Home From Within (35 page)

“This hurts me, really bad, but I think me coming forward as her dad would bring a lot more pain to a lot more people than it’s worth. I’ve worked too hard for too many years to destroy my marriage and my family.”

Jessica could not believe what she was hearing; he was stepping aside so Paulina’s world would not shake. Jessica reached out and touched Paul’s hand. “Are you sure?”

Paul looked at her carefully and twisted his hand around so they were holding onto each other.

“Yeah. I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said, with tears building in his eyes. “But promise me, if she’s in trouble—needs a blood transfusion or a kidney, promise you’ll call me. I need to know you’ll do that.”

“Of course,” Jessica said, exhaling and feeling extricated.

Jessica let her hand discover Paul’s calluses, the sharp edges around his cuticles, even the silver wedding band with an inscription on the sides. “Is Alicia upset you have another child?”

“In a way. But not so much with me, more with you. She doesn’t get the whole ‘under your father’s control.’” Paul rubbed the side of Jessica’s thumb, tracing it the way he did in high school. “She’s feeling nervous about you.”

“Why?” Jessica asked.

“History and facts. If you had stayed, I would be married to you.”

Jessica gave him a look, one that said hello and good-bye at the same time. She could feel tears coming from behind.

“Thank you, Paul,” Jessica said, and then raked her fingertips along the palm of his hand until they fell from his fingers. As she collected her purse and got ready to yank herself out of the booth, Paul reached toward her.

“Jessica, I will always love you now and forever.”

Jessica moved from the booth, not wanting to fall into his words, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Thank you for the gift,” she said quickly and walked out of the diner.

Pulling herself into her truck, she paused a moment to look at Paul through the diner window. He was looking straight ahead then turned toward her fixed eyes. They shared one last flicker of love, and she drove away.

Jessica rolled down the windows of her truck to let the spring air carry away her sadness. Her heart was feeling pity for two lovers that were permanently divided seventeen years ago. No matter how much love they felt for each other, or the inward hell they lived through, they could not move forward together, so they needed to move forward apart.

When Jessica got closer to the city, she zipped up her windows and called Matt once again, leaving a message. “I am begging you to call me. Paulina is on her way home, and I need to talk to you. Please call me back.”

Before pulling into her mother’s driveway, Aunt Lodi called and said Matt had just called her. “Honey, I know this might be hard for you, but he doesn’t want to speak to you right now.”

Jessica felt sick to her stomach again.

“We talked it over and think we should tell Paulina I threw out my back with all the stress, and you’re staying with me until I get better.”

“Okay,” Jessica said slowly. “So that explains why I’m not living at home.”

“Matt packed up some of your belongings and drove it out to my place. He’s not ready to see you yet.”

After hanging up the phone, Jessica sat in her mother’s driveway fishing for a way out. She would drive to Aunt Lodi’s tomorrow and devise a plan to get Matt back. How she would accomplish this was still a blur, but knowing that Matt packed her belongings and shipped them to Aunt Lodi’s felt like the banishment she experienced at the hands of her parents seventeen years earlier.

Jessica walked over to Marilee’s home after she got off work. Marilee and Eddie both lived within walking distance of their parents’ home. Jessica sat on the back deck underneath the shadow of arching trees, drinking iced tea and scrambling to tell Marilee all the sordid details of the last twenty-four hours before her family came home from work and school.

“So Paul said he would be married to you instead of Alicia if he knew you had his kid?”

“Yes. And there would always be a piece of him that loves me ‘now and forever.’”

Marilee took a gulp of her Diet Coke. “Whoa, what did you say?”

Jessica closed her eyes for a second and took in the smells of the yard. She slowly opened them while blowing out the air from her lungs. “Many years back those words would have meant everything to me. But the only person I want to hear those words from now is Matt.”

Marilee smiled lovingly. “Tell me about him.”

“Oh look, there’s that cute boy Matt. Remember him?” Aunt Lodi asked as Jessica pushed Paulina’s stroller through the draft horse barn at the UP state fair. Jason, now ten, was gobbling cotton candy and pulling off little pieces for Paulina, who was now three. Jessica’s return to the state fair had been Aunt Lodi’s idea, trying to pry Jessica out of the beehive she hid herself in. Jessica was attending college, but had no social life to speak of because she rejected all invites from classmates. Eventually, their efforts faded away.

“Yes, I remember,” Jessica whispered. “But don’t say one word to him.”

“It’s good to see you again, Matt,” Aunt Lodi said, ignoring Jessica’s narrow eyes.

Matt looked at them cautiously and then grinned. “The folks from Chicago.”

As Aunt Lodi engaged him in conversation, Jessica found herself trying to hide but having nowhere to go. Paulina was starting to make a fuss about the lack of motion so Jessica picked her up and tried to distract her by looking at the beautiful horse, Moses. Jessica recalled their last encounter and felt drawn to him again.

“You can come on in and touch him,” Matt said.

Jessica walked into the stall, quietly talking to Paulina so she would not become frightened by the horse’s size. But truthfully, Paulina rarely withdrew from new experiences, which only reinforced how strong Paul’s DNA was not only in her looks, but also in her personality.

Jessica could feel Matt’s eyes on them. “Who’s the cutie?”

“This is Paulina . . . my daughter,” she said, trying not to sound defensive. Sometimes people would judge Jessica because of her teenage mother status.

Matt smiled at Paulina. “Well hello. You want to see Moses?”

Jessica watched Paulina size Matt up, and then she finally gave him a toothy grin and said yes. Jessica held her up to Moses so she could reach out and touch his body. Paulina stroked his shoulder blade for less than a minute and then started pounding her fists on him, yelling, “Come on horsey, Go, Go, Go.” Jessica pulled away and gently scolded while Matt laughed.

“I know,” Aunt Lodi said, “feisty.”

“Looks like she’s more like Dad than Mom,” Matt said.

Matt’s accurate assessment caught Jessica by surprise, and she could not help but give him a small smile. Jessica took special care in how she interacted with men, never wanting their attention, never wanting to love another man again.

“Hey babe,” said a blond girl who walked toward Matt with a welcoming smile. She looked like the same girl Jessica had remembered during their first meeting many years back.

Matt leaned over and gave her a kiss, pulling away slowly. Jessica started to place Paulina back into her stroller, but she started screeching and arching her back, making it impossible for Jessica to place her in easily. As Jessica wrestled with her, a swell of incompetence rushed through her but was quickly pushed back by Matt’s voice.

“Now stop giving your mom trouble, little one,” he said as he approached Paulina’s stroller. Paulina stopped squirming to look up at him, and Jessica took advantage of the moment and quickly snapped the straps.

“Good girl. You just made your mom happy,” Matt said and then looked at the blond girl, who was laughing at him.

“You are too much,” she said, walking over and grabbing his hand.

Aunt Lodi thanked them and then asked when they were getting married. Jessica swung her head and looked at the girl’s ring finger. On it was a thin gold band with a small round diamond.

“As soon as she graduates from veterinary school,” Matt said. “In two years.”

“Well congratulations, and veterinary school—how wonderful,” Aunt Lodi said as Jessica gave a weak smile and started pushing Paulina away from all that happiness. It was just too hard to be around young love.

Jessica, Paulina, Aunt Lodi, and Jason continued to attend the state fair yearly, making it a point to visit with Moses and Matt, along with his wife, Anne. Matt and Anne were friendly greeters, making Jessica and everyone feel like extended family members. When Matt and Anne got married, Aunt Lodi gave them a small wedding gift and Jessica tried hard not to make her body feel like stone as Matt gave them each a hug. Matt and Anne were at the state fair one more time after that, then they vanished for two years. That second year Aunt Lodi inquired as to their whereabouts and they were told, by Matt’s brother Seth, that Anne had cancer. Matt and Anne had moved to Minnesota to be closer to the Mayo Clinic where she was being treated.

Matt returned to the state fair, alone, when Jessica was twenty-five and Paulina eight. Aunt Lodi approached him as if he were an injured animal, and Jessica watched as tears built up in the corner of his eyes. Without even asking what had happened, Aunt Lodi said, “I’m so sorry, Matt,” and reached for his hand. He took hold of it and nodded, looking from her face to the ground, over and over again, his other hand wiping away tears that fell softly from his eyes.

“She’s in a better place. No more suffering,” he repeated a few times.

Jessica tried not to look at Matt’s face because she felt herself sliding back into a terrible undercurrent of sadness, one that she worked very hard in the last few years to swim away from. But his tears and the pain in his voice, his hunched over body, it all reminded Jessica of the grief she felt for Paul.

Before she could turn the valve to “off,” tears streaked down Jessica’s face. Matt looked up, let go of Aunt Lodi’s hand, and walked toward her.

“You know this pain, don’t you?” Matt said, looking deeply into her eyes.

Jessica looked up at him and, before she could stop herself, nodded and stepped closer where they quickly embraced each other in their sorrow.

It was Aunt Lodi who suggested they take a walk to clear away some of the air. It had become stagnant with pain.

Matt guided Jessica to a remote part of the fairgrounds, where RVs and campers were parked for the weeklong event. He led her to a small clearing past the RVs, under a few white pines, and they sat on a bed of soft needles. Matt shared the details of watching Anne battle the disease, how each new treatment was met with joy and hope, but with each failure came a piece of her life: first the hair, then the weight, then the light in her eyes. He sat next to Anne as she withered away, and he felt much of his own heart wither away too. Jessica shared that her one and only true love had died at the hands of her father. That she felt responsible for his death and was reminded of Paul every day because of Paulina. Matt’s face turned from anguish to shock.

“Your own father killed the father of your daughter? How could that be?”

“My father’s very powerful.”

“Shouldn’t you call the authorities?” Matt asked.

“No . . . my father is the authorities.”

Matt continued to stare at her and Jessica was starting to feel like she was under a microscope, on a petri dish of insanity. She quickly asked Matt another question to change the topic of her nightmare back to his.

They talked for over an hour, and the sun was starting to fade past the horizon as a whisper of a breeze blew. In the distance, a man’s voice came over the loudspeaker announcing the start of the demolition car derby in the grandstand, and the draft horse pull contest that would be starting in the horse arena in thirty minutes.

“Are you staying to watch?” Matt asked.

“Yes. I have Paulina hooked on it now. I think she’s a groupie, like me.”

Matt laughed for the first time since they spoke. “Groupie, huh? Now that’s something I’ve never heard about in draft horse pulling.” He slowly lifted himself off the ground, reaching his arm out so Jessica would have a steady hand to grab onto in order to pull herself up.

“Thank you,” she said, and then bent over to wipe pine needles from her jeans.

“Thank you too, Jessica. I really needed someone else to talk to. My family and Anne’s family are great, but they keep looking at me like I’m broken. I’m tired of being looked at like damaged property.”

Jessica felt the same way although for her it was all internal. She gave him a nod, and they walked in comfortable silence until they reached the draft horse barn. Matt shared that he claimed Moses once he realized how much better care he took of him than his brother and confided that without Moses, he probably would not have a contending team.

At the end of the night, Jessica surprised herself with the excitement she felt because Matt’s team won, even beating two of his older brothers.

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to Matt?” Aunt Lodi asked as they were making their way off the metal risers to leave the arena.

“No, we’ll see him next year,” Jessica said.

“But I want to say good-bye to Moses,” Paulina said.