“I talked to my dad,” she whispers.
Both of our strained smiles straighten into emotionless lines.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“I did,” she responds.
I get it. It’s her father’s actions, and she deserves to be the one to question him about them. I never would have asked her to. I planned to approach him myself, which probably would have not gone well at all.
Brooklyn sits up and glances toward Morgan’s bed, probably checking to make sure she’s deep asleep. Her bottom lip is trapped by her teeth when she peers back to me, so much uncertainty weighing down her eyes.
“I don’t care if Morgan hears about my life. My grandparents are the ones who prefer to keep things quiet, and since I don’t really think of them as family, I try hard not to think of them at all. When it comes to my dad, I simply don’t like having to defend him over and over, so I keep him to myself.”
Her lips tug into a soft smile bit it quickly fades as her eyes dip from mine to my chest.
“Your grandparents are the ones who asked my father to write the letter requesting denial,” she says. The instant her words leave her lips, the puzzle is complete. It all falls in place.
I sit up and pinch the bridge of my nose, eyes shut tight as I take in the full picture.
“And Cam,” Brooklyn hums.
I pull my hand away and look her in the eyes, expecting the words that quickly come.
“They asked him to write it again.”
The floor falls from under me, my entire being diving deep into a place that strips my stomach from my body and leaves me with nothing but sickness. There’s only one option for me to take, and it’s honestly the last thing on earth I want to do. Just in case, I spend a solid two minutes staring at Brooklyn’s ceiling, her room quickly losing light with the setting sun.
This can’t be a phone call. This ask has to happen in person, which won’t be convenient or comfortable for either of us. But the difference is seven years of my father’s life being spent right where he is or maybe, just maybe, somewhere on the other side of the wall where he and I can go to that damn bakery together, catch a Sox game, and talk about my graduation.
My eyes shift to meet Brooklyn’s, her forehead lined with worry and lips pulled in with anxious expectations.
“Would you drive me into the city?” It’s the last place I want to go. But I need to. And I need the flexibility of being able to move around Boston.
“Now?” Brooklyn asks.
I nod, my lips pursed with guilt.
“You want to meet my mom?” I ask, figuring since Brooklyn will be with me, I may as well show her all of my baggage.
“I’d love to,” she says. Her eyes don’t light up in excitement, though, and her smile stays cautiously the same. It’s good that she gets it. Meeting my mom isn’t like meeting your average boyfriend’s parent. Our relationship is strained, a constant ten-foot pole between us keeping her from showing up to big things in my life and keeping me from calling her to tell her about my girlfriend. My mother and I are a business relationship. A pleasant one, but it’s never been full of affection. It’s barely been marked by a handshake.
“We should go soon,” I say.
She nods, shifting in the bed to gather her things. I get to my feet and pull a sheet of paper from the printer on Brooklyn’s desk. I hand it to her with a Sharpie and she quirks a brow.
“You write nice notes,” I say with a wink. I still have the one she left for me this morning in my pocket.
Brooklyn draws a heart and writes the word HUG above it then scribbles a quick note inside her drawing, letting Morgan know we had to run an errand. I decide I like that label for what we’re about to do. An errand. It’s so much better than calling it what it is—playing a game of family-drama Jenga and pulling out the last piece from the bottom.
Sunday night traffic is light, so we get into the city in under forty minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve been to my mother’s building, so I guide Brooklyn on a screwy route before I spot the building trimmed with green iron and the park with the world’s smallest fishing pond across the way. It’s close to my mom’s campus, and a lot of the professors live here. It’s one of the reasons she moved in here during grad school. She’s always been big on visualizing and actualizing goals. A family simply isn’t one of those goals, hence I’m not in the picture much.
“Should we call her and let her know we’re here?” Brooklyn asks.
I chuckle because what a sweet and perfectly normal question.
Shaking my head, I say, “Nah.” It’s better if my mom doesn’t know we’re coming. I don’t want to get into the ugliness of the truth right now, but the odds are fairly good that my mom would take the advance warning to instantly be anywhere else. It would bedue to anemergency, of course. It’s only been within the last couple years that I realized the inordinate number of emergencies my mom tends to have right before I arrive.
Brooklyn locks her Mercedes with her fob and we scurry across the street to my mother’s building. Thankfully, she hasn’t changed any of the codes, so we don’t need help from security when we get inside. We take the elevator up to the eighth floor and seconds later, I’m standing in front of her apartment—number 8F.