Page 45 of Letters to Lily

“He looked really shocked to see me right before I ran away,” I admitted.

“Um,” Kristin pulled me back so she could look me in the eye then. “Did you just say you ran away?” I nodded my head. “Why did you run away?”

“They looked happy, Kris. His arms were around her when they walked in and they were laughing, and his head was dipped in close to her neck.” Misery was rolling off of me in waves as I recounted everything I’d seen, including the part where the waitress had draped herself across his shoulders when he tried to help me up and gave me a nasty look.”

“A nasty look, you say?” Kristin sat thoughtfully, quiet for a moment before she spoke again. “I bet she never told him.” My best friend hugged me tight once more before standing and announcing, “I’m going to make you some hot chocolate. You’re shaking like a leaf.”

Kristin made her way to the kitchen, but she returned almost as quickly. There definitely had not been enough time to heat up the water. “Sash?”

“Yeah?” I managed to squeak out with a hiccup.

“You said that Kade was with the waitress from the diner, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you remember that time Brad asked you out to dinner, a double date that would have been with his brother and the diner waitress?”

“Yeah, I…” It dawned on me then what she was getting at.

“What is his brother’s name?”

“He’s never mentioned his name. I teased him once about it, and asked if he really liked using that word, brother, and he told me it was helping him to get used to the fact that he had one.”

“Do you think there’s any way he knew?” She asked the question I was currently mulling over.

“He couldn’t have. He gets so angry when I talk about the baby’s dad. Like, seriously angry, threatening to kick his ass if they ever met kind of mad.”

“Well, I think you know how to find Kade now.” Kristin said as she moved back into the kitchen again. “I really would love to be there to see the two of them getting together this next time though. That’s bound to be explosive. Now that I think about it, they do favor one another in the looks department. Brad’s a bit darker of hair, skin tone, and whatnot but their features are really similar.”

I nodded, realizing what had been niggling me just under the surface ever since I’d met Brad. He reminded me of someone, and now I felt like a complete fool, because for all the thinking about Kade I’d done, I never thought about him being the person Brad resembled.

I moved over to the front door to pick up my messenger bag I had flung there when I came in. I needed my phone. “Crap,” I realized as soon as I put my hand on the phone that I hadn’t needed to move my journal out of the way to get to it. “Oh no,” fresh tears started falling again.

“What’s the matter?”

“My journal is gone. It must have fallen out of my bag. Maybe in the cab, but possibly when I fell in the diner.”

“Damn, I’m sorry. Let’s call the cab company and ask them to check with the driver, and I will call the diner and see if the nice older lady saw it.”

“Bernadette, her name is Bernadette.”

“Okay, I’ll ask for her specifically.”

“The letter Kade gave me last year was in that journal.” I wouldn’t cry over my lost letters to my daughter, because I could always write more. I couldn’t replace that letter from him though and that sucked.

“Well, let’s not cry over everything just yet. Maybe we can track it down.” Kristin was already dialing the diner and asking for Bernadette before I could even move my fingers over my phone to search for Brad’s number.

I tuned her out as I left Brad a message, after the phone went straight to voicemail. “Brad, I need you! As soon as you get this message, please call me back, or just come over. It’s sort of an emergency.”

By the time I hung up and glanced up at Kristin she had a funny look on her face. “Okay, thank you so much, I’ll let her know.” She was saying to the person on the other end of the line. “No, she’s okay, just shaken up is all.” She paused a moment, and then nodded her head as if the person on the other side of the conversation could see her. “Yeah, he is. Okay, thanks, bye.”

“Well?”

“Ms. Bernadette says that your journal was found at the diner. Kade picked it up, the waitress girl tried to throw it away before he could look at it, but he wouldn’t let her. Then he scanned through the first page, the waitress said something to him about you always writing letters to your baby in it, and he went ballistic on her. It’s safe to say he did not know about the baby, and he realizes now that she did.”

“Oh,” I said simply. “That doesn’t mean anything though. He was still with her, so what Jason said before must have been true. He really did leave because of me.”

“Okay, I’m going to stop you there, because too much miscommunication has happened already. Let’s wait to pass any more judgments until we can get everyone in one place and you two can discuss what actually happened. I have to believe there’s more to the story than we’ve seen, because otherwise…” Kristin didn’t continue with what ‘otherwise’ would mean. I think she would be a lot like me and lose faith in pretty much everything. “He’s loved you for a long time too. I just never understood how all this happened.” Kristin handed me a steaming mug of hot chocolate then. “Did you get a hold of Brad?”

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