stammered, disbelieving.
Aly knew her mother would have a thousand clever things to say at that moment, but she had run dry. If Noah was at her side, she would feel safe. But Noah was home, doing his duty to the family that existed in his life long before she did, and like with everyone else, she had asked a lot. Instead of Noah’s comfort or Vanessa’s guidance, Aly went from a blind-spot to snow-blind, from inside to locked in, every edge rough, every end loose, every side vulnerable.
Aly offered, “What use do I hav e of him? What point would there be to make here? He’s a stranger. He’s made it clear I’m nothing to him.”
“I believe that,” Maggie swallowed.
“I’ll bet you do.”
Maggie shrunk back. Adam froze.
Aly felt the seam – whichever piece it was inside the woman that was unraveling. Her father had left a mark on Doctor Margaret Stone. She thought of Vanessa.
That makes three of us.
“Manipulative,” Maggie whispered. “I can only imagine what your mother was like.”
Aly didn’t care if the woman wanted to drag her fa ther through a field of glass or spit a thousand venomous insults in her face, but the doctor had approached one of two people she had no right to touch.
Past tense.
Your mother was. Maggie had found her way into Aly, beneath her skin, – charring her wounds, blackening her lips. Her calm disintegrated to ash.
It hurt.
“You know nothing of my mother,” Aly enlightened, eyes narrowed, voice low. “You are nothing compared to my mother.”
“So you think,” Maggie said.
“He loved her,” Aly lied. The last one hurt them both.
~
After the interview, a small blonde man with a shuffling gait retrieved her from the room. After having her sign an official witness transcript on his clipboard, he led her to Greg’s office. Her hands were folded behind her back as she analyzed his space, moving around the room.
A flat screen was placed between tall bookshelves that covered the room, except for a large window with the panels to a heating and cooling system and a vertical column of framed awards, degrees, and diplomas. He had a curved desk in the center, his chair stationed in the elbow. One end was weighted down with papers, a printer, pencil stands, an adjustable lamp – while the other was barren, except for his laptop and his gangly arms. There were no pictures.
This place looks like it belongs to a CEO. No wonder he’s always here.
“So,” she mused, “Any other haphazard teenage daughters I don’t know about?”
He scratched his head, brow furrowing. “Not that I’m aware of. Why are you asking?”
“I just figured, considering Docto r-Margaret-Whatever acts like you broke her heart, called her fat, kicked her dog, and lit her house on fire.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Most people don’t find that kind of imagination charming.”
Aly shrugged. “I’m not most people. So, what’d you do? Abandon her and your unborn child in your rent-due apartment with only a message saying ‘you’ll figure it out, looks like we made our choices’? Or just deport her grandparents and leave her in the woods for the New‘Squatcher-HazeWeek?”
“That’s a lot. I mean, you're being a little… intense.” He scratched his beard, carefully selecting his words.
He stood as he spoke, gesturing for her to follow him. As they left the room, he shut the lights off and locked the door. Ignoring everyone who nodded or stared whenthey passed, he didn’t stop until they sat along the chairs in the front lobby. Suspicious, Aly sat.
Quietly, he continued, “I'm not exactly sure what your mother has said.”
“You left us. What was there to say? She said you worked, but I was her job – notexactly profound, but fair enough.”
“Alyson, she had the opportunity to come with me. She didn't want to.”
She blinked. “What?”
He sat, removing his cap and rubbing its red impression on his forehead.
“I was researching at a local university. Just before she was impregnated with it, I transferred to Albany, and was commuting. I don't know if you're really old enough to understand this now, but that distance... it drove a wedge, and when I got a major opportunity just outside of Ketchikan, she didn't want to come. She hated my work. She thought I was ridiculous. Vanessa told me to go.”
Impregnated with it.
There it was. Years of abandonment, desperate for a proper father to return and complete a hole-ridden family, and that's what she was. An it, something impregnated. He spoke like it was a dirty word, a foreign cuss