What You Left Behind (26 page)

Joni finally kisses me a couple of weeks later, at work one Thursday night. She does it right in the middle of the freezer section, as we're stocking boxes of rice-crust pizza. I reach back for her to pass me another handful of pizza boxes, but she grabs my wrist instead. I turn, and her lips collide with mine. I don't waste a single second. I kick the freezer door shut and pull her to me. Her kiss is even better than I remembered. She walks me back until I'm pressed against the cold door, but the heat between the two of us is enough to keep me warm.

How the hell did I get so lucky? I don't deserve her. But if she wants to be with me—and right now it seems she does—I'm sure as hell not going to say no.

When we part, the world zooms back into focus. I look around quickly. No managers or coworkers in sight. Excellent.

“Let me drive you home tonight?” I murmur against Joni's ear. “There's something I want to talk to you about.”

“Will there be more kissing?” she asks, grinning.

“I'll have to think about it,” I say with a wink.

• • •

“What are you doing Thanksgiving weekend?” I ask Joni as we drive toward Clinton.

“The usual dinner stuff on Thursday. I already put my Tofurky order in at work. Why?”

“Well, you know how Meg found my father's address and stuff?” We haven't really talked about the pink journal since I read from it at the memorial, but I know she hasn't forgotten.

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking about taking a trip down to New Jersey. To…I don't know…see.”

She looks at me. “Really?”

“Yeah. Why, bad idea?”

“No, I think it's great, if that's what you want to do.”

“So will you go with me? We could leave the Friday after Thanksgiving and be back by Sunday.”

She places her hand on top of mine, resting on the gearshift. “Absolutely.”

• • •

“Are you going to call him first?” Mom asks as she helps me load my and Hope's bags into the car. She's been completely supportive of my decision to go meet Michael, but I can tell there's a part of her that's worried. Whether it's worry that I'll find some spark I've been missing in my relationship with her, or that Michael won't be as receptive to me as I hope he will, or that even if he is, I won't get the answers I'm looking for, I can't tell.

“I don't think so. I'd rather say whatever I need to say in one shot, instead of splitting it up between phone conversations and stuff.”

She closes the trunk. “What is it that you're going to say?”

“I haven't really gotten that far yet.”

She pulls me into a hug and holds me tighter than usual. “Good luck, Ryden. Call me if you need anything. Drive safely. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“And I love you, little monster,” she says, nuzzling her nose against Hope's. “Have fun, you guys.”

I swing by Joni's, load her and her bag into the car, and hit the highway. I hand her my phone. “You're in charge of the GPS,” I tell her. “I already input the address into the system, but let me know when there are turns coming up. It's almost a six-hour drive, so we'll have to stop for diaper-change breaks. And you can have control of the radio if you want. I don't really care what we listen to. No hip-hop though.”

She flips to the same pop/rock station my mom always listens to and starts singing along with a Katy Perry song. Okay, maybe I shouldn't have relinquished control of the radio quite so easily.

A while later, when we lose the station, instead of searching for another, Joni turns it off.

“What are you going to say when you meet him?” she asks.

That's the Question of the Day. “I don't know.” I'd hoped all the driving would help me come up with something. So far, it hasn't.

“Okay,” she says. “Why do you want to meet him?”

The answer hits my lips automatically. “I feel like I won't ever truly know how to be a dad until I meet mine.”

“But you're—”

“I know what you're going to say. Don't.”

“What?”

“You're going to say that I'm already a good dad and he won't be able to tell me anything I don't already know.”

“Yep, that's pretty much exactly what I was going to say.”

We drive in silence for a long time after that.

Well, sort of silence.

Because there's been this quiet hum in my head ever since I laid eyes on Michael's contact info, and the closer I get to him, the louder it's becoming. The hum grows into a full-on chorus, a chorus of people I know. And all the things they've told me—all the advice I refused to listen to—are suddenly resounding in my brain in multipart harmony:

Joni insisting I'm already doing an okay job at being a dad. I mean, the last few weeks
have
been better. Hope doesn't seem to hate me lately. Could it have been
my
anger and guilt she was sensing and reacting to this whole time? Maybe I've been doing better, so she has too?

And that thing Alan said. How I was obsessing so much over finding the journals, finding Michael, finding the
mystical
secret
to
fatherhood
, that I was completely missing the point. That my quest to become a good dad was actually making me a bad one.

And my mom, the way she looked at me like I'd lost my mind when I told her I thought Michael, someone who
knew
he had a kid on the way and
left
anyway
, could help me figure out how to be a parent while my own mother couldn't.

I pull over onto the side of the highway, flip on my hazards, bring my head to the steering wheel, and squeeze my eyes tight, trying to think.

“Hey, Joni?”

“Yo.”

“Can you Google something for me?”

“Sure. What?”

“Michael Taylor, Edison, New Jersey. Do an image search.”

I can feel Joni's questioning stare burning a hole into the side of my face, but I don't open my eyes.

A few minutes later, she says, “Got it.”

I lift my head and take the phone from her. There he is: a good-looking, late-thirtyish guy with olive skin, brown eyes, slicked-back black hair, and glasses. He looks familiar in the most unfamiliar way possible. I've never seen him before in my life, but I've seen pieces of him every day in the mirror. My nose is his nose, my smile is his smile.

The photo is of a youth soccer team. The kids look like they're about ten or so. Michael is wearing a pullover jacket that says
Coach
.
He's the coach of a fucking kids' soccer team.
Which means I probably got my athletic ability from him. And which means one of those kids is probably my half-brother.

I stare at the photo, clicking the pieces together. Michael is a dad. He's wearing a ring in the picture, so he's probably a husband too. He's a stand-up guy who coaches his kids' sports teams. He's clean-cut, well put together.

He is, according to the look of this picture, a good person. He doesn't quite resemble the long-haired, piano-playing, marathon-running guy from my imagination, but he's not a drug addict or in prison or in some sort of creepy religious cult either. And he's not dead.

Which means he
could
have looked me up, could have put in the effort to get to know me. He just didn't want to.

I click off the screen and turn around. Hope's snug in her car seat, a little baby who has no idea what's going on. She looks at me.

Suddenly the chorus reaches the climax of the damn operatic masterpiece, and they sing as loud as they can, right in my face.

Hope's eyes are no longer blue. I don't know when they changed, but they're a bright, stunning green. They're not dark like Meg's, like I thought they'd be. They're like mine.

Even though life has been really fucking hard lately and it's going to be really fucking hard for the foreseeable future, and even though I'd go back and do it all differently if it meant Meg would still be alive and I'd get the chance to play soccer at UCLA…I love this baby. She's more than just Meg's legacy. She's my daughter too.

I'm her dad. I don't need a face-to-face with my non-father to tell me how to begin. I'm already in it, even if the game started before I was warmed up and in position.

One of these days, the “Da-da-da” is going to turn into her first word. So I should work on being ready for it.

Because I'm all she has. It's not her fault she was born into all this bullshit. I'm starting to get that it's the ways I'm
different
from Michael that are important. (Why the
hell
did it take me driving halfway to New Jersey to see it?) All I need to know is how
not
to be the guy he was when Mom was pregnant. And I've already done that.

I shift back in my seat. Joni waits patiently, looking out the passenger-side window, trying to give me as much privacy as possible in this cramped car.

An idea strikes me. An idea so awesome it might actually be the best idea I've ever had.

Wordlessly, I hand her the phone and pull onto the road again. She flips the radio back on.

When we approach the George Washington Bridge, Joni says, “Okay, you're going to merge onto the lower level of the bridge, and after you cross over to New Jersey, you're going to take I-95 South.”

“What happens if I don't get on the bridge?” I ask.

“Uh…you'll head into Manhattan.”

I nod. “Got it.”

The bridge exit approaches, and I drive right past it.

“That was it, Ryden. That was our exit,” Joni says, pointing behind her. “What are you doing?”

I shoot her a smile, the first since this long car trip started. “I'm taking you to Washington Square Park.”

Her face jolts in confusion. “But what about your father?”

“I think I know everything I need to know about him.”

Several beats of silence go by as the traffic grows more congested and the buildings to our left grow taller. And then, all at once, Joni claps her hands, bouncing up and down in her seat. “Holy crap! I can't
wait
to show you Washington Square Park! You're going to love it. Hope's going to love it too. It's magical.”

I laugh, thinking of Joni's magic room, of a weekend in New York, and of all the possibilities of an unmapped future.

I look straight ahead at the city coming into view and tell her the absolute, one hundred percent truth.

“I can't wait.”

This book took a long time to write, which means there were so many amazing people who helped me in various ways along the journey. Please bear with me while I throw some props their way.

To my husband, Paul Bausch, thank you, as always, for being awesome and supportive and excited. And thank you for being interested in cancer research and women's rights (and all kinds of other good stuff) and sending me the article that sparked Ryden and Meg's story.

Thank you to my mother, Susan Miller, to whom this book is dedicated, for being the inspiration for the wonderful parents in this book. And huge thanks as well to the rest of my family: Jim Verdi, Robert and Alyssa Verdi, my nephew Jacob, and John Miller.

Kate McKean, thank you for being such a smart, insistent, cheerleader agent. Ryden never would have gotten to where he is without you.

To my editor Annette Pollert-Morgan, I'm so thrilled/honored/lucky that you “got” this story. Your faith and support throughout this journey, and the fact that you fell in love with Ryden at first sight, has meant everything.

To the incredible Sourcebooks Fire team—Kate Prosswimmer, Katy Lynch, Elizabeth Boyer, Jillian Bergsma, Sabrina Baskey, Heather Moore, Alex Yeadon, Todd Stocke, Dominique Raccah, and my cover designer, Jeanine Henderson—THANK YOU for all you do.

Sarah Ketchersid, thank you for discussing this book so long ago over beers and saying, “What if she's already dead at the start of the book?”

Big, big shout-out to everyone at the New School, the Lucky 13s, the Binders Full of YA Writers, and all the awesome book bloggers.

Here comes the long list! Thank you to all the people I can always count on to come to my parties and buy my books and give me notes and just be all around cool and supportive: Alison Cherry, Bridget Burke, Carolyn Demisch, Caron Levis, Casey Cipriani, Colleen Mathis, Connie Kiselak, Cristin Whitley, Cynthia Farina, Dahlia Adler, David Levithan, Debra Tackney, Dhonielle Clayton, Frank Scallon, Kevin Joinville, Laurie Boyle-Crompton, Lindsay Ribar, Mary G. Thompson, Michael Armstrong, Mindy Raf, Nicole Lisa, Renia Shukis, Riddhi Parekh, Roseanne Almanzar, Sarah Doudna, Sona Charaipotra, Steven Shaw, Victoria Marano.

Four people in particular read this book more than anyone else and offered such insanely amazing advice, I don't know what I'd do without them. Alyson Gerber, you are my hard work and perseverance guru. Caela Carter, your positivity and talent are truly inspiring. Corey Ann Haydu, each thing you do impresses me more than the last. And Amy Ewing, you're not just a crazy-talented writer and amazing friend, you are my rock. Thank you all for being you.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I concluded without mentioning my author idol, Ned Vizzini. Your work has been such a huge inspiration for me, and as far as I'm concerned, you will forever be the master of writing about tough subjects in an honest, unafraid, sometimes serious, sometimes not way. Thank you. We miss you.

Thank you for reading
!

At Sourcebooks we are always working on something new and exciting, and we don't want you to miss out.

So sign up now to receive exclusive offers, bonus content, and always be the first to get the scoop on what's new!

SIGN UP NOW!