What She Wanted (25 page)

Dean pinched me to his side. “Darling, this is just one town. There’s a whole lot more out there waiting for you.”

A group of people, from middle school kids to guys as old as Mark, broke into a spontaneous line dance on the polished wooden floor.

Heidi fizzed with excitement. “Dancing!”

Dean twirled me into the mix, and we boot scooted our way through another perfect night.

I didn’t sleep for a week. The afterglow of the gala quickly faded into indescribable pressure. How could I be the woman all those people thought I was? The word “fraud” circled my thoughts like a shark, waiting to ruin me. Wherever I studied in the fall, they’d see I’d been lucky with a few amateur shots, not some girl prodigy like the gala had made it appear. Heidi thought I needed more practice responding to good things. Dean didn’t think I saw myself clearly. Sylvia just wanted to know why I hadn’t chosen a school yet.

Mark ambled into the living room dressed in oil-soaked work clothes. “Well? Are you going to eat something or mope around the house like that again today?”

I gave myself a cursory look and flipped the television channel. “I’m not hungry.”

“Then get in here and eat anyway because I made it for you and eating it is basic manners.”

I closed my eyes and prayed to be beamed up or hit by a runaway cement truck. Nothing happened.

“You can clean up the kitchen when you’re finished eating. That’s called division of labor.”

I levered my body off the couch and moped toward Mark’s voice in the kitchen. A whiff of buttery heaven impaled my mental exhaustion and lifted me into a slightly better place.

Mark had lined the island in piping hot breakfast foods, buttery hotcakes, fluffy scrambled eggs, and strips of crispy brown bacon. The coffeepot percolated on the countertop by the sink.

He shut the refrigerator and hefted a load of cold items onto the island. “We’ve got two kinds of jam: grape and strawberry. Mrs. Baxter dropped off the strawberry.”

The food looked amazing, but nerves had wrecked my stomach. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not hungry.”

Mark frowned. “You know, I’ve never noticed before, but you’re a pain in the ass.”

“Gee,” I deadpanned. “Wherever could I have picked that up? I’ll eat later. I’ve got a ton of entrance essays and thank-you notes to write. Thank you, though.”

“Everyone thinks they’re so busy,” he muttered.

“Hey. I’m not making this up. I’m rushing to make decisions most kids spend years on. I haven’t slept. Gala or no gala, there are no guarantees and every application costs at least fifty dollars. I can’t afford to go balls to the wall. I have limited income. I have to have a plan.” My chest rose and fell in sudden bursts. “I’m completely stressed out, and I’m not in the mood for stuffing my face with all this food. Is that okay?”

He scoffed. “So, make a plan. It isn’t that tough, is it?”

“Yes!” I’d nearly worn out the stack of college catalogues that had arrived in the days following the gala. Heidi and I made lists of pros and cons of each campus, but the decision was so much bigger than that.

I struggled with the drastic change in my reality. Change wasn’t my friend and everything was going to change again soon.

I had two weeks until the window for last-minute applicants closed. Once that happened, no amount of recommendation letters and fancy galas would be able to pry it open again. I had to pick the institution that would define my future, my career, and my life’s path in fourteen days. The proposition was insane. NYFA had been my first choice when it seemed unattainable, but now there was so much more to consider. What was the campus like? How about the area outside campus? How much was tuition? Which schools offered scholarships? Partial or full? Was it too late for a grant? What was campus life like? What was their graduation rate? What about job placement? “I have papers I need you to sign. There’s no financial aid without them. If I leave them on the dining room table, will you sign them?”

“Yep. You probably won’t believe me, but I meant to sign them before. Time gets away when you’re old.”

I rolled my eyes. From where I was sitting, it was easy to interpret his comment as “You weren’t important enough to prioritize,” but I was starting fresh, so I wouldn’t fixate. However, if he didn’t sign the papers this time, he’d hear about it until he did.

The problem, it seemed, with a dream becoming reality, was that all the hairy details that went along with the dream became real, too. Even with the financial aid in place, I refused to squander the opportunity of a lifetime on quick, emotional decisions. I had to look at every aspect of every photography school and be smart about where I applied.

Mark poured a glass of orange juice and slid it across the island to me. “And you still have to deal with us.”

I sipped. He meant Joshua and him. “Yes. Even if I somehow magically get all this stuff done and am actually accepted into a world-class photography school, I still have to work this stuff out before I can leave Woodsfield. And I have less than a month.”

He cut into a hotcake with the tines of a fork. “Do it then.”

I raked a hand through my hair and bit my tongue. “Don’t you have to change and shower or something? You worked all night and, the way I hear it, you recently had a heart attack.”

“The night shift’s for pansies and gimpy old men. There’s nothing to do but get dirty and come home. I’m hardly winded. I pushed a broom around the plant for eight hours and got lapped by a rental cop twice.”

I bit into a slice of salty bacon. “Sounds awful. Did you get paid?”

He laughed. “Yes.”

I smiled. “Jeez. I sound just like you, don’t I?” I piled hotcakes on my plate and drowned them in sticky-sweet syrup. “You’re right. I can’t live like this. I’ve got to get on with things before I’m thirty and wondering where I went wrong.”

“Atta girl.”

My cheeks heated at the affirmation. “I don’t want to be mad at you or him. I understand your motivation for not letting Joshua visit me at the end. If I can understand why he left for so long, maybe I can get past the pain and move on with whatever comes next. I don’t have to like what he says, or agree with it. I just need to hear it.”

Mark worked his jaw.

I waited, hoping he’d miraculously open up.

“Finish your breakfast, then give him a call.”

“I don’t have his number.” Defeat squashed any motivation I’d had before the gala. I was overwhelmed. Exhausted. Two written essays away from joining the next carnival that came through town.

Emotion flicked over his features. He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and set it on the island beside my plate. “Now, you do.”

I dusted my palms together and did my best to look strong. “I have to work on my portfolio and finish writing entrance essays.”

“Right after you call this number.”

I took the paper. “Maybe. I don’t know.” I shook my head and backed out of the room. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Thank you for breakfast.” I took the steps two at a time and face-planted onto my bed, flinging pillows everywhere. How could I be an adult when I felt so much like a little child? An abandoned child who had to face the man who’d made her that way. I wanted him. I didn’t want to be hurt by him. I loved him. I hated what he’d done.

I screamed into a pillow until my head went fuzzy for lack of oxygen.

I couldn’t finish the essays or choose a school or leave this town until I faced the facts. I had more than one screwed-up relative who didn’t want me for eighteen years. I might as well get to know the other one better.

* * * *

I stood outside Joshua’s apartment at lunchtime, wondering why I couldn’t run from my problems instead of dealing with them head-on. Mom hadn’t listed this confrontation as something to do with my life, but she would have if she’d known how screwed up it would all become in her absence. Plus, I was dogged to a fault. I couldn’t let things go. Especially not something this important.

I tightened my grip on the strap of my camera bag and crept up the unusually empty driveway toward the door, convincing myself with each step that this was the right thing to do.

The door swung open and Joshua stepped onto the stoop, looking as anxious as I felt. His bushy hair was combed into a tidy part, not the crazy every-which-way style he usually wore. He’d traded his plaid shirt and tattered jeans for a nice pair of cargo shorts and a collared shirt.

I reminded myself he was the one who had explaining to do. I shouldn’t be afraid of whatever he said. The past was done. I was only here to fact-gather.

“Hey.” He raised his hand hip-high. “I’m glad you came. I wasn’t sure when we hung up.”

Neither was I. I mentally worked the man before me into something new and confusing: Dad.

My limbs twitched to run. My mouth longed to scream about betrayal, grief, and heartache.

Buried beneath the frantic surface responses, a little girl begged me to give him a chance, and she prayed there was a good reason things had gone down the way they had. She wanted him to have wanted me, and she wanted us to get past whatever had pulled us apart. She wanted a family.

My heart pounded at the powerful realization.
I want a family
. Desperately.

“Katy?” His voice cast me out of my thought prison.

“Hi.”

“Would you like to come inside? I made lunch.”

I followed him into the apartment on spongy legs, distracted by the ache in my heart and flutter in my gut. If I passed out, I’d miss the truth I’d waited all my life to hear.
Pay attention
.

The place was small but charming. Everything was in its place and lunch smelled delicious.

He led me to a table, covered in white linen and set for three. “I’m grilling out back.” A large salad sat beside the sink and a small bowl of strawberries. “Do you like trout?”

“Sure.” Not that I could eat at that moment, even if I hadn’t gorged on pancakes hours before. I hadn’t felt hungry until I started eating, then I couldn’t stop.

A chair bumped the backs of my knees and I sat.

My phone buzzed with a text from Heidi.
“How’s it going?”

So far, I’d done my best to stay upright and not vomit or cry.
“Fine.”

Joshua poured a glass of sweet tea and handed it to me.

“Thank you.”

He nodded. “Was that your boyfriend looking after you?”

“It was Heidi. My best friend.”

“Sure. I remember her.”

I’d almost forgotten she’d sent him off my porch when I didn’t want to see him. I shook my head and pushed sweat-laced palms over bare thighs. I should’ve worn longer shorts for such an important meeting. I’d chosen my comfort shorts, but they were too short and old. They’d been with me longer than most of my friends. I bought them for back-to-school jeans sophomore year, but my legs had grown almost four inches since the purchase. Heidi had chopped them off and voilà. They were too short and old for this conversation.

A lump formed in my throat that I couldn’t swallow. Chills rolled down my arms and my teeth began to chatter. Joshua was right in front of me. I was at his house. He was making me lunch. He was close enough to touch. He was real.

“I owe you a lot of answers.”

I concentrated on heat rising from the grill outside the patio doors. Sunlight glistened on the fresh cut grass. A breeze tousled blooms and pinwheels in the flowerbed. How could the most terrifying moment of my life happen on the prettiest day of the year? There should be a rule that scary things only happened on bleak, stormy nights. It would at least give a girl some warning and a little ambience.
Is this a horrible thing? Does it require ambience? Am I having a stroke?

“Katy?”

I pried my dry lips apart. “Sorry. Being here is harder than I thought.”

“I know. For me, too.” He took the seat across from me. “I talked with Mark. I know he’s told you part of the story. My family moved away before Amy died, but I made the three-hour drive from our new place to yours many times. I came every weekend until she was too sick for visitors. We talked on the phone when she had the energy. When hospice told her folks that she only had a few days, they shut everyone out. It was just the four of you in there.”

“I wish I remembered.”

“No,” he whispered. “You don’t. It was horrible. The sadness was unbearable.” Tears swam in his eyes. “You were the only light they had left.”

He said
they
not
we
. “What about you?”

“I stopped coming to visit, and I left for the military right after graduation.”

Shame and guilt burned through me. There was nothing worse than being unwanted by my father and the reason my mom was dead. “Mark said you refused to sign the birth certificate.”

Joshua narrowed his eyes. “I did that for you. My parents were so engrossed in their mind games and ongoing battles, they barely noticed me. They would’ve ruined you. Amy hid the pregnancy until she was so sick her mom forced her to see a doctor. She was officially diagnosed with leukemia and pregnancy at the same time. She missed a lot of school towards the end. She was really thin. I told my parents about the cancer and said she lost the baby. They never questioned it until you were born. By the time Amy came home from the hospital with you, it was too late. My family had no legal rights to you without getting an attorney and fighting, which meant spending money they didn’t have. It was my teenage way of keeping them from laying claim, which turned out to be pointless. While I was focused on Amy, Dad had gotten a local woman pregnant, so we moved in a hurry. Mom accused Amy and the other woman of getting pregnant on purpose to take Dad and I away from her. It was ugly at our house for a long time. Worse than the usual.”

I curled my fingers into fists on my thighs. “Sounds awful.” What kind of person was Joshua’s mother? Who would accuse a dying teen of intentionally getting pregnant to trap her boyfriend?

Regret changed Joshua’s expression. “They were normal for a while when I was young. Before Dad started drinking too much and Mom started lashing out to regain control.” He scrubbed both hands over the top of his head, wrecking his tidy style. He raised an apologetic smile. “I had no idea you needed me. My parents thought I was a worthless piece of…crap. They said I’d never amount to anything. I was useless. I believed them. When Mark pushed me out of your life, I spiraled. I let all the hateful words in and I clutched onto them like they were the gospel and I was powerless against it. When my folks split and moved, I was glad to go.” He blew out a long breath. “I wanted to leave you. I wanted to go somewhere none of my friends knew I was a dad or that my girlfriend was dead, probably because I got her pregnant and she’d refused early treatment. Maybe because I agreed with her to hide the pregnancy for so long. All because I didn’t step up and be strong when she was afraid.”