When Stars Fall by Wendy Million
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wyatt
Present Day
When I walk down the hall to Haven’s bedroom, Ellie’s insistence I not come back here makes more sense. The walls are covered in pictures of her and Haven through the years. I want to stop and stare at them—examine each one in minute detail. Tear apart the memories and slot myself in. If only rectifying the mistakes in your past was that easy. Instead of dwelling on what I can’t have, I carry Haven until she tells me to turn into a doorway.
The room is a monstrosity of pink. I set her down, awed and horrified at the explosion of color. She beelines to a photo on her dresser. Me and Ellie at the MTV awards. I take it from her. Isaac took this picture. Pain shoots through my heart, and a familiar ache spirals out. The agony of missing him still takes me by surprise; it just flares a bit less often than it did at the start.
“That was a great night.” I hand the frame back. “Your mom and I were really happy.”
“Mom says I am the product of a lot of love—almost too much love.” She sets it in its place with almost exaggerated care.
“She does, does she?” I examine her artwork, pictures, mementos of places she’s traveled, things she’s done with Ellie and her family. A life she’s lived without me.
“Do you think that too?” Haven asks. “Did you love my mom like that?”
I turn and consider Haven’s question. Rage at Ellie simmers inside me, but underneath my anger is an emotion that’s been my constant companion for years. Dulled by the drugs for too long, but always present nonetheless. “I will love your mother until the day I die. I’ll probably love her even after that, wherever that is.”
“I’m not sure you can love someone after you die?”
“Someday I’ll explain that idea better.”
Haven grabs artwork and a few of her other treasures to show me. I sit on her bed, clutching the newest piece she’s shoved into my hands.
“You like art?” That doesn’t come from me or anyone in my family.
“No, I like sports better. They’re all pretty easy for me. Mom says I’m like you that way.”
“Did your mom talk about me a lot?” I don’t know my daughter, but she believes she knows me. Such a strange imbalance to grapple with on top of everything else.
“If I asked, yeah. Oh!” She goes to her bookshelf and removes a thick scrapbook. “We used to go through this when I was younger and I asked about you. Do you want to see?”
“Sure.” I set the book on my lap. On the cover is the same photo of me and Ellie from the MTV awards.
Haven perches on the bed beside me and helps me keep the large pages open. My heart pounds when I realize what Ellie has done. The scrapbook starts with snapshots from Love Letters from Spain, and then each page progresses from there. She mapped our relationship.
Haven is talking, but I’m having a hard time concentrating. She’s retelling the story of me and Ellie. She’s animated, completely into the tale, knows that period of my life almost better than me.
My heart cracks into a million pieces. What has Ellie done? Why would she do this? Her telling me earlier this week I was everywhere and nowhere makes a new kind of sense. Snippets of Haven’s stories penetrate my brain. The memories. So many recollections she saved for our daughter.
“Dad?” She stops mid-sentence. “Why are you crying?”
I touch my face and realize she’s right. I brush the tears away self-consciously. Not that I don’t cry. Hell, I can cry on cue. But this is different. I’ve never cried and not known I was crying. The piercing pain in my chest needs to go away. This ache needs to be softened. A little something to dull the pain. So many options. My tongue remembers the sensation of a Percocet rolling around, being flipped to the back of my throat. One pill would make this ache go away.
Get a grip, Wyatt. I am not going there.
“Happy tears.” Not sure I sound convincing. Not much of an actor at the moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I realize Ellie is standing in the doorway. I stiffen at her scrutiny. “We’re fine, Ellie. You don’t need to watch over us.”
She runs her hands down her face and brushes a few tears away, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Why is everyone crying? We get to be a family now, right?” Haven looks between me and Ellie.
“That’s a complicated question,” Ellie whispers.
“Why?” Haven asks.
“There are grown-up things your dad and I have to sort out.” Ellie’s shoulders rise and fall almost imperceptibly.
Dad. So weird. I pat Haven’s leg. “No matter what goes on between your mom and me, I’m in your life forever. You’re not getting rid of me.”
She flings herself at me, hugging me tightly. I stare at Ellie over Haven’s shoulder, and I set my jaw. She’s not locking me out of any more moments with my daughter.
Ellie vanishes from the doorway. The urge to follow her is instinctual. I release Haven and half rise from the edge of the bed, but Haven drags me back. “You didn’t finish looking at the book.” She flips through the pages in rapid succession.
“Sorry.” I examine her as she sorts through the story of my life. At her hairline is the tiniest scar. Hesitantly, I brush her hair aside. She freezes and her expression turns quizzical. “What happened here?” I ask.
Haven runs her index finger over the mark. She looks thoughtful for a moment and then grins. “Australia. I banged my head on a reef when Mom and I tried to learn to surf.”
“When was that?” She hurt herself enough to leave a scar, and I wasn’t there.
“Last year. I kept begging Mom to let me try. We don’t get waves like that here. She finally let me and then I hurt myself. She was pretty upset.”
“I bet.” I can’t imagine how I’d react to seeing my daughter with a head injury. It’s been bad enough watching my nephew hurt himself. The instinct I’ve always had with Ellie—to protect, to save—is already magnified when I look at Haven. “You were okay, though? Just this tiny scar?”
“Yeah, just that.” She flips another page in the book.
Every entry I see is another notch in my aching sadness. After another flip, one of the photos catches my eye. I stall her hand before she can zip past.
“Are you looking at Uncle Isaac?” Haven glances from me back to the photo.
“Yeah.” So many of Isaac’s things I burned in a drug-fueled rage after he died. So stupid. Getting rid of the remembrances didn’t make me miss him any less.
“Does talking about him make you happy-sad like it does my mom?”
“That’s what your mom calls it?”
“Yeah, she says the memories are happy, but it makes her sad she doesn’t get to make any new ones. Talking about you used to make her happy-sad too.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, willing myself not to cry again. “That sounds about right.” The words squeeze out of my tight throat. “I might call mine sad-happy. Sad I missed so much, and happy I won’t ever miss any more.” I tug at the neck of my shirt. It’s hot in here. Shifting the book off my lap, I stand. “I need some air.” I glance around her room for a door or window I can open.
“The air conditioning is on. But there’s a balcony off my mom’s room.” Haven jumps off the bed and leads the way through to the rear of the house.
When we enter Ellie’s bedroom, the space is wrong and right at the same time. It smells like her in here—a weird mixture of flowers and vanilla. The scent stops me in my tracks. The decor is neutral like the rest of the house, and the photos on the wall tell the story of her life with Haven, here in Bermuda. I’m nowhere to be found. Of course I’m not, but the ache in my chest spreads like a virus.
Haven opens one of the French doors and turns to me. “There are a couple chairs out there. I’m getting a drink. Do you want one?”
I shake my head and step outside. With a deep breath, I take my gum out of my pocket. I pop two pieces out of the foil and stuff them into my mouth. The motion of putting them on my tongue is comforting. Better gum than the alternative.
“Back in a minute,” Haven says, retreating into the house.
The ocean is calm again today. Haven is right, there isn’t much of a surf on this side of the island. The humid air penetrates my lungs when I breathe in and out, stilling the chaos inside me. Outside is good. My brain clicks back to a photo I saw in Ellie’s room. On the dresser as we walked through was a photo in a frame. Something pinches my consciousness. Why did it jump out at me? I step into the room and cross to take a closer look.
Ellie, Haven, and some other guy. One big, happy family.
Another surge of anger roils through me. I’m tempted to throw the picture, to smash it on the floor or to drop it from Ellie’s balcony and watch it shatter below. In my pocket, I squeeze my stress ball while staring at the photo.
“What are you doing?” Ellie’s voice comes from the doorway.
I hold up the photo to her without saying a word.
“I dated him for a couple of years. We broke up six months ago. I just haven’t gotten around to putting a new picture in the frame. It’s been ten years. Did you really think I wouldn’t have dated anyone else?”
“That’s not the problem.” I bite down hard on the gum, chewing with force. “The problem is him in the photo looking as though he’s Haven’s dad.”
“He was good to her.” She takes the photo from my hand, tension radiating off her. She opens a drawer and lays it in, facedown.
“I should have had a chance to be good to her.”
“You have a chance now.”
“Yeah, thanks to TMZ. I can’t even believe TMZ made me a father.”
“I’m sorry.” There’s more steel in her voice than there was last time. “I never wanted you to find out that way.” She’s reached the end of her apology rope. Too bad. She needs to make amends for the last ten years. One or two conversations aren’t going to heal those wounds.
“I’ve been here for days. I’m not convinced you were ever planning to tell me about Haven while I was capable of understanding what it meant.”
“I wanted to make sure you were clean and sober,” she says. “Haven can’t be thrown into our old life.”
“My old life hasn’t existed for a couple of years.”
“Yeah, I’m sure with Anna around there’re no drugs or violence or shady people.”
“That’s not me. I’m not doing those things.”
“You’re a party to them. You’re playing with fire. And honestly, I’m not comfortable with Haven being in a house with Anna when she’s doped up and unpredictable.”
“You know how I feel about my sister.” My anger rushes out of me like water through a crumbling dam. I don’t even want that lifestyle for my nephew, but there isn’t much I can do other than be there.
“You love her. Consider yourself responsible. I understand. But you have a daughter now. You have to protect her. Even when that means you’re protecting her from Anna.”
“Who’s Anna?” Haven is in the doorway, sipping from her cup.
“I’m sorry, honey.” Ellie flushes when she realizes Haven heard her. “I shouldn’t be talking to your dad about this stuff right now.”
“Who is she, Dad?” She cocks her head.
“Anna’s my sister.” Watching her try to best her mother is a little amusing. Ellie shakes her head and gives me an annoyed look. “She was going to find out at some point. I think there have probably been enough secrets, don’t you?”
“Anna has the same sickness as your dad.”
“Except worse,” I chime in.
“Wyatt,” she hisses a warning. “She’s nine. She doesn’t need all the honest details.”
“I get to make some of those decisions now, right?”
Ellie’s eyes widen, and there’s a chance she might start levitating. Haven recognizes her mood.
“I’m going to talk to Aunt Nikki for a minute. When you’re done fighting, Dad, do you want to go swimming?”
“Sure.” Her careless use of the word Dad echoes in the room. My anger has subsided for now, and I’m sort of enjoying winding Ellie up.
“No. No swimming.” Ellie slashes her hand through the air. “There will be people taking photos.”
“Let them take photos. They might as well use their lenses and get shots from far away than pursue us when we try to leave.”
“It’s never an either-or situation. It’ll be both.”
Haven is gone from the doorway. She got Ellie’s sense of what’s appropriate. I would have stayed for this conversation as a kid. My parents’ verbal fireworks made them seem as though they cared about something.
Parents. We’re her parents. I’m the one Haven is looking at and wondering about.
“This isn’t going to work. We need to present a united front on things.” Ellie sighs.
“I won’t cave to whatever you think is best. I get a say now.” She won’t railroad me into towing an invisible, arbitrary line she’s created. “You can’t pretend I don’t.”
“A say is fine.” She searches my face, frustration and sadness mingling. “But she’s impressionable. She’s looking at us to make good choices and decisions. What’s easy isn’t always what’s best.”
“Sometimes they’re the same. Why do you think hiding out is what’s best? The storm is at the door. It’s out there. We control the spin. This is PR 101. Haven and I go swimming. Hell, you can come too, if you want. We appear to be a happy, functional unit. If there doesn’t appear to be drama, there’s less drama. They get their photos and their made-up stories.”
She crosses her arms.
“She won’t even know they’re taking the photos. We understand what the crush of the press is like.” Even though I’m pissed at her, my unwavering desire to shield her from anything bad keeps my anger in check. Sadness coats her, and I want to figure out how to fix it, even if she caused her own misery.
“I never wanted this level of attention for her. It’s why we live here.”
“Come outside with Haven and me. Let them get their photos. Maybe they’ll think their scoop isn’t a scoop at all. Maybe they’ll think they were the ones who were duped for ten years.”
“Wyatt, I’m—”
“Get changed, Ellie. Let’s go put on a show. We need to protect our daughter, and this is the best way I know how.”
