Authors: Brandi Megan Granett
“Does this mean we can go skiing sooner?”
“Not sooner, Lynnie,” Linden said. “We can’t wake up Bunny too early, you know.”
“Oh, Grandpa, I can. She said I was the only one allowed to. Ever. Daddy, let me hug you goodbye.”
Scott bent and squeezed her in a big embrace. “Lynn,” Scott said, “What times do you take your vitamins?”
Lynn fiddled with the zipper of her new pink parka.
“Lynn,” he said again.
“I’ll be skiing with Grandma and Grandpa all day. I’ll take them in the morning and before bed. I don’t want to do lunch ones.”
“But you need the lunch ones.”
“Daddy, I am fine. You heard what Grandma said. She said I was fine. She told you to relax.”
“I can’t relax, Lynn-love, I want you to be okay. Please take them.”
“Only if you take some, too, in Turkey.”
“Okay,” he said. His voice brightened. “I’ll take as many as you do. And you email me every day if I don’t call first. I want pictures. And stories.”
“Scott,” Linden said. “Me and Lynnie will be just fine. Have a good vacation. Take care of this bridesmaid. See she gets to the wedding on time.”
The drive to JFK mercifully progressed with only the expected amounts of traffic. Despite the holiday, lines for checking in and security moved swiftly. Miranda wondered if the universe conspired to make this trip easy for them.
“We don’t board for a least an hour,” Scott said.
“Yup.” Miranda said.
“A drink?” they both said together.
They found the bar closest to their gate. The bartender stood at the other end of the bar deep in thought with his cell phone. Scott pulled out his phone and started typing out a text message; his brow furrowed in concentration. She tried to bore a hole in the bartender’s back with a stare; then she cleared her throat in another failed attempt. Nothing. Scott typed more, a furious clacking sound erupting from his phone. Two men. Two phones. No beer. Finally, Miranda hopped off her stool and walked to the end of the bar. “Are you on duty?” she asked.
“Oh, sorry, ma’am,” the bartender said. “What can I do you for?” He tried flashing his flawless smile.
“Scott?” Miranda asked, “A beer?”
“Sure, anything,” he said, still not looking up from his phone.
“Two beers,” Miranda said.
“Sure, coming right up.”
“Sorry about that,” Scott said.
Miranda climbed back up on her stool.
“I’ve never left Lynn before,” he continued.
“Never?”
“Never. When she was a baby, we lived in Oregon. None of my friends there knew anything about babies. Not that I would have trusted them anyway. And my parents, well, they weren’t really ready for this. Let’s say it threw them for a loop to be polite.”
The bartender put the beers down in front of them along with the receipt. Scott slipped a twenty on the bar and the bartender walked away, going back to his phone.
“What about Lynn’s mom?”
“It’s complicated. Lynn’s mom disappeared right after Lynn was born. Her name is Cassadee. We met in college. We were friends. We partied.”
“Just friends?”
“Well, there was one night when we were more than that.”
“That is how babies happen, right?”
“Well, kind of. But not that time. Lynn’s not mine.”
“Wait a minute, what? She is so yours. She even has your eyes.”
“Not biologically. Remember that night I visited you in New York? I got the call to come to the hospital that night. I flew to Oregon immediately and rushed to the hospital. When I got there, my name was on Lynn’s birth certificate, and Cassadee refused to see the baby and me. There wasn’t anything I could do. Cassadee signed herself out in the middle of the night.”
“She just left?”
“Yup. She found me a few weeks later at a hotel in downtown Portland. She wanted money to score.”
“Score what?”
“Anything I guess. She wasn’t particular about the drugs. Or the people she did them with. When I wouldn’t give her money, she told me Lynn wasn’t mine and threatened to petition for a paternity test. She said that the real dad had overdosed two months before. She pulled out a stack of pictures. The last one was a guy in a coffin.”
“A picture of him in the coffin?”
“This is why I don’t talk about any of this in front of Lynn. This is why I couldn’t just explain. I don’t want to ever risk her knowing about this.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave her money and tried to get her to sign a sort of adoption document just in case. She took the money and never returned the paperwork. It’s been like that ever since. She asks for money; sometimes I give it to her, sometimes I don’t. I didn’t want her to mess anything up for Lynn, so I used to give in a lot. I haven’t the last few times, though.”
“Can I ask something?” Miranda took a big swig from her beer and set it down.
“I don’t really talk to other people about this, but with you, it’s different. So ask.”
“What’s up with Lynn and the vitamins?”
“She needs to take them. They’re important.”
“Is she okay?”
“Okay? Yes, she’s great. But Cassadee. Well, she didn’t stop using while she was pregnant.” He picks up his beer and takes a hard swallow. “She’s HIV positive.”
“Lynn is HIV positive?”
“Well, Cassadee is. With Lynn, it’s more complicated.”
“Complicated? I thought it was just a blood test.”
“It is a blood test, but her first one came back positive. Her second one came back negative. The third was negative. The fourth was inconclusive. The fifth negative.”
“Five tests?”
“The doctors think I’m crazy about it. They say the evidence is fine, she isn’t infected, but there’s the first test. That first test they did when she was first born, I still remember the scream she let out as they drew her blood.”
“What about you?”
“My tests have always been clean. It seems that Cassadee got HIV and pregnant at the same time, sometime after we had our night together. With all the drinking and drugs, she didn’t carry Lynn to full term; they told me that it was a miracle for a baby to be born so early and at such a low weight and yet have functional lungs. Even with that she had to stay in the hospital for almost a month. She was almost seven weeks early. Had I understood the math then, I would have known right away that the baby wasn’t mine; I could have been spared the coffin picture. We hooked up in July. But with Lynn being that early, Cassadee must have gotten pregnant in August or September. By the time I got there, it was too late, and Cassadee was gone. And well, Lynn was there. And—”
“And what?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Crazy? I think this was a rough spot to be in.”
“I fell in love with her. The baby. It took two seconds. They handed her to me, and I wanted her to be mine. She was so tiny. And they kept calling her a miracle. We all did. It was the craziest thing. One minute I was working on Wall Street and drinking with friends and being everything a man from my family was supposed to be and then I was in a hospital holding a baby, a baby I suddenly loved and wanted more than anything. If Cassadee would have hung around, I probably would have proposed, made the whole thing official right then and there.”
“Even with the HIV?”
“I didn’t know about it right then. Cassadee didn’t tell the hospital until she signed out. And they didn’t think to test her when she came in. Pregnant women usually get those tests before they deliver.”
“She put a lot of people’s lives at risk.”
“Yes, that was her way. Still is her way. She said she never wanted to see Lynn or me again. Frankly, I don’t waste a lot of time thinking about her. Lynn has me, and we are just fine together.”
“You are fine together. Anyone can see that. But doesn’t Lynn ever ask about her mother?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Listen, Randa, Lynn knows the basics. What else can I tell her? Your mother’s a junkie? Your mother left you? How do you explain any of that to a kid?”
“That has to be rough.”
“It is rough. But then most of the time that stuff doesn’t even factor in. Most of the time it’s just me and her doing what we enjoy.”
“What do you enjoy? I’d like to know more about that, too. You’re the first one of my friends to be a parent. Not that I ever would have expected it.”
“I didn’t expect it either, but you know what? I don’t regret it. Not a single minute.” Scott finished his beer.
Miranda liked watching the sparkle in his beautiful green eyes. She noticed a few strands of gray hair at his temples. He looked a little older but still the same. Avery always teased that he looked like a member of the Kennedy clan. “You’re a real JFK junior, all right,” she said to him during one of their Martha’s Vineyard vacations. “You just stay out of trouble okay.” Then Scott grinned, his perfect teeth glistening like a beauty queen’s. “Yeah,” she said, “that just makes it worse. Go back to playing Frisbee.”
The loudspeaker blasted out that their gate for the flight to Istanbul changed. Miranda consulted their tickets.
“That’s in the other terminal,” she said.
Scott looked at his phone. “Looks like we have to run.
Like really run.”
On the plane, out of breath from the two-terminal trek, they found themselves seated in different rows. “I guess last-minute means last pick,” Miranda said. Her seat came first.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Scott said, over his shoulder as he made his way up the aisle.
Miranda took her assigned seat. An older lady took the seat next to her. They watched the safety demonstration with rapt attention. The plane taxied to the runaway quickly and took off without a delay. Gratitude washed over Miranda; the length of the flight alone filled her with dread.
From her bag, Miranda pulled out a book from Avery’s collection of mysteries. This one featured a quilting club of all things, and she tried to get past the first page while thinking about Scott.
“Good book,” said the lady sitting next to Miranda. “There’s even a pattern for a mystery quilt online to go with it. Do you quilt?”
“Oh, no,” Miranda said. “I don’t think I could. I can’t cut straight with scissors.”
“I have a friend with that problem,” the lady continued. “They make tools for that.”
“Really,” Miranda said. She stretched up a bit to try and catch a glimpse of Scott in the back of the plane. “How interesting.”
“Who are you looking for?” the lady asked.
“Oh, my friend. We’re going to Istanbul for a wedding.”
“A wedding. How lovely! I’m meeting a tour. The Byzantine Empire and Churches. Fourteen days. My daughter sent me. She’s a lawyer in California.”
“Wow, fourteen days of churches; that’s something.”
“For my birthday last year, she sent me to the Holy Land. I walked in the footsteps of Christ. That was only ten days, but they were the best ten days of my life. Just imagine walking where Christ walked.”
Miranda didn’t know how to respond. Her response could dictate the next eighteen hours of her life. She took a deep breath. “The Holy Land—” she started.
Just then, Scott tapped her new companion’s shoulder. “Excuse, ma’am,” he said. “I was wondering if you would do me a favor.” He turned on the Kennedy twinkle.
“You must be this young lady’s friend.”
“I am, and I was wondering if you might switch seats with me. I’ve asked the attendants, and they assure me that if you are willing it would be just fine. They’ve also assured me that if you would like a glass of wine, they would happily pass the bill in my direction for your kindness.”
“A glass of wine, well, I don’t really drink.”
“Please forgive me then.”
“No, well actually, I do sometimes.”
“Oh, sometimes,” Scott said. “Then, well, would you mind?”
“Seeing as you went to the trouble to arrange things, no, not at all. Which seat is it?”
“35A. It’s the window.”
“Young man, you should have started there. I wanted a window.”
“Then it must be fate,” he said.
“Fate,” Miranda said. “Nice chatting with you.”
“You too, dear. Don’t forget that quilting pattern is online.”
Scott sank in next to her, pushing his backpack under the seat. His knees touched the back of the seat in front of him.
“Thank you,” Miranda said.
“What’s this about a quilting pattern?” he asked.
Miranda raised the book. “A murder mystery with quilting. Avery’s if you can imagine that.”
“To each his own. I can put on my head phones if you would rather read.”
“Did you not hear me? It’s a quilting murder mystery. I’ve never had any sort of domestic goddess fantasies, certainly not ones that involved crime fighting while making up a blanket.”
“Well, you know, your taste could have changed in the last six years. Maybe you gave up on Updike and Cheever and settled for something a little more accessible. Though I must admit I always loved when you read to me. You picked the best books.”
“Remember the year we read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and then recreated it in my swimming pool?”
“That was better than when you moped about reciting the Petit Price all over Newport.”
“Wait, wait,” Miranda said, almost bouncing out of her seat. “I still remember some of that. ‘One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.’ Lord, I was a strange kid.”
“I hope Lynn is just like that.”
Miranda fiddled with the book in front of her, flipping through the pages like a deck of cards. “Just like what? A dork? You can’t hope that. She could be something better than that. She could be homecoming queen or class president. Not some book worm.”
“Not some book worm? Really? I hated when our trips were over, and I had to go back to my regular life and my regular friends. All they wanted to do was shoot hoops or play Super Mario. When we were together, you created whole worlds for us. That pirate fort you told Lynn about—that was because of Treasure Island. Why wouldn’t I want her to be able to do that? You still do that. I’ve seen those word sculptures of yours all over the Internet. You use words to make strangers smile.”
“I guess so,” Miranda said. “But it makes me smile, too. I love when someone new comments on a post I made or I see that it gets shared. It’s like making a difference in a really small way. But it’s the only way I’ve got.”