A Missing Heart Read online

  “Well, I guess you’re safe from that happening now,” I tell her, trying not to sound cold, even though it’s all I feel inside right now. I know I’m not doing a good job at hiding my emotions.

  “Safe,” she laughs. “My parents are putting the house up for sale next week. They’ve found a tutor to homeschool me for the rest of the school year. I can’t walk the stage during our graduation since they have forbidden me from that too. When I move to D.C. next fall for college, they’re moving down there too, because Dad got some job opportunity he can’t pass up. So coming home for holidays and vacations like we planned is no longer a possibility. Maybe it was all a big coincidence with them picking up and moving out of the house I’ve lived in since I was born, but I’m pretty sure they’re doing it to move away from the embarrassment I’ve caused them in this stupid, little rich town.”

  All of this is almost too much to take in. Everything that happened in this past week and year has been too much to take in. I’ve lost my daughter. I’m losing my girlfriend—the girl I am head over heels in love with, the girl I’m pretty sure was supposed to be my forever. Hours ago, I wasn’t sure I could ever look her in the eyes again; yet here I am, looking her in the eyes and still loving her as much as I did before she told me our daughter was being given up for adoption. All I feel is pain—a smothering pain that is stretching from the tips of my toes to the ends of each hair on my head. “What are you saying?” I’m not a goddamn moron; I know what she’s saying.

  “This is it, AJ,” she says, pulling herself up to a better sitting position. I watch the pain wrench through her face with the slightest movement, and all I want to do is make it better—take away all of her pains, but that’s no longer a part in her life I will take part in.

  “We’re over?” I ask, needing the heart-breaking confirmation.

  “It won’t work. We won’t ever see each other,” she tells me.

  I drop off the side of the bed to my knees and fold my hands tightly on top of her bed. “I’ll drive to you. We can make it work. We still have two months and the summer maybe—”

  “If the house sells fast enough, we’ll be leaving a lot sooner than two months from now. My diploma will be mailed to me, as I’ve been told.”

  “Why not make the best of it until then?” I plead. It’s never been like this with us. Everything was always easy. We enjoy the same things, think the same way, agree more than disagree. Until now.

  “It will hurt too much,” she says, through a croak in her voice. “I love you, AJ. I love our daughter. I loved the thought of us being a family, and my parents took that away. They’re taking it all away. I regret it. All of it. I wish I hadn’t been bullied into their decisions. I want her back. I made a mistake.” Tears pour down the sides of her cheeks, and her erratic breaths are followed by a soft cry. I want to tell her not to go to D.C. To stay here. Or come to Rhode Island with me. We’ll get a place out there and she can find a new college to go to. But that’s idiotic. Her education is being paid for by her wealthy parents, and she got into one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Telling her to stay here for me would be the most selfish thing I could do. Yet, I want to do it. I want to beg her to give everything up for me. Maybe we could get our daughter back somehow. I don’t know how it all works, but maybe there’s a way.

  “Let’s fix it,” I tell her. I shouldn’t have said that. I have nothing to lose, though. She shakes her head slowly, as tears completely consume her eyes, filming them and making them impossible for me to see through and probably impossible for her to see me, and the tears in my eyes. “I can’t lose you too.”

  “We’re only seventeen. Our whole lives are ahead of us, and we’re only in this much pain because we don’t know of a greater pain yet. They said this pain will pass.” These words were all spoken directly by her parents and are now being regurgitated from her fragile mind. “We shouldn’t make this worse than it has to be. I’m sorry for everything, AJ, but we should make this our goodbye.” Her hands squeeze tighter around the balled fabric scrunched within her fists and they both tremble ferociously.

  “I’m sorry for everything too,” I tell her, but if I refuse to say goodbye, this can’t be our goodbye. Which is why I don’t say another word to her as I leave her bedroom.

  While I’m afraid it may be my biggest regret ever, being only seventeen, I have a long life left to spend every day hating this decision, but I refuse to say goodbye.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “YOU TWO ARE all set to take Gavin home now. I suggest lots of rest, lukewarm baths, and cuddle time for the little guy,” the doctor says, running his finger down the length of Gavin’s tiny nose. “I’ve called in a prescription for him to your pharmacy, and it should be ready within the hour.”

  “Thank you so much, Doctor,” I offer.

  “Oh, and ibuprofen as directed on this printout.” He hands me a piece of paper with some instructions on how to care for a fever and an ear infection.

  “Will he be okay?” Tori asks.

  “It’s just an ear infection, Mrs. Cole. It’s very common in young children,” the doctor says with a questioning smile. It’s as if Tori hadn’t been listening to anything going on for the past hour, and I’m not sure I’d be surprised if that were the case because I’ve seen this look on her face before, like she’s thinking of a million different thoughts in the same exact second. She does it a lot, and I’m always wondering what’s going through her head, but more times than not, I never find out.

  “What now?” she asks.

  “Tori,” I groan. “God, we have to take him home and get his fever down.”

  “Okay,” she says, sounding sheepish, childish.

  I take the baby carrier with Gavin secured inside and walk back out into the ER waiting room where Hunter is still waiting. He’s staring off into the distance, and I hate that he’s been sitting here just thinking for the past three hours. That is not what he needs…in an emergency room, of all places—the place where his life basically ended the day Ellie died. When he sees us, he rushes from his seat and takes the carrier from my hands. “What’s going on? Is he okay?”

  “Just an ear infection,” I tell him.

  “Thank God.” With a sigh of relief, Hunter looks at his watch and back up at me. “I’m going to go get some more work done on that job. You go home and take care of Gavin. Charlotte and I can bring you guys some food tonight, and if you need anything else, just let me know—we can help you out.”

  “Hunter, dammit,” Tori snaps. “You two don’t need to help us every time something happens. We appreciate it, but it’s not necessary. Everything is under control.” I don’t like where this is going. Hunter may be sensitive and caring but he has a very, very short fuse and lately, Tori has been testing it.

  “You have everything under control. Okay, I get it.” Hunter replies. I know he’s biting his tongue, and I kind of hope he continues to do so because I’m not in the mood for this to escalate. “I’ll talk to you later.” Thankfully, Hunter ends the conversation and gives me a brotherly, knowing nod before heading out.

  Tori and I slide into the car, which reeks of hair product and nail polish. Almost the moment the doors close, I feel constricted, like I can’t breathe. “You said you can’t do this,” I remind her. “Were you trying to tell me something?” Or is it just the whole…acting like a normal human being thing you can't do? I’ll keep my last thought to myself.

  “I was trying to tell you that I don’t have the maternal instinct you want me to have or expect me to have. I don’t have the connections or feelings I should have for Gavin, and every day I wake up and hope those feelings have found me, but it continuously kills me to know they haven’t. I don’t know what is wrong with me or what’s missing, keeping me from loving him the way you do, but it makes me feel like a monster, AJ.”

  Her statement is so clear and concise, it’s like a bullet to my chest. The words could tear the child’s heart out if
he were old enough to understand, which I’m utterly thankful he’s not. While this truth is all I’ve wanted to hear since Gavin was born, it’s exactly what I’ve feared knowing. I read about this, though. This was in all the postpartum depression pamphlets I read. She could be helped if she’d open up to it.

  “T, look, I know we’ve talked about this before and you shooed me off but I think you’re suffering with postpartum depression, babe. It’s honestly nothing to be ashamed of. I read it happens to a ton of new mothers. The docs can help you.”

  Tori huffs loudly, as if she’s annoyed with my accusation, the same way she was annoyed the last time I brought it up. She pulls the visor down in front of her face and lifts the cover off the mirror to reapply a thin coat of lip gloss. “I’ve been seeing a therapist twice a week, AJ.”

  “You have?” Why hasn’t she mentioned this to me? What is there to be ashamed about? I don’t get it.

  “I don’t have postpartum.”

  “Is your therapist an actual therapist?” I ask snidely, under my breath. At some point in the past three hours, we’ve gone from the couple who has never had an argument—thanks to my ability to sweep everything under the rug—to the couple who will probably never be civil again. At least that’s what the wrath of anger is making me feel right this second.

  “Don’t be an ass,” she says, slamming her visor closed. “I have a valid reason for feeling the way I do.”

  “Let me guess…that’s what your therapist said?” I’m going too far. I can’t help it. I’ll regret this, or maybe I won’t.

  “You know,” she squeaks. “Everything was so perfect between us when we agreed to keep things simple. You didn’t have to know every little thing about the way my mind works, and I didn’t have to spend time digging through your damn cobwebs to figure out that you have an empty brain.” And now we’ve switched over into child mode. I’m not biting the bait on this one.

  Well, maybe one little bite. “And if you remembered to take your birth control pill every night…”

  She reaches for the handle on the door while I’m driving her stupid little Audi. “Let me out,” she demands.

  “We’re on a highway right now. Don’t be such a drama queen,” I say, through laughter. My laughter is out of rage, not humility, but it’s the only reaction I can come up with right now.

  “Pull over or I will open the door,” she growls.

  “Our son is in the back seat, for God’s sake. Have a little pride in yourself.” If I were thinking clearly, I’d be cautious about what was coming out of my mouth, but like every other thing that has come out of Tori’s mouth in the past few months, this is yet another completely shocking move on her behalf. This girl was the calmest chick with the biggest smile when I first met her. One fucking year later, she’s threatening to jump out of a moving car. How in the world did we get here? I know I’m not that bad of a husband. Actually, I’m pretty damn good considering I treat her like gold.

  Regardless that Gavin can’t understand what his mother is doing right now, I would not want to tell him some day about the time his mother jumped out of a moving car that I was driving. I don’t think Tori would ever do something so stupid but she’s screaming right now, louder than I’ve ever heard.

  I jerk the car to the side of the road, with plans to stop. However, the wheels haven’t even come to a complete halt when the door opens and she jumps out of the car. Okay, maybe it’s a good thing I pulled over when I did.

  Taking the deep breath I need, I close my eyes and count to five, hoping to calm down. When I reopen my eyes, I find Tori curled up in a ball on the side of the highway in a heap of brown grass and dirt. What the fuck is she doing? Has she lost her goddamn mind? I have Gavin in the back seat, and there’s no way I’m getting out to talk her off a cliff because she can’t control herself. “I’m not leaving Gavin in the car on the side of the highway, T. Come back in here so we can talk…please.” I do my best to keep my voice calm, but it’s like she doesn’t hear me. I’ve never seen her cry this hard, and I wish she would open up and tell me what’s going on. We’re married; she’s supposed to confide in me. Except, neither of us have ever really opened up to one another, which is strange for a married couple, I suppose. It was what worked for us, though. We wanted to focus on the current and future, rather than the past. After going through a disgusting divorce from Alexa, who cheated on me and got pregnant with another dude, and of course, losing the love of my life and our daughter, the last thing I wanted to do was talk about anything that had to do with a yesterday. Maybe we took that too far, because right now I feel like I don’t know anything about Tori at all.

  “Babe,” I call out. “Come on, you’re getting your white pants all dirty.”

  I know something is wrong when she hears me say that but doesn’t respond. The Tori I know would never sit on anything with white pants, never mind a pile of raw dirt on the side of a highway. This is so fucking stupid. I hop out of the car and jog around to the other side, opening Gavin’s door. I lift the baby car seat out so I can take it with me on the twenty-step hike. After seeing too many of those stupid videos on Facebook where a truck flies into a parked car on the side of the highway, I’m not taking my chances there.

  I place Gavin down and wrench my hand around Tori’s arm, lifting her up from the ground. She’s fighting me on it, but she’s not going to win. Her fists are crashing into my chest, and when I look at her face, there is nothing familiar about her now. Dark streaks of makeup form lines from her bottom lashes to the corners of her lips and then down past the bottom of her chin. Her normally pale complexion is bright red, and her lips are bowed down into a deeper frown than I’ve ever seen her wear, not even when she was in labor. “I don’t want to be her,” Tori cries out. “Every second of every day, I feel her inside of me. In my brain. In my words. In my actions. I’m her and I hate her. Make her go away, AJ.”

  I’m trying my hardest to digest and comprehend everything she’s saying but none of it makes any sense. She’s lost her mind, I think. “T, I don’t know her. Are you her? Is that what you’re saying?” God I hope that’s not what she’s saying, because I’m about one “her” away from calling 9-1-1.

  “You don’t know her,” she grunts.

  “Okay, babe, you are sort of freaking me out, and I don’t know what to say or do to make you feel better right now. We’re on the side of the road, you’re hysterical, our baby is in a car seat…on the side of the road, and if anyone drives by and cares to evaluate this scene, we’re probably going to have some state officials and possibly the Department of Social Services pulling up behind us.”

  I don’t know what I said to make her stop crying, because God knows nothing I just said was meant for that reason, I’m just truly concerned that this probably looks like a domestic violence scene.

  She runs the side of her hands across her cheeks, smudging away some of the black makeup, but at the same time, making it worse. Sniffling, she opens her eyes wider, as if she’s realizing what she’s doing and she looks around. “Tori,” I say calmly.

  “What am I doing out here?”

  Oh boy. Has she had these episodes before? Is that what this is? An episode?

  “You told me you wanted to get out of the car, and I pulled over,” I explain with hesitance. I’m looking at her the way she’s looking at me, and there’s nothing but utter confusion between the two of us.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. With her hands folding up against her chest like a battered woman, she walks past me and slides back into the passenger seat, quickly closing herself in. I watch through the window as she pulls her shoulder belt over her chest and secures it. Then she lowers the mirror and attempts to clean up her face. I don’t know who this woman is right now.

  I place Gavin back in his seat and settle in behind the wheel, debating if I should say anything or if it’s safer to keep my mouth closed for the remainder of the ride. Quiet wins.

  Only an hour has p
assed between the time I convinced Tori to get back into the car, got us all home, put Gavin down for a nap, and sat down on the couch in front of the black screen of the TV. I feel scared for what happened, and I feel more scared about asking her what happened. We can’t ignore this, though. This affects more than the two of us, so I muster my courage and broach the subject, “Tori, babe, you have to talk to me.”

  In this precise moment, as if Mom has bionic telepathic senses for when things aren’t going perfectly, her face lights up my phone, which is sitting directly between Tori and me.

  “She always knows when to call, huh?” Tori says, standing from the couch and leaving the room. For a moment, I’m angry at Mom, my phone, and everything that interrupted the possibility of me finding out what the hell is going on, but now I realize there will always be an interruption or an excuse. Tori doesn’t plan to tell me the truth, or she would have told me by now.

  With the room empty of any hope in finding out answers, I pick up the phone and hold it up to my ear. “Everything okay, Mom?”

  “AJ,” she laments. “You can’t answer the phone with a ‘Hello’?”

  “Sorry,” I spit out. When do parents stop smothering? I ask myself this question all of the time, and now I realize I will smother Gavin until the day he dies, which will be long after I do. Then I’ll haunt him to make sure he’s always doing the right thing.

  “Hunter told me Gavin had a high fever and you two were in the hospital all afternoon. How’s he doing now? Do you need anything?” What else did Hunter tell you? I want to ask.

  “He’s sleeping now, but when I took his temperature last, about an hour ago, it was back down to one hundred at least.”

  “Did you already get the prescription?” she asks.

  “No, they said it would be an hour before it’s ready.”

  “I’m going to go pick it up for you. I—I know Tori has been sensitive about company lately, so I’ll just leave it at your door so I don’t bother the two of you.” I’ve been allowing Tori to act like this to my family—my family who will do just about anything to help each other in a time of need. I have the most selfless family a person could ask for, and Tori would rather I push them away.