He shook his head.
“By the time I finished school, your mom had married Willis. Will and I had always been… rivals, I guess, for Harley’s attention, but I never really thought she would marry him. I— was devastated, of course. I felt like I had lost the only thing that really mattered to me in the world,” he said, staring blankly at the tabletop.
“Even though they struggled to understand her, family meant so much to her. Har wanted to stay in this area to take care of her parents, but right after they got married, Willis insisted that they moved to a county in Virginia where he had landed a position as Sheriff’s deputy. He’d applied without telling her. Her parents told her that her place was with her husband, so she felt she didn’t have much of a choice. They moved to Virginia. Her parents passed away about a year later.”
Alex crumpled the tissues in his hands again.
“After they got married, I went... kind of crazy, for a while,” he chuckled ruefully. “I was living in New York City, and everything, and everyone, was available, for a price. I tried to fill the hole she’d left in my heart with any substance or person I could find. I was not… not a good person.”
Martin squeezed Alex’s shoulder again, before leaning in and placing a kiss on his temple.
“That was a long time ago, baby,” he whispered.
Alex nodded, though he seemed unsure, then looked back up at me.
“I was home on Christmas break my last year of law school. Your parents were having… problems,” he sighed. “And I’m sure I didn’t make them any better. Harley and I ran into each other at a Christmas party. She and Will had fought, and she’d gone to the party without him. Seeing her again… it was like someone had breathed life back into me. My world went from being black and white to havingcoloragain. We talked—and drank—for hours. We woke up the next morning in my hotel room.”
Alex shook his head, then turned to look at me solemnly. “She didn’t tell me about you, Nicki. Not at first. She and Will had been trying to have a baby for years, and they didn’t know why they hadn’t been able to.”
“The first time I saw your baby pictures, I knew,” Rhiannon said. “You had the same eyes Alex had when he was young. That same red hair… She didn’t even have to say anything, I just knew Alex was your father, though she denied it, at first.”
“With your birth, Harley and Will seemed to have worked out some of their problems. She refused to see me again for years,” Alex continued. “I never knew… never knew I was positive, not until about six years ago. I started getting sick,” Alex said, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “I started losing weight. I had pneumonia three times one summer. I knew something was seriously wrong. I went to a specialist, and he diagnosed me with HIV. I don’t know if I got it from having sex with the wrong person, or if it was from all the drugs I did when I was in college, but it didn’t really matter where it came from. I had it, and I had passed it on to her, and— and you.”
As he’d spoken, I couldn’t stop the roil of emotions boiling through me. My mom had died because of this asshole, and I was likely to as well. I just shook my head, digging my fingers into my scalp as I tried to make sense of everything, anger, pain and grief mixing in my chest.
“So, Mom fooled around on my dad, and it ends up killing us both?Great! Justfuckinggreat…” I said angrily.
“Nicki, that’s not fair,” Kaine began, but stopped as he noticed the faces of those around the table. They looked almost comical. Alex’s face was white, but his eyes were wide in stunned surprise. Martin’s mouth had dropped open into an O shape, and Rhiannon looked at me as if I’d grown two heads.
“Nicki, whatever are you talking about, dear?” she exclaimed. “Alex didn’t have anything to do with your mother’s death.”
“Youknowwhat I’m talking about! Mom had AIDS, and shedied!” I yelled.
“Oh, my dear, you didn’t know?” Rhiannon asked, confusion apparent on her face.
“Know… what do you mean,‘know’?” I demanded angrily. I’d had just about enough of these people and I stood, ready to walk out the door.
Rhiannon reached up from where she sat and took my hand gently in her own.
“Sweetheart, there has been some kind of horrible miscommunication. Harley didn’t die from AIDS. She was killed by a drunk driver.”
“What!” I exclaimed in surprise. “That’s— What? She—”
Rhiannon opened a folder I hadn’t realized was lying on the conference room table. Inside was a local news website printout with a news story dated about eight months ago with the headline “Local Woman Killed By Drunk Driver.” My mother’s photo was under the headline.
I stared at it for what seemed like hours. I didn’t have many pictures of my mom, and in this one she was smiling andhappy. I didn’t realize how sad she had been, married to my father, until I saw true happiness on her face.
“You… you took this?” I asked, looking at Rhiannon. She smiled and nodded.
“It was about three years ago, I think. We’d just gotten some information she thought would help in a… a case… we were working on,” she said.
“She worked here?” I asked. Rhiannon nodded again.
“She needed our help, Nicki,” Alex said. “She was still trying to figure out how she could get you back from your dad. She fought every single day to find a way to get you back.”
“Wait, that doesn’t make any sense,” Kaine interrupted. “Once he turned eighteen, his mom didn’t have tofighthis dad anymore. She could have just reached out to Nicki directly.”
“She tried,” Marty said. “Your dad is a very powerful man, Nicki. Based on your testimony during the custody hearings, he obtained a restraining order against your mother. He told her that the only way she would ever see you again was if she came back as his wife.”
