Page 23 of The Fix
“Will you go get the nurse, Dad?” she asked. “And take the baby?” Tears began streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t hand him over to a virtual stranger. She couldn’t.
“Do you want to think about it a little longer, honey? If you still need time, everyone will understand.”
“No, Dad. Please, take him.” She couldn’t drag this out. It would only hurt worse.
Her dad paused, so much pain in his expression. “Sure, sweetheart.”
She leaned in and put her lips on the baby’s head, breathing him in as her tears wet his skin. “I love you,” she murmured. “I will always love you, every moment of every day.” Her heart ached so badly she wondered how it could keep beating, and she felt a primal wail reverberating through her marrow.
But she’d chosen this. It was right.
Her dad stood and leaned in, taking the sleeping baby from her arms. “This is the most loving choice, CamCam.” He looked down at his grandson and then leaned forward and kissed him too. “He’s going to have a beautiful life.”
Cami turned her head, the scream rising higher, tears streaming faster so that she could barely see. Itwasright. It was best. So why was she vibrating with the wrongness? “Go,” she choked. She heard her dad move away and gripped the handrails at her side so she wouldn’t bolt out of bed and tackle him, begging to take her baby back, the little soul that had been with her as she’d fought for her life.
The door opened and then closed with a click, and Cami turned her face into the pillow and sobbed.
Chapter Fourteen
Eleven Years Later
His grandfather’s home was an off-putting mix of putrid trash and sweet-smelling flowers. The old man had obviously deteriorated mentally in the last few years of his life, if the place he’d called home was any indication. It’d always been eccentric, just like the man who’d lived there, but it’d never been filthy. Not like this.
Rex ran his hand over what looked like a carburetor on top of the kitchen table, the remainder of its surface piled with other random car parts and old milk jugs that hadn’t been rinsed and were now growing what might be antibiotic farms inside their damp shells. Rex grimaced and looked away. He’d thought he’d be able to haul any junk to the dump using his pickup truck, but it was clear that wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, he’d have to rent one of those driveway dumpsters and maybe even hire some extra muscle.
He noticed the flowers in random vessels here, there, and everywhere. They were all dead now, but at some point—and though he hadn’t so much as removed a lick of trash—his grandfather had attempted to dress up the place with colorful blossoms.
Something about that felt like a decent metaphor for his grandfather’s life, but he couldn’t quite muster the mental motivation to work it out and form it into a coherent sentence.
What hecouldwork out was that the twinge in his gut was guilt. He should have made a point to get back here and check on the old guy. Or at least to say goodbye. He’d justified it by telling himself it was quick at the end. His grandfather had been selling scrap metal one day and then was in the hospital the next. He was dead a month later, unsurprising after a lifetime of heavy drinking and lack of basic health care.
Rex had loved his grandpop, though his mother’s father had been too crotchety for real closeness. But he had taught Rex how to tie a tie and how to look a man square in the eye when you met him, and he’d instilled the pride Rex felt in serving his country because he’d done the same.
But he’d also been quick to anger, and he had a real mean streak when he started drinking. He’d drunkenly called Rex names when Rex was younger—shit for brains, Chief Numbskull, just to name a few.
Names that his grandfather had seemed to erase from his memory completely come the next day, and yet somehow those forgotten slurs had felt tattooed into Rex’s skin. Which was honestly ridiculous because, even then, Rex knew very well he wasn’t a numbskull, nor did he have shit for brains, and the “Chief” bullshit had just been plain stupid. And low. What could Rex do about the other half of his heritage? He hadn’t had a say in who fathered him.
So yeah, that insult was laughable, but it still stung. Because it was the pure meanness that hurt him more than the names, and the fact that they’d been hurled at him by someone who was supposed to be on his side.
Someone who’d been meant to build him up, not tear him down.
He could articulate that to himself now, and yet he still felt the echo of hurt when he pictured his grandfather’s narrowed gaze, staring at him with disdain.
Rex sighed. The old man had raised two daughters who were nicer than he was, but one liked the bottle just as much, if not more. For whatever reason, her father’s constant criticism hadn’t affected his aunt Carolyn. Or maybe she’d even used it as motivation to prove himwrong. Who could say why one person was more affected by casual cruelty than another.
It was funny how getting out into the world and growing up some clarified the place you’d started out. He’d spent eleven years away from Aspen Cove, only coming home here and there for holidays and then returning to his life. He’d met all kinds of people from all sorts of places, all of whom had their own stories, many better than his, some much worse.
He spotted an old photo on the wall of his grandpop’s time in the military. He was wearing army fatigues and standing in some desert, his arm slung over the shoulders of another soldier as they laughed into the camera. A photo of Rex in uniform was tucked into the side of the frame. His mother must have given one to Grandpop. Rex’s eyes lingered on that photo, and knowing his grandfather had tucked it in next to his caused a ball of emotion to clog his throat. He couldn’t explain the feeling that came over him, but seeing that photo there felt strangely like the apology Rex had never received and hadn’t even known he needed.
He made his way through the house and opened the back door, the scent of flowery perfume wafting in on the breeze.Holy shit.He gaped at the wild, colorful display of flowers growing in every possible direction. The last time he’d been there, it’d been overgrown; now it was a veritable jungle. He looked down and spotted a stepping stone. It was one of those mosaic ones made of broken glass, and it was mirrored and iridescent and added to the strange otherworldliness of the space. “You were a nut, old man.”
Rex stepped onto the stone, and from that one, he could see another one almost hidden underneath the bending branches of some heavy purplish flowers he couldn’t identify. He moved forward onto that one and could see another one from there. He paused and then turned back toward the house. It appeared there was some method to the madness here, but Rex didn’t have the patience to figure it out rightnow. What he did know was that this needed to be torn out if this space could become a usable backyard for a family willing to buy the property.
As he pulled the door closed, he paused, glancing back. Some of these plants had been here for decades, and though his grandpops hadn’t maintained anything, there was beauty here among the chaos. Maybe there was a park or an old folks’ home looking to add to their garden that would be willing to dig up these plants and relocate them elsewhere. Perhaps a young couple who’d used every last dime buying a fixer-upper would be willing to wade through this mess for the roses he could smell but couldn’t see.
Maybe he’d put up a listing on Facebook Marketplace and see if there were any takers. And if not, he’d be absolved of any guilt when he started tearing the flowers out by the roots and tossing them in the dumpster.
He returned to the living room and looked around for a moment, wondering where to even start. “I guess it falls to me to clean up for you,” he murmured. Because his mother sure wasn’t going to do it. If he could even find her. She’d moved to a new address with her latest boyfriend, and her phone was off.
