There were so many unanswered questions, so many things I didn't know about her, about him—about them. I didn't know where to begin.
"Did you really love her?" I asked after a pause.
I saw him tense just a little, but since I would be granted anything I wanted on that day of heartbreak for me, he managed to sigh a little and nod.
"I didn't realize how much until she was gone. That's how it usually works," he said, attempting to smile.
"Did she know?" I asked.
He shook his head, a gleam in his eye. "No. I'm sure she never knew. The only person she wanted love from was Mike, and…I wasn't very good at loving her. In another life, we would have been happy together; just not this one."
I nodded in understanding, thinking the same rules applied to me and Derek. Under different circumstances, we could have been so happy together.
"I don't even know what to ask," I admitted. "I want to know everything."
"There's plenty of time, kid," he assured me. "We've got many years to come. If you can't learn it all today, there's plenty of time to ask."
"Tell me how you knew about the book," I said.
"Wuthering Heights," he said. "Well, your mother was a very literary woman, as I'm sure you remember. She lived and breathed the written word."
I smiled at the memory of her reading to me and nodded. "I know."
"She fancied Mike her love story. Even when it got really bad, she hung on to those clichés—love is all you need; nothing worth having is ever easy; love only once; good things come to those who wait—you name it. The tortured love theme…she thought it was fitting, maybe even romantic since they were supposed to be at the end of their rough journey. Years she had waited, and finally he was going to be all hers. He was such a lazy piece of shit," Alex said, shaking his head. "He wouldn't expend his energy on her. He took what was easy…and he threw away two women who loved him more than life itself. I know that Sarah isn't the good guy in your version of the story—I still fully believe she got pregnant intentionally to trap him and it's been 19 years—but she loved him, and she didn't deserve to be jerked around either. Jamie certainly didn't. Technically, Jamie was the mistress, but… she loved him with all of her heart. To her, it wasn't an affair; it was true love and he just finally realized it."
"Were they having an affair long?" I asked. "I found the letter from my mom to Mike, but…I kind of got caught, so I didn't get to finish the letter. It said he was supposed to leave Sarah for Mom, but she said he was married…"
Alex nodded. "They reunited. Not intentionally, they just kind of ran into each other, but they had this…intense passion for one another that I really don't like to think about," he stated. "Jamie and Mike were addicted to each other—they couldn't be together, but they couldn't leave each other alone. And for some reason, they couldn't seem to figure out that pattern, and they were just as damn surprised every time they didn't work out as they were the time before." Alex sighed wearily. "Until the last time, that is. Jamie did finally figure it out, but…it robbed her of this…sparkle that she had, this innocence and optimism that she somehow hung onto through everything. Jamie invested everything in Mike. She gave him all of herself, and all of her hopes rested on him. That was her biggest mistake, Nicole. Never let your hopes and dreams rest on a man, because they aren't reliable."
I nodded. "I think I'm beginning to see that."
"So did she," he informed me. "He was married to Sarah that time, and it was hard for your mother to even accept that she had stooped so low, but it was for Mike, and she decided just to put all her chips on him one last time. He promised her he was going to leave Sarah and be with her. He told her that he loved her, and he had never actually told her that—I think maybe that's why she decided to trust him again. She wanted more than anything to believe him, Nicole. But your mother, for all her hopefulness, wasn't a stupid woman. He fell back into the same pattern he used to fall back into—he would always withdraw from her when he realized he wasn't going to follow through on his promise. Throughout the years when she would talk to me about him, every time she would cry. That was how I knew something was different the last time—when she talked to me about him, about the affair and her doubts about him actually leaving, she wasn't crying. It was like she had run out or something, and I guess she had—she had run out of tears and hope and everything else. She was drained. She let him hurt her more than anyone else in her whole life, but she couldn't stay away from him."
There was a long pause, and I wasn't sure that he was going to go on, because something changed in his face. His jaw was tight, his eyes cast toward the ground, and if I wouldn't have known any better, I would have thought he was going to cry.
"There's something…that I want to tell you, and you're probably going to…get very mad at me. I'll understand, believe me, because I've spent years…hating myself for it."
Dread formed in the pit of my stomach. "Okay…"
"I told you the last time was different," he said. "Your mother felt him withdraw and…I don't know what was different that time, but somehow…it was like she suddenly woke from a stupor, and she realized he was never going to follow through. She called me one night…it was actually the weekend before the accident, and she told me…"
Alex paused and cleared his throat, maintaining his composure. "She told me that she knew Mike wasn't going to leave Sarah, and she couldn't stand to be his mistress again. She told me
that she wanted so badly to walk away from him, to just put him behind her. But she wasn't strong enough. She told me that. Even though she knew she needed to walk away from him, she still loved him, and she couldn't walk away on her own. She asked me to help her. She said that… loving him was killing her, and she just needed a fresh start, a new life. Jamie finally realized that Mike would never be anything but bad for her, Nicole, and she came to me, and she begged me to help her leave him. She asked me if we could just take you and go away somewhere and never come back, because that was the only way she could…"
I was completely amazed as I watched my father cry for the first time in my life.
"Hey, don't do that," I said, moving closer to him on the couch, not knowing what to do. "It's okay."
He shook his head, looking irritated at his own lack of composure. "No, it's not okay. She needed me. She needed me to help her get away from him, and she even asked me for my help… and I let her down. I told her no, that she was being…overly dramatic. That was Saturday night, Nicole. She died Wednesday." He looked at me, his eyes tormented with years of guilt. "I could have saved her, but I told her no."
It was my turn to hug him. "You couldn't have known what was going to happen."
"I shouldn't have had to!" he told me vehemently. "She would still be alive today if I would have just put you guys in the car and taken her away like she asked me to, but I didn't take her seriously. She asked me for help, Nicole. Do you have any idea…how it feels to know that someone you love died, and you could have stopped it, but you didn't?"
"You didn't know," I told him quietly as I hugged him, and this time it was Alex who cried into my shoulder.
We stayed there on the couch for a couple minutes as he regained his composure and I absorbed the new information he had just passed on to me.