“I know you do.” She inhaled and her eyes went oddly bright. “I, um, met my birth mother today.”
“Oh.” Not even remotely what he’d been expecting her to say. He hadn’t known she was adopted, but then, why would he? “That is big. How did it go?”
“Not great. Really not great.” She swallowed as she turned her head toward the water. “She has other children, but they know nothing about me and Frankie. She also has a less than squeaky clean past and our biological father is dead.”
He could see her pain in the stiffness of her body and the tenseness of her muscles. The set of her jaw. “Quite a load of information for a first meeting.”
She nodded and sniffed. Then muttered a squeaky, “Sorry.”
She was trying not to cry. He got up, retrieved a box of tissues, and brought them back to her, setting them within arm’s reach. “It’s okay to cry. I’m the last person who would judge you for that.”
She did some more nodding and sniffing, grabbed a tissue and pressed it to her eyes, then blew her nose. “This isn’t very professional of me. Won’t happen again.”
“I don’t care if it happens again. I also don’t care if it’s professional or not. You’re hurting. I get that. Different reason than my hurt, but pain is pain and that’s something I understand. Don’t apologize for being human.”
“Thanks.”
“I know this is a business relationship, but we’re friends, too, aren’t we?”
She finally looked at him. “I’d like to think so. Joyce and I are definitely friends.”
He laughed. “Joyce is friends with everyone.”
“You aren’t, though, are you?”
He shook his head without shame. “Nope. I don’t like people.”
A reluctant smile bent her mouth. “That’s not true.”
“No, it’s not. But what is true is that people can be exhausting. At least for me. And when Jeanie died, everyone wanted to fix me. There was no fixing me. I didn’t want to be fixed. I wanted to be miserable. I mean, I didn’twantto be but…”
“You needed to feel the things you were feeling. Being sad and grieving was your way of paying tribute to her. To the life you shared.”
“Yes.” The way she understood that floored him.
“And now, being happy again feels like being disloyal.”
He nodded. That was it. That was utterly and completely it. “I have a son who doesn’t speak to me because he blames me for his mother’s death.”
Harper’s brow wrinkled. “I thought she died of cancer.”
“She did. But I wasn’t around as much as I should have been, not until the end, when I snapped out of thinking I could make everything right by pretending nothing was wrong.”
“That never works.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He sighed. “As you know, I kept writing and focusing on the books because I didn’t know what else to do. I finally faced reality and the last two months were very different. I was with her night and day. I never left her side. But Kyle still blames me. Too little, too late.”
“I assume you’ve reached out to him? Tried to apologize, all of that?”
“I have. Texts, calls, letters, emails. No response.”
“That’s so hard. It’s nearly impossible to reach someone who doesn’t want to be reached. I wish I had an answer, but the best thing I can tell you is time might change things. I really don’t know what else you could do that you haven’t done already.”
“That makes two of us.” He shrugged. “I’ve kind of resigned myself to it. No other options.”
“Would you like to talk about the book some more?”
“I think that’s enough for today. Thanks for sharing with me. I’m sorry things didn’t go differently for you.”
