect her the best I can in the tomorrow. Broken people give broken love. And we are all a little broken. You just have to forgive and sew up the wounds love delivers, and move on.

We go from the stables to the kitchen where he makes a show of making us huge ice cream sundaes, and then squirts whipped cream into Estella’s mouth right from the can. She announces that she can’t wait to tell Mommy about this new treat, and I’m fairly certain my ex-wife will be shooting me nasty emails in the coming weeks. She loves him. Like I did. It’s heartbreaking to watch what kind of dad he could have been had he tried. The last two days of her visit, I feel sick to my stomach. I don’t want her to go. I want to be able to see her every day. In a year she will start pre-K. Then kindergarten and first grade. How will we wing weeklong visits to the UK then? It’ll all work itself out, I tell myself. Even if I have to bribe Leah to move to London.

Estella cries when we part at the airport. She’s clutching the llama to her chest, her tears dripping into its fur, begging me to let her stay in “Wondon.” I grind my teeth together and hate every decision I’ve ever made. God. What am I even letting her go back to? Leah is a vicious, conniving bitch. She left her at a daycare to get drunk when she was a week old for God’s sake. She kept her away from her father just to hurt me. Her love is conditional and so is her kindness, and I don’t want her anger to touch my daughter.

“Mum,” I say. I look into my mother’s eyes, and she gets it. She grabs my hand and squeezes.

“I pick her up from school twice a week, and I have her on weekends. I’ll make sure she’s okay until you have her back with you.”

I nod, unable to say anything else. Estella sobs into my neck, and the pain I feel is too complex to put into words.

“I’m going to pack up and come home,” I say to my mother over my daughter’s shoulder. “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.”

She laughs. “Being a daddy suits you. You have to finish out your contract with them. Until then, I’ll keep bringing her to see you.”

My mother has to pick her up and carry her through security. I want to jump past the barriers and snatch her back.

I’m so f*cking depressed on the tube ride home; I sit with my head in my hands for most of it. I drink myself into a stupor that night and write an email to Olivia that I never send. Then I pass out and dream that Leah takes Estella to Asia and says she’s never coming back.





Since the court appointed all my custody dates with Estella, I get to have her with me every other Christmas — which makes it this Christmas. It’ll be my first Christmas with my daughter. Leah called me seething when our court-appointed mediator gave her the news.

“Christmas is important to me,” she said. “This is wrong. A child should never be away from her mother on Christmas.”

“A child should never be away from her father on Christmas either,” I shot back. “But you made sure that happened for two years.”

“This is your fault for moving away. I shouldn’t have to pay for your asinine decisions.”

She was right to a degree. I didn’t have anything for her, so I told her I had to go and hung up.

Christmas isn’t important to Leah. She doesn’t value family or tradition. She values being able to put our daughter in a Christmas dress and carting her to the numerous Christmas parties she attends. All the wealthy mothers do that. Tis the season to show off your children and drink low-fat, liquored-up eggnog.

I go shopping for her presents the day I find out I’m getting her for Christmas. Sara goes with me for reference. We’ve had drinks a couple times and I land up telling her everything about Olivia, Leah and Estella, so when I ask her to come shopping with me, she jumps at it.

“So, no dolls,” she says, holding up a Barbie. I shake my head.

“Her mother buys her dolls. She has too many.”

“What about art supplies? Nurture the inner artiste.”

I nod. “Perfect, her mother hates her to be dirty.”

We head over to the art aisle. She dumps play dough, paints, an easel and crayons into the cart.

“So, any word about Olivia?”

“Can you not?”

She laughs and grabs a box of chalk. “It’s like a soap opera, mate. I just want to know what happens next.”

I stop at a tie-dye t-shirt kit. “Let’s get this, she’ll like it.”

Sara nods in approval.

“I haven’t reached out to any of our friends. She told me to leave her alone and that’s exactly what I’m doing. As far as I know — she’s knocked up and living f*ckily ever after.”

Sara shakes her head. “Unfinished business is a bitch.”

“Our business is finished,” I say more sharply than I intend. “I live in London. I have a daughter. I am happy. So f*cking deliriously happy.”

We both laugh at the same time.



I talk to my mother the day before she flies out with Steve and Estella. She’s acting odd. When I ask her about it, she stumbles over her words and says she’s stressed about the holidays. I feel guilty. Steve and my mother are foregoing their usual plans to bring Estella to me. I could have gone home, but I’m not ready. She’s everywhere — under every twisted tree, in every car on the road. One day, I tell myself, the sting will subside and I’ll be able to look at a f*cking orange and not think of her.

Or maybe it won’t. Maybe life is about living with the hauntings.



I buy a tree and then scour the city for pink Christmas ornaments. I find a box of tiny ballerina shoes to hang on the tree and pink pigs with curly silver tails. When I grab two armfuls of silver and pink foil, the sales clerk grins at me.

“Someone has a daughter…”

I nod. I like the way that sounds.

She points to a box of pink flamingos and winks. I throw those on the counter too.

I set everything up in the living room so that when she arrives we can decorate together. My mother and Steve are staying at the Ritz Carlton a few blocks away. I figure I’ll let Estella choose what we eat for Christmas dinner, though if she asks for sushi or a rack of lamb, I’m screwed. The following day, I arrive at the airport to collect them an hour early.

I wait, sitting on the edge of one of the baggage claim carousels that aren’t in use. I’m anxious. I wander off to buy an espresso and drink it, looking out at an empty runway. I don’t know why I feel like this, but something ugly is curling in my stomach.

People start walking through the gate, so I get up and wait near the front of the crowd, trying to spot my mother’s hair. Blonde is a hard color to miss on a woman. My brother once told me that he remembers her having red hair when he was little, but she firmly denies it. I pull out my phone to check if there are any missed calls or texts from her and see none. She always texts when she lands. My stomach does the sick lurch. I have a really strange feeling about all of this. What if Leah has done something stupid? There is nothing I’d put past her at this point. I am about to dial my mother’s number, when my phone starts flashing. I see a number I don’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“Caleb Drake?” The voice is a woman’s, breathy and quiet, like she’s trying not to be overheard.

I get chills. I remember the last time I got a call like this.

“My name is Claribel Vasquez. I am a counselor at Boca South Medical Center.” Her voice drops off and I wait for her to continue, my heart beating wildly.

“There’s been an accident,” she says. “Your parents … your daughter. They-”

“Are they alive?”

She pauses. It feels like an hour, ten hours. Why is she taking so long to answer me!

“There was a car accident. A semi-”

“Estella?” I demand.

“She’s in critical condition. Your parents-”

I don’t need her to say anything else. I sit, except there is nothing to sit on. I slide down the wall I am leaning against and hit the ground, my hand covering my face. I can barely hold the phone to my ear I am shaking so much.

“Is her mother there?”

“No, we haven’t been able to contact your ex-wife.”

“Estella,” I say. It’s all I can manage. I’m too afraid to ask.

“She came out of surgery about an hour ago. There was a lot of internal bleeding. The doctors are monitoring her now. It would be best if you came back right away.”

I hang up without saying goodbye and walk straight to the ticket counter. There is a flight in three hours. I have just enough time to go home and get my passport and come right back. I don’t think. I just throw a few things in a bag, catch a cab back to the airport and board my flight. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, I don’t think. You’re in shock, I tell myself. Your parents are dead. And then I remind myself not to think. I need to get home, get to Estella. I’ll mourn them later. Right now, I don’t need to think about anything but Estella.



I take a cab from the airport. I call Claribel directly as soon as the door closes. She tells me Estella’s condition hasn’t changed and says she will be waiting for me in the hospital lobby. When I run through the doors, Claribel is waiting for me. She is childlike in size, and I have to bend my neck down to look at her.

“She’s still critical,” she says right away. “We still haven’t managed to get in touch with Leah. Are there any other numbers we can call?”

I shake my head. “Her mother, maybe. Have you tried her?”

Claribel shakes her head. I hand her my phone. “It’s under in-law.”

She takes it and walks me to the elevator.

“You might want to call Sam Foster. If anyone knows where she is, he does.”

She nods and steps inside with me. We take the elevator to the critical care unit. I watch the floors light up as we pass them. When we reach the fifth floor, Claribel steps out first and swipes an access card through a keypad next to the door. It smells like antiseptic, though the walls are painted a warm tan color. It does little to lighten the mood, and somewhere off in the distance, I can hear crying. We walk briskly to room 549. The door is closed. She pauses outside and places a small hand on my arm.

“It’s going to be hard to see her. Just keep in mind there is still a lot of swelling on her face.”

I breathe deeply as she opens the door, and I step inside. The light is dim and a symphony of medical equipment is playing around the room. I approach her bed slowly. She is a tiny lump under the covers. When I stand above her, I start crying. A tiny piece of red hair sticks out from the bandages on her head. That is the only way I can identify her. Her face is so swollen that even if she were awake, she wouldn’t be able to open her eyes. There are tubes everywhere — up her nose, down her throat, snaking into her tiny, bruised arms. How did she survive this? How is her heart still beating?

Claribel stands at the window and politely looks away while I cry over my daughter. I am too afraid to touch her, so I run my pinkie over her pinkie, the only part of her that isn’t bruised.