me that was you, and… well I wanted to thank you.”
He smiled and looked down. “It’s what was best for everyone.” I noted a little bit of tension in the air before he cleared his throat and continued his previous thought. “The test will be a week from Sunday, and you and I can take Ryland to meet Jocelyn sometime this week.”
“No,” I said shaking my head. “Ryland can go, but not me.”
“You don’t want to be there?”
“Oh, I want to be there all right, but something is telling me that it would be better if I wasn’t. Ryland is going to have to start doing these things on his own, and I think we all know it’ll go a lot smoother without me and my temper in the mix,” I said with a grin.
“You might be right,” Alex chuckled, though it was clear there was something else on his mind.
“What is it?” I asked.
He hesitated, looking slightly awkward. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want… I was just wondering, what happened, exactly?”
At first I wasn’t sure what he meant. “With Jocelyn? You don’t know? I’d assumed everyone here knew all about it.”
“He’s never mentioned it, and it’s not something that the rest of us talk about.”
“Well I guess it’s not something to be proud of, is it?” I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my tone. Everyone here worshiped the ground Jocelyn walked on. Of course he wasn’t going to inform his fan club that deep down he’s a commitment-phobe and a deadbeat dad.
“All I’ve ever known was that at one time he was married to his Anam, and had two kids: a girl and a boy.”
“Wait, married to his what?”
Alex shifted in his seat, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “His Anam,” he said reluctantly, then anticipating my question, continued: “It’s umm… it’s nothing. Just a… sort of a bond…” He scratched the back of his neck, looking away. “Tell you what, you can ask Chloe about that one, she’s something of an expert.”
Ah. Must be a girly thing.
“Well,” I said, hoping if we moved on he would relax, “there isn’t much to tell.” I looked down at the couch cushion, not sure what to say. I didn’t mind telling him, but I was oddly embarrassed, as if he might think less of me if he knew my own father didn’t think enough of me to hang around. Hugging my knees to my chest, I decided to go for it, and hope for the best “He left us,” I said, though I couldn’t quite look up at him, resenting the emotion I felt building up in my throat. I sat there silently waiting for it to pass, while Alex waited patiently, knowing I would continue when I was ready.
“We lived in Maine when I was a kid. Jocelyn worked as a European history professor at the University of Maine and my mom was a nurse. When I was seven, Mom got a great new job at a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh. She was about to have Ryland and the hospital said she could start right after he was born. The day Mom and Ryland came home from the hospital we started packing, and two weeks later, Mom, Ryland and I were on our way to Pennsylvania, expecting Jocelyn to follow us in a few weeks after his semester at the university officially ended. The day we’d expected him to arrive, Mom got a letter in the mail. She’d gone into her room to read it, and didn’t come out. By that evening, my aunt Linda, Mom’s sister, had come to stay with us for a while. I only saw Mom a few times over the next few days, and when I did she looked sick. I assumed she had caught a cold or something, and needed Aunt Linda to take care of Ryland and me so we wouldn’t catch it. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why Jocelyn hadn’t come yet. Aunt Linda was actually the one who told me that he wasn’t coming at all. A few days later, when Mom was finally well enough to come out of her room, she tried to explain to me that Dad had gotten a new job running a school somewhere far away, and that it was what he’d always wanted, and that we should be happy for him, and not to be sad, and that maybe someday he’d come and visit me. I bought it too, until I