Page 42 of Daddy's Double Surprise

Opening my phone, I pulled up her contact information and thrust my phone in his face. “Memorize her number. You call her from your phone. Tell her she needs to listen to me, or hell, just tell her the truth yourself. I need her, Jackson. I don’t want to lose her.” I saw the past two months of my life passing through my memories in a slow montage of pain and heartbreak. We were so good together; this shouldn’t have been happening.

“Sometimes a breakup is just a breakup, Carter.” He pushed my phone away. “We’re not in high school. She’s a grown adult. You have to give her space. If she wants to work it out, she’ll call you.”

“No, I can’t accept that.” I started for the door, but his hand shot out and pushed me back again.

“You’re not leaving this room until you calm down. We have patients to think about.” He pushed me until I backed up to the stool and sat down. “Take a few deep breaths. Try to let this go a little. If you need the day, that’s fine. I can finish up by myself, but I can’t deal with patients who are upset because of your drama.”

I stared blankly at the wall, letting his words sink in. I felt numb, hollow inside as he walked out and shut the door. Every muscle in my body was tense. I craved a drink to calm my nerves. I couldn’t very well just show up at Rick’s house and demand answers. It was obvious he had pushed Sunny to question me, and I was the one who did the damage. I didn’t even thinkMelanie would have sympathy for me. At this point, all I could do was wait and see if Sunny reached out again. It felt like torture.

The only thing worse than waiting was not knowing if she would ever call me. I had finally connected with someone, only for my family lineage to come back to haunt me. I didn’t know if I’d make it. Losing Sunny felt like losing Hope. But how was I supposed to mourn the loss of someone who was still alive? How was I supposed to go from knowing her so intimately to being a stranger to her again?

29

SUNNY

Mom told me she was coming for a quick visit since I hadn’t been answering her calls. It was the only reason I wasn’t startled when I heard the front door open. I lay on the couch in the Malibu house watching rerun after rerun of shows on MTV, sulking and stewing in the negative thoughts I’d been having ever since Carter told me he’d been lying to me since the day we met.

“Sunny? Baby, I’m here,” Mom called, though it sounded like she had ducked into the kitchen first. I heard cupboard doors opening and closing, the fridge, and then she walked into the living room holding a takeout bag from one of my favorite soup shops. I lazily sat up and shut the TV off as she walked over and sat down next to me.

I said nothing as she opened the brown paper bag and took out the takeout cup, emblazoned with the label from the soup shop, and then a plastic spoon and some salt packets.

“Here, honey, I brought you your favorite comfort food. I want you to eat something.” I texted her earlier telling her I had no appetite. It was true; I hadn’t eaten today, and yesterday I only had a half sandwich at lunch.

Nothing looked appetizing, and anything I ate came right back up anyway. But this soup had my mouth watering and my stomach growling.

“Thanks, Mom,” I mumbled, accepting her offer of a cardboard cup and spoon. The first bite was heavenly on my tongue, sluicing down my throat like a stream through the desert. It might come back up, but for now my stomach was happy to welcome some warmth and nourishment.

“You look so tired, Sunny. Have you been sleeping?” She started doting, picking up the used tissues, amassing them in the paper sack. She stood and shuffled around the living room collecting my cups of water left on various surfaces where I’d sat the past several days.

“Not well,” I admitted, still slurping down the soup. My nights had been restless, my days full of overthinking, numbing myself with television, and napping when my brain got too full.

“I’m worried about you.” She pouted for a second while she watched me eating soup, then walked out of the living room.

I didn’t want her to know exactly how hungry I really was—ravenous—so I waited until she was out of the room before I lifted the cardboard cup to my lips to drink the broth as quickly as possible. It was delicious and my body needed the calories. I was sure the lack of appetite was due to depression and my aversion to throwing up, but I also knew I had to eat. Growing a baby was hard work and took its toll.

When Mom came back in, she sat down next to me. She had a glass of water and some tablets, which I wasn’t sure what they were. She held them out to me, and I narrowed my eyes at her as I set the cup to the side.

“Vitamins,” she said, nodding. “You need nourishment, honey. You’re having a baby. You can’t starve yourself in grief. You have to think of the baby.”

I groaned as I took them and picked up the water, washing the tablets down before returning to eat more of the soup. She accepted the empty glass in return and cupped it in both hands as she watched me take each bite, as if she were policing my eating habits now to make sure I ate every bite, the way she did when I was a kid.

“You always half starved yourself when you were sad, you know?”

Ignoring her comment I said, “I just don’t feel like eating…All I do is think about the baby, and Kira, and how bad it hurts that no man in my life fully respects me to treat me like the woman I am.” After swallowing the last of the soup and handing the cup to Mom, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and sighed. “I deserve better.”

Mom took the cardboard cup and the glass and stood again. “You’re right, you do. And so does my grandchild.” There was little Mom could do to make Dad or Carter grow up and fix what they’d broken, so she did what moms do. She hovered like a helicopter trying to care for me.

“I know,” I mumbled, slumping down onto the couch on my side. I curled into a ball while she walked out, and I listened to the sounds in the kitchen again before I saw her reappear.

“Honey, have you called Dr. Fetters to set up some prenatal care? You need to be taking good vitamins and eating right.” When she sat on the corner of the coffee table only inches from me, I knew she was here for the long haul. I’d end up lying here while she cleaned the whole place and made me eat dinner. Probably end up napping too, but she’d treat me like a sick child instead of just a brokenhearted pregnant woman.

“I haven’t. I’ve just been too emotional. Mom, he really hurt me by lying.” My mind had been consumed with thewhysof this whole thing. Kira had undiagnosed diabetes, and the medication they put her on was so hard on her kidneys, it shut them downwhen they had already been strained from the high sugar she didn’t know about. They should’ve tested for that.

“Yes, well he kept that secret for a good reason. Did you talk to him about it? Asked him why?” Mom’s head tilted to the side, and I closed my eyes. I was keeping a secret from him too, but I had a good reason. To protect him. His reason for keeping a secret was to protect himself. We were not the same.

“I didn’t, but does it matter? They never tested her body to make sure she had good kidneys before they pumped her full of?—”

“Woah,” she interrupted. “First of all, it was a pure accident. Do you think the company wanted to kill her?”

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