Page 121 of Love Lessons

“Where is she?” she asked, peering toward my backseat.

I took a few steps forward, holding up both of my hands in a calming manner. “Whitney. Let’s be realistic for a second here.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You didn’t bring her? You tricked me into coming and she’s not even with you?”

I nodded toward the picnic table in the grass where I’d seen some employees take smoke breaks. “Let’s sit down and talk.”

“Why’d you lie?” she screeched. I tried not to let the fury in her eyes intimidate me as I made my way over to the picnic table myself.

“Come sit down,” I repeated, pulling myself atop the table to rest my feet on the bench.

“Do you know how manipulative this is? I can’t believe you—”

“Sit. Down.”

I didn’t have time for her games. I tried to keep my judgmental thoughts at bay as I waited for her to listen. Finally, she took a seat at the opposite end of the picnic table and stared at me in disgust. “You’re such a dick.”

I closed my eyes for a second, silently counting to three before I opened my mouth. “So, Finley started therapy again recently,” I began. “She’s made a lot of progress, but she’s still not fully healed from you leaving.”

“So let me see her. What the fuck are we doing here?”

“It’s not that simple, Whitney. If she sees you today and then doesn’t hear from you again, it’s going to tear her apart. It’ll be like starting back at square one. And I know you don’t care, but the first couple of months after you left were a total nightmare. It was traumatic.”

Whitney took a deep breath. “Don’t act like I don’t care. I kept away because I knew that was what was best for her.”

“Exactly,” I blurted. Whitney looked down at the ground, watching a grocery sack blow past us. She’d walked right into the point herself—a lot quicker than I had anticipated. “I need to know what your plan is here. Are you going to keep in touch? Will you be here on her birthday and every holiday? Do you want to help me support her? Raise her? Or were you planning to give her one good day before disappearing again?”

Whitney continued staring straight ahead.

“Tell me.” I kept my tone calm. Level. “What’s your plan?”

“I didn’t have one,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I just wanted to see my daughter.”

“Well, for seven months, you didn’t really care whether you saw her or not. So it’s all or nothing. Either be in her life or don’t. None of this inconsistent bullshit. I’m not about to let you reopen the wounds we’ve been working so hard to patch up after you abandoned her the first time.”

The way Whitney scowled reminded me of Finley. I swallowed, feeling sick to my stomach. This shouldn’t have been something a person needed to think about. It should have been an instant, “yes, I will be here.” But it was never like that with Whitney.

Her silence went on for a long time. By then, I’d figured out her answer—but she was too proud to say it. So I decided to coax it out of her.

“If you want to go back to whatever life you’ve created down in Florida, that’s okay, too. If you truly want to do what’s best for Finley—that’s probably it.”

“I mean, I don’t want to keep hurting her,” Whitney mumbled. She leaned forward, hugging her knees. Her eyes were welling up with tears. “That’s all I can seem to do.”

“Then allow her to heal from losing you once instead of prolonging the pain.”

She was breathing hard, running her fingers along the seams of her jeans—silently making a decision. It was all I could do not to sit there and yell at her. Jesus Christ. Either choose to be a mom or don’t—it shouldn’t have been so hard. “You know,” she said after a couple of minutes, “you weren’t always there for her, either.”

That felt like a slap in the face. I wondered if that might come up, so I was prepared with a response. “And I wish I could change the past, but I can’t. I hate myself for it. But I’m doing everything I can to make sure Finley’s life is full of love and stability now.”

Whitney nodded, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Damn it. It was simply too hard for me not to fold when people cried in front of me. Whatever Whitney had going on with her mental health, maybe it was too complex for me to understand. I started to wonder if I had perhaps been too harsh.

And then Whitney said, “I’m going to get it right this time.”

Panic ran through my veins as I considered what this meant. My mind raced with thoughts of everything that would have to happen now—how would I tell Finley? Was this really going to work out? Would we have to get the courts involved again? How would this affect Finley long-term?

But then I noticed the way Whitney cradled her lower abdomen in her hands. For the first time in that conversation, it dawned on me she was pregnant. She couldn’t have been far along, from the looks of it, but there was definitely a bump there.

My mouth fell open.

---