“No,” she insisted immediately. “We’re going to Pilates.”
“Okay...?”
She grabbed my arm and started dragging me toward the studio a few doors down. It was a small place and the owners were best friends and the most lithe, in-shape women I’d ever met. They were well into their sixties and had retired from other jobs to do this together. Adleigh and I had decided we were going to do this too one day. Well into our sixties. After our families had grown and our lives had settled, we’d buy a little place by Mom and the beach and run a Pilates studio that was warm and welcoming and beautiful.
“I have more news,” she said, but this time instead of tears, her grip on my arm tightened to an almost painful degree. I was afraid for entirely different reasons.
“What’s going on?”
“I, uh, got an interesting email the other day.”
“Ad, just because they’re claiming to be royalty doesn’t mean they are. Do not send anyone money. No matter how many millions they promise you in return.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“Worse than a pretend prince who’s actually poor?”
“It was Dad.”
Unfortunately, the sidewalk opened up right then and swallowed me whole. And that was how I died. The end.
“Wait, what?” my un-dead mouth screeched. “Dad? Are you sure?”
“It’s Dad, Ade. For real.”
I made a choked laughing noise that sounded truly hysterical. “No, you’re wrong. It’s actually more likely that you’re emailing a real African prince. He’s a missing person at this point, babe. Totally gone with the wind.”
“He’s in town. He moved back to the area.”
“How did he get your contact information?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, flustered. “I guess there was an article highlighting that Habitat for Humanity thing the basketball team did. The one I helped at. And there was a picture of Shane and me. My name was printed underneath. I suppose he saw it, then tracked me down through the school.”
I felt like she stuffed my ears with cotton. Everything had weirdly disappeared around us. I was back in my tiny childhood home, crying on the kitchen floor because my daddy had left and wasn’t coming back. I could close my eyes and see Mom pacing the floor in front of the sink, crying too. Holding a wiggling Adleigh who was also crying.Daddy, come back, I’d cried and cried. My mom had just shaken her head.He won’t. He won’t.
“Did you respond?”
“Not yet.” She chewed her bottom lip aggressively. “He apologized. I mean, that’s what the email was mostly about. He apologized for leaving us. And shared a little of where he’s been over the years. He says he wants to meet me.”
I knew she didn’t intend to leave me out. He’d found her after all. Not me. But just her words alone were like a slap across the face.What about me? Did he want to meet me?
Ugh, I hated how much my heart pinched at the idea. How I was equal parts hope and despair. It had been so long. I genuinely never expected this day to come. As a little girl, I’d looked for him everywhere. At every supermarket. At every dance recital or game I’d ever played in. I looked for him on the street and in other cars, at gas stations and movie theaters, and in our driveway. I’d looked and looked and looked. But he never came.
When I was old enough to realize how foolish I was being, I stopped looking.
At some point, I made peace with never seeing him again. He’d vanished.
Reading my unspoken thoughts, Adleigh added, “I’m sure he wants to meet you too, Ade. I shouldn’t have said it like that. He asked a ton of questions about you. He just suggested coffee. Says he’d like to apologize in person.”
“No,” I bit out. My thoughts were spinning wildly, and I felt barely in control of my body. I was worried I was going into shock or something. But that answer was crystal clear. “No, I don’t want to meet him.”
“No?”
Adleigh sounded wounded. I flinched. I hadn’t meant to sound so harsh or shut down the suggestion so quickly. But how could I meet the man who had abandoned us? How could I face the man who had looked around at his family and decided he wanted something else?
God, I felt sick. I felt the sharp slice of heartbreak all over again.
It had been different for Adleigh. She was too young to remember him. She didn’t have any memories of him around the table. Or playing basketball outside. She didn’t catch the scent of him sometimes if the sun was hot and the grass freshly mowed. She hadn’t had to witness our mom crumple and break and only pull herself together because she had two daughters to take care of. She didn’t know what it was like to be tucked in tight by big hands or feel the scratch of his stubbly cheek when he kissed me good night one night and then never have that again.
