Page 60 of The Kiss of Deception

By the time he spoke in plural, my vocal cords had tangled into countless tiny knots. I couldn’t speak—surely wouldn’t have known what words to offer. Toby stared at the white stripes that inundated the playing field, offering a moment of reprieve to us both.

And he carried on.

“I haven’t been here in almost two decades. Wasn’t planning on coming back either. But my Zoe is trying. She might not realize it yet, but she’s trying. What kind of grandpa would I be if I didn’t try, too? She deserves everything I can do for her, torturous as it is—and if that’s facing my pain, so be it.”

Far from a full house, the seats began to empty swiftly. The entrances became exits, what had been everything only minutes prior, a culmination of past and present and future wrapped in 90 minutes of emotion, now became memories in the pocket.

“When my wife died, the biggest part of me died with her. It felt wrong to exist without her, to experience life when she was not here to do it with me. I withdrew from life—refused to live, quite simply.”

The gentle blow of the grass-wind in the late afternoon was a delicate hand that caressed his gray hair in a show of support, granting him the strength to finish his memoir. He rested his overwhelmed throat for a moment, the roar of the crowd fading with their steps back to their own lives.

“I was so entrapped in my own grief that I lost sight of everything around me.” A perpetual shake rocked his head with every word he spoke, like he was scolding himself without stop—like he’d been doing it for a long time. “My son... The death of his mother changed him in ways I’ll never comprehend. Not six months had passed since B’s death and his bags were packed to Europe. He never looked back. He just… left everything behind—his daughter, his wife.”

And his father, too.

Although he didn’t mention it outright, he didn’t conceal it. Toby missed his son. It was humbling, witnessing the old man as he dared to remain so jovial and vulnerable in the face of so much loss and heartbreak.

The wrinkled smile he always wore camouflaged the heavy grief he carried inside—or perhaps it was Toby who refused to let the heavyweight drag down his smile. Perhaps he’d come to see that grief wasn’t just the pain of loss—it was evidence of the love that would always remain upon death and departure.

“Miranda—God knows I love that child like my own—but she was always too busy being the daughter her father demanded to be able to be Zoe’s mom.”

Toby pinned me with the sky-blue gaze he shared with his granddaughter, though his was clean of any traces of grays or greens.

“Zoe was barely ten, left all alone to grieve the loss of her second mother, to navigate the abandonment of her father—and mine, too, as much as it pains me to say. In a matter of months, she’d lost her family. She had no one to turn to but herself. Who she is today is the reflection of that little girl. She locked herself inside, and she hasn’t found the key. But she’s searching, now.”

If I thought that was it, I was mistaken.

That was the introduction to all the things, so many things, he told me.

That during those times he was lost, the only steady presence in Zoe’s life was her maternal grandfather—and how he took advantage of the fragility of a little girl to shape her into the legacy he wanted her to perpetuate.

That, although she rebelled eventually, she didn’t escape the restraints put inside her head. By then, the damage was done and deep, Zoe irrevocably changed by the selfishness of those who were supposed to always put her first.

Toby opened a bottle of aged concerns and remorse. It poured so much light on the woman I know today that all I could see was the warm fluttery feeling in my heart multiplying under it for the little girl and the woman she had become.

Tobias unfolded his hands from his lap to grab mine, curled in a fist, and squeezed it.

“I’m happy she has you. She deserves someone who makes her the center of their world—someone who sees the whole world in her.”

I felt my nod, because that’s what she is.

My whole world.

“Don’t let the cold act fool you—ice can splint and shatter, too. And underneath all those shields lives a sensitive girl who never learned that her feelings aren’t weaknesses or weapons—they’re human. When she pushes you away, push back. When she runs, you follow her. Don’t let her go, son. Don’t give up on her.”

As I drive home to Zoe to do just that—to follow her, fight for her—I replay his words on loop.

To solidify my decision—or to shift it.

Deep down, though, I know it’s been made.

It’s time to go all in. If that requires me to show all my cards, I will. If I have to risk it all for the possibility, I will.

There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, I’m not willing to do for just the possibility of Zoe.

Of us.

I hear it as soon as the ding of the elevator ricochets against the hollow hall.

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