Authors: A. L. Jackson
“Goddamn it, Christian. What in the hell were you thinking?”
That was the problem—I wasn’t thinking.
I sank onto my couch, buried my head in hands, and looked back up at him. “I love her.”
He scratched at the back of his neck in discomfort, softened his demeanor. His commitment would always be with Elizabeth, but I also felt somewhere along the way we’d become friends and he believed me when I told him I loved her.
“That was really stupid, Christian . . . you should have known you needed to take it slow with her . . . she’s . . . she’s . . .” He turned away and blew out a long breath. “You really fucked her up, man.” He cut his eyes back to me, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about what happened this last weekend.
“I know.”
“Give her a couple of days . . . she needs some space. She’s not doing so great right now.”
I nodded, and I really did try.
But it didn’t take long for the guilt I felt over Saturday night to transform and for my anger to grow.
I couldn’t believe Elizabeth would allow this to happen to our daughter. I sat outside Lizzie’s school on Tuesday afternoon. I expected Natalie to be there, that Elizabeth would have asked her to pick Lizzie up rather than me as I had for so many months, but I needed Lizzie to see me, to understand that I did not intend to
leave
her.
Looking at Lizzie was like looking at ghost. My child was missing and in her place was a shell with an ashen face, pale and wan. She plodded along dragging her feet, her only lifeline the doll she clutched protectively to her.
From the car, I watched her from across the street. Only when she felt me did her numbness subside, a second’s recognition and a flicker of life. Natalie trailed her gaze to mine and smiled sadly as she nudged Lizzie forward and into her car.
For the first time, my calls to Elizabeth were not filled with apologizes but with accusations.
As much as I loved her, I hated her for placing our daughter in the middle of something that was so obviously about the two of us.
My anger and concern only grew as the next days passed.
Thursday, when every call I’d made had been unreturned, I made a call I had never wanted to make.
A few hours after first speaking with him, my attorney, Lloyd Barrett, called back and laid out what he had found. I sat at the small table in my kitchen with my elbows grinding into the tabletop, palming the back of my head as I listened to him first read through the record of eviction during the first year of
Lizzie’s life, just months after Elizabeth had moved to San Diego. I hadn’t known about it and was still trying to digest the information when Lloyd continued. His next words were like daggers that went straight through my chest as he read word for word the police report of the 911 call from a little girl screaming for someone to help her mommy, the beaten woman identified as Elizabeth Ayers, the paramedics, and the arrest of Shawn Trokoe.
With a hint of disappointment he said, “That’s all we have, but it should be enough to at least provoke some doubt in her judgment.”
That’s all?
I cursed myself, wanted to curse him and ask him how either of these things didn’t reflect upon me and
my
judgment.
Lloyd pushed on through my silence, knew me we well enough that he sighed through the phone as he offered advice. “Listen, Christian, I know this is rough on you, but with your history, you’re going to have to use this or you won’t have a leg to stand on. You had no contact with this child for five years, and that’s not going to sit very well with any judge that I know.”
I sat with my phone to my ear, saying nothing, having no idea how to proceed. The last thing I’d wanted to do was drag Elizabeth’s name through the mud, shed her in a negative light, and paint her as a bad mother, because I truly didn’t believe that she was. I just wanted mediation, a legal agreement saying I had some right to see my daughter.
“Chances are we’ll settle this thing out of court, and we may not even need to use this, but you have to have somewhere to start.” I knew he meant it as encouragement, but he really didn’t understand the consequences of what he was asking of me, because I knew giving the go ahead on this would seal our fate. Elizabeth would never forgive me, and I’d never be given another chance to prove to her how much I really loved her. It
destroyed me to think of shutting that door forever, but the truth was she had broken my heart—had broken my daughter’s heart.
I didn’t
want
to break the promise I’d made to never put her through a custody battle, but I would
never
break the promise I’d made to Lizzie—that as long as I lived, I would never leave her.
Matthew’s and Mom’s voices played loudly in my mind,
Give her time . . . give her time
. I just didn’t know how much time I had left, how much longer I could tolerate watching my little girl suffer.
I raked a hand through my hair and slumped further onto the table. “Just . . . give me a couple of days, and I’ll let you know what I decide.”
~
Thursday night was fraught with nightmares I wasn’t entirely sure were dreamed as I wrestled with the decision that had to be made. I contended with the part of my heart that said I would wait for Elizabeth forever, the part that loved her so much it caused me physical pain.
I pushed that part aside as I rose from my bed Friday morning so fatigued and drained that I could barely stand. I went into the office in a haze with no idea how I would survive this, but knowing for Lizzie, I would let Elizabeth go.
By late afternoon, I felt myself ripping apart, coming unglued. The pain and guilt and anger I’d shouldered all week had become too much. The last bit of hope I’d held onto withered when I entered the hollow space of my condo. I shed my suit for jeans and a t-shirt, wishing for the Friday before when Lizzie and I had shopped and made plans, how she’d buzzed in excitement as I’d helped her dress for her mother’s birthday. It was the same night Elizabeth had agreed to go to New York with me—the night she held me in her arms at the foot of her staircase.
Instead, I sat on the couch with my phone in my hand, building up the nerve to make the call that would sever Elizabeth from my life forever. I looked out at the boats bobbing in the bay and pictured Lizzie’s face and hands pressed to the window, could hear her sweet voice as she counted them, and knew there was no other choice to make.
The light tapping at my door stopped me mid-dial. It was a tiny sound coming from low on the door—a knock I knew could come from no other person than the one I wanted most.
Crossing the room in two steps, I tore the door open. For a moment, I froze as I came to the realization that I wasn’t hallucinating and Lizzie and her mother were actually standing in my hallway. Lizzie stared up at me. She looked sick, her little body weakened with the wear of the week. Her deadened expression was gone, though, her cheeks pink and chapped and stained with tears. The emptiness had vanished from her eyes. In its place was both hope and despair. I lowered myself slowly, reached for her, and pulled her into my arms.
She wrapped her sweet arms around my neck and stuttered over the tears that began to fall, “Daddy.”
The emotions I’d repressed the entire week in my shocked grief now fell free in an overwhelming surge of relief, and I sobbed into her neck as she sobbed into mine. I chanted her name, hardly able to believe she was really here.
“Lizzie,” I said again as I pulled away just enough to see her and to wipe the tears from her cheeks. I held her face between my hands, probably a little too tight. “I missed you so much, baby girl. Do you understand how much I missed you?” I stressed the words, desperate for her to understand I’d never wanted this separation. She nodded and cried as she spoke in her soft angel’s voice, “I missed you too, Daddy.” She scraped the nails of her fingers against my skin, dug in, and hung on.
Exhaling heavy and deep, I brought her against my chest and she locked herself to my neck. I squeezed her with one arm around her waist and a palm on the back of her head, looking up at Elizabeth over Lizzie’s shoulder.
I was almost shocked to see she looked like death, as if she’d been to Hell and taken me with her—the fatigue, worry, and hurt marring her face the perfect partner to mine. Her jaw quivered and shook from where she stood, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She swallowed and looked away as tears streamed down her face.
I stood and pulled my daughter up with me. Lizzie latched her legs around my waist just as tightly as she wound her arms around my neck, whimpering as if she were terrified I might let her go. I shushed her, ran my hand through her hair, and promised she wasn’t going anywhere—that I wasn’t going anywhere. I did not intend to let her out of my sight anytime soon.
I turned and left the door wide open. Elizabeth could stay or she could go. At this point, I couldn’t bring myself to care. The only thing that mattered right then was the shaking little girl in my arms.
I carried Lizzie across the room to the adjoining kitchen and rested her on the counter, the distance of the large room and my back to Elizabeth our only privacy. I didn’t go far, just inched back enough so I could drink in her eyes, read her expression, and understand what she felt. With her hands in mine, I asked her, “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
Were any of us okay?
Would we ever be?
Lizzie shed a new round of tears, trembled under my hands, and said, “You left me, Daddy . . . I was so scared you
might never come back.” I had no idea how we would ever be all right or if I could ever forgive Elizabeth for what she’d done.
I pressed my lips to her head, smoothed away the matted locks of hair sticking to her cheeks. “I’d never let that happen, princess.”
I held her there for the longest time, and while she cried a week’s worth of tears out against my shirt, I murmured every reassurance I could find. I told her that I had been thinking of her every second, promised her that no matter what, her mother and I would make sure this never happened again.
I felt Elizabeth’s movement from behind, the sound of the door close, and the soft shuffle of her steps over the hardwood floor. When her weight settled on my leather couch, I knew she had chosen to stay.
Honestly, I had no idea what to do with her as she sat silently in my living room, had no idea whether I wanted to scream at her or thank her, whether I should tell her to leave or her beg her to stay.
When Lizzie finally settled down, I pulled away and smiled at her, touched her nose in a playful way, desperate for some sort of normalcy with my daughter. “Are you hungry, baby girl?”
She nodded and smiled a real smile of tiny gapped teeth and dimples.
“Come here.” I helped her from the counter and led her to the refrigerator. There was little there, mostly delivery leftovers I’d ordered and hadn’t been able to stomach over the last week. In the microwave, we heated up orange chicken and rice from the Chinese place down the street while we shared small smiles and tender embraces that still bore the sadness of our separation. I fixed her a plate and set it in front of her. Kissing her on top of her head, I whispered, “Here you go, sweetheart.”
She grinned up at me. “Thanks, Daddy.”
We ate together side-by-side with my arm wrapped possessively over her shoulder. We sat with our backs to Elizabeth because I wasn’t ready to face her any more than she was ready to face me. Between bites, Lizzie and I murmured words of love and encouragement to each other and little things I hoped would restore her confidence. She’d smile up at me while she chewed, though I could still sense her wariness in the way she clung to the hem of my shirt and watched me as if I might suddenly disappear.
I swallowed down the anger it provoked, reminding myself that I had to accept the fact that part of this had been my fault too.
Lizzie ate her entire plate plus a bowl of vanilla ice cream that had been left over from the last dinner we’d shared here when we’d laughed and made sundaes. She fed me little bites with her spoon and giggled, and for the first time, I smiled, unrestrained and uninhibited as I leaned in to tickle her tummy.
“I love you so much, Lizzie.”
She climbed onto my lap, kissed my cheek. “I love you even more, Daddy.”
I laughed with the game she wanted to play, knowing I had already won because there were no bounds to how much I loved my child, but teased and poked her belly anyway. “Nu-uh, I love you more.”
“Well, I love you this much, Daddy.” She spread her tiny arms wide and I wrapped her in mine.
~
I flipped off the light switch in the small second bedroom. When I had bought this place, I could never have imagined it would eventually become Lizzie’s room. There was a warm glow resonating through my body, a peace that she finally was here. I’d lain beside her until I was sure she was in a deep sleep, sure
that she felt safe and loved and secure. When the fists curled in my shirt finally loosened and her soft breaths spread out in an even rhythm over my face, I’d slowly risen from the tiny twin bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and kissed her for what seemed the millionth time that day. I would have been content to watch her sleep all night, but it was time to confront what was waiting for me in the other room.
At the end of the hall, I stopped and looked out to where Elizabeth sat at one end of the couch in the muted light of my living room. Her back was to me, though I saw her face reflected in the darkened panes of the windows—so sad and forever beautiful.
I swallowed, and she looked up and caught me staring at her in the glass—so incredibly sad. I wanted to wipe her sadness away, but I now doubted that I ever could.
I moved to the opposite end of the couch, sat on the edge of the cushion, and slouched over my thighs with my hands dangling between my knees. There was so much to say, but I had no idea where we’d ever begin, and I feared that this may very well be the end. Minutes passed by while nothing was said, the room quiet except for the sound of our breathing in the sadness and apprehension that hung stagnant in the air.