Our first stop is Joshua’s house. El presses the horn so hard I have to plug my fingers in my ears. She’s one wild woman. My wild woman. The front door of Joshua’s house flies open. He doesn’t look happy.
Why is he at home anyways?
Joshua storms to our car. “What the fuck, El?”
She opens the door for him. “Get in.”
Joshua sends me a careful look. We don’t get to meet bossy El often. We don’t know how to handle her. Joshua slides into the backseat without a word, he fixes me a stern frown through the rearview mirror. I shrug. I have no idea what’s going on yet except for our location. Yeah, she is driving us home.
We resume the drive, at intervals, El’s eyes dart to the GPS. I should be driving but the stubborn woman won’t let me. Joshua’s eyes bore holes into the back of my head but I’m uninterested in putting him out of his misery. He didn’t talk to me for about five years for a crime I didn’t commit. He can handle this.
The car slows as we near an intersection. Her hands close around the steering and I poke her side. Her growl should deter me but it doesn’t. “Do you think we should tell him or wait till we get to your parents?”
It’s her choice of words for me and how freely it flows from her. We. We are a team.
Joshua grips our seats, his head pokes between the seats and he says, “Me? Tell me what?”
Confusion embeds itself on his face. I don’t say a word. I am enjoying this. I’m enjoying his discomfort, it is like the cool revenge I didn’t know I needed to serve him. It’s almost liberating to punish him like this.
El shrugs. “Ask Brandon.”
I shrug. “Ask El.”
On cue, we erupt in laughter. I stretch my hand and El takes it. Joshua groans, a sound that tells us a lot about his irritation at this moment. When he gets married or finds a lover, he can get his sweet revenge.
“You guys are not funny.” He sits back with a frown and his arms folded on his chest. “El? Is it something bad?” His voice is so small and vulnerable, I’m the one who answers with a shake of my head. “Alright.”
I flip through the radio stations until I stop at a song that talks about loving the right one. I raise El’s hand to my lips to kiss her wrist, she passes me a concerned look and I smile to reassure her. We are fine. She is my beginning, my middle and my end.
Minutes later, we arrive at the Stark mansion. The gate automatically slides open and the front door opens before we park. Our childhood butler steps out. I almost laugh at his rigid position. El palms my face and presses a kiss to my lips. She smiles so big my heart dances in response to it. I love her smiles.
“We are here,” she says.
“We are here,” I murmur.
Joshua groans. “You guys are unbelievable.” He opens the door and murmurs, “You know your way in.”
“Wait,” I call out to him. He groans again like I asked for his life. “Get our parents to the study.” His eyes jerk to my face and he nods. “I need to talk to all of you at the same time. It’s good news, Joshua. Great news.”
“It better be,” he grumbles as he steps out of the car. “Don’t keep us waiting.”
El and I grin at his retreating figure. El plucks the diary from under her seat. “Do you need it?” I don’t. All I need is my words. “I hope they are as relieved as I am.” Her eyes water, she sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of my hand. “Oh, my God. You didn’t kill him,” she says as if she just realised it. “My God.”
“I didn’t,” I whisper.
El nods twice. “You didn’t.” My phone rings, I don’t pick and hers start ringing immediately. It’s Joshua. The butler is gone, Joshua is waving at us from the entrance. We both sigh. “It’s time to go in.”
“Alone?” I ask when she makes no attempt to open her door or step out. She nods. But we are a team.
“I think you need to do this on your own.”
My lower lip juts out. “But why?” She hops on my lap and holds my face in place. Her eyes focus on me. “I want you to be there.” When her lips part, I shake my head. No excuses. “Don’t say no to your baby.”
El frowns. “I’m not saying no. I just think it’s better if you do this without me. They need to hear it from you and I don’t want to intrude on such a private moment.” Her logic doesn’t make sense. She’s family, she can’t intrude on anything. I don’t want to argue with her so I nod. “I’ll be around, I promise. Okay?”
“Okay, Elna.” El giggles at my childish tone. When we are outside, I grab her hands and direct us to the room closest to the study. Even if she won’t be there, she can be close. “I love you. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Staying put,” she responds. “I love you too.”
With her words echoing in my head, I push the door to the study open. It’s clean. No trace of the fiasco from my last visit. Mother is by the window, Father is by her side. I don’t think he ever leaves her side. It’s kind of cute. I never want El to leave my side if she can help it. I want us to be like them when we are old and wrinkly.
They look up at the sound of the door.
“Hi.” It comes out so forced, so fake, so formal. Joshua snickers. Bloody wanker. I cross over to them and kneel in front of my parents to draw Mother into a hug. The hug with Mother lasts longer than Father’s. She’s smiling as I break away from her embrace. “I have missed you,” I say, but more to her. “El is here.”
Mother’s eyes bulge and my head jerks in a shaky nod as I take her hands. It’s the first time El is stepping into her in-laws house. Talk about fucked up dynamics and our family will be the first ones on the line.
“Where is she?” Mother asks.
“In the house.” I unclench my hands. “But I need to tell you something first.” My eyes move from her to Father before finally landing on Joshua. His jaw ticks, he grips the handle of his chair. “All three of you.”
Father gives me one of his famous curt nods, Mother does nothing. I take a seat in the middle of the study where everyone has a view of my face. My hands shake again. This is why I needed El to be here with me. At the same time, I’m partly glad she’s not here. All four of us in this room have a lot to say.
“I’m not Brianna’s father.” There, I said it. A thick uncomfortable silence falls over us like a veil. Everyone is dumbstruck and staring at me like I grew a horn. For their sake, I say, “I’m not her father. Brendan is.”
Words hold power and they are a perfect example of that. No one moves. I shrug their reaction off and continue. Best to get this over with as fast as possible. I hate talking about it. I want us to move on fast.
“I want to adopt her.” No. I shake my head. “I need to adopt her.” I don’t look in their direction to gauge their reaction. “Bri doesn’t know yet but I will let her know. I just thought you deserved to know first.”
A sob escapes someone. I don’t know who because I refuse to look up. I need to let it out before facing them. At this point, it feels like I killed my brother for nothing. I shudder at the thought. I need to erase that word and its synonyms from my dictionary. I am not a murderer. What I am, is an awesome father.
“There’s a guy, Brianna’s uncle. His name is Vincent. He found her mother’s diary and he gave it to me.” My nails sink into my palms to stop the tremors. “He told me something important you need to hear.”
I still can’t raise my head for the big reveal but I inhale greedily because my lungs are burning up. I open up my palms, they are clammy. I don’t like talking about this. After today, I never want to discuss this.
“Brendan was dead before the accident happened,” I whisper. Pain laces my words, I bend over as if in physical pain. The hurt worsens each time I talk about it. “I didn’t kill him. Mother, I didn’t kill your son.”
The unmistakable sound of a cry rips through the air. Mother is in tears. They stream down her face in torrents. Father can’t console her because he’s trying to hold back his tears. Joshua too. I take another deep breath.
I am not finished.
“So this Vincent, he was mad at Brendan for the same reasons I was.” The rest of the words tumble out. Everything they need to know, their unspoken questions, I answer them. “It’s up to you to punish him.”
Mother staggers towards me. Her coat falls but she doesn’t pick it. I meet her halfway and she holds me. She holds me in the way only a mother can hold a son, with such gentleness that it makes me tear up.
“My boy,” Mother says over and over again as she wipes the tears that escaped my eyes. “Oh, my boy.” Those become my favourite words of hers. Her palms press to my cheeks. “You didn’t do it.” My head doesn’t stop bobbing. “All these years of guilt. Of self-hate.” She takes my hands. “It’s over now, Son.”
It is over.
She hugs me again. Someone claps me on the back. Father. Joshua being the adult baby he is engulfs all of us in a group hug. I think I like it. No, I love it. He’s the first one to step back, he grins at me.
A peek at my wristwatch and the alarm bells in my head trip off. My girls. “We need to go now,” I tell my parents. “We will come for a proper visit next week or you can come visit.” I would love them to take the girls off my hands for a week or two so I can spend proper couple’s time with El. “The girls miss you.”
“We will come,” Mother answers on their behalf. She’s back by her husband’s side. “I think I owe one of the girls something. For the life of me, I can’t remember what.” We laugh. “It’s time to meet the wife.”
“She’s in the other room,” I tell her.
They leave me and Joshua behind. I pass him a contrite look and exit the study. I want to stay back with him since I know he might have questions but I miss my wife. We have been apart for about an hour.
“Are you pregnant?”
The question stops me in my tracks. I stare at the door to the room I grew up in. It was the one I asked El to wait for me in. What the hell is Mother talking about? I should walk in there and put a stop to this interrogation if it makes my lovely wife uncomfortable but I stay put. I also want to hear El’s response.
Are we pregnant?
“What? No, I’m not pregnant.”
“You are, my dear,” Mother says again. “You are pregnant, Elna. You have the glow.”
The glow? I raise my hand to knock but stop. The next book I’ll be reading has to be about pregnancies and glows. El is pretty so she always shines but there’s no glow. Maybe it’s a women’s thing.
“It’s not possible.” El’s voice lacks conviction, I hope she’s wrong. “We just started...”
Fucking. We started fucking again this week. Last time was last year at the twins’ birthday.
“Having sex,” Mother finishes for El. My cheeks burn in second hand embarrassment, El must be wishing for the floor to swallow her. “No matter. I am ready to be a grandmother again. Congratulations are in order.”
There’s no reply to that statement.
The knob jerks and the door opens. El walks past me without a word. I look to Mother and a mischievous smile flits to her lips. Noting the question in my eyes, she shrugs and walks away.
Great job, Mother.