Page 39 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mari

Thirty minutes later, after I’d kissed Leo for courage, we sat across a scuffed linoleum table from Jamie, hot chocolates going cold in front of us. Leo’s hand was a gentle pressure on my knee, keeping me from flying through the ceiling.

Meanwhile, Jamie’s eyes were fastened to my face, his lips half an inch open. Like he was looking at a revelation.

Inside me I could feel a slow-building tidal wave of frustration and confusion, and I focused on my breathing so I wouldn’t scream.

In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.

“How did you two meet, then?” Jamie asked.

My eyes found Leo’s, pleading. “Um, we met in the shop,” he said, his smile gentle.

Jamie’s laugh was high, strained. “Of course you did. Silly question. I’m not surprised that you ended up working with books.

I always had my head buried in one, drove my mum mad.

‘Go outside, you’ll get rickets!’ she’d always say.

Didn’t stop her from giving me a book token every year for my birthday, though.

” He shook his head. “I’m making her sound like she’s died, but she’s very much still alive.

Turning seventy-five later this year.” He hesitated.

“She’d be delighted to meet you, Mari, if that’s something you’d like. ”

I had a grandmother . A grandmother who’d be delighted to meet me. It was like I’d been starving for a year and presented with a box of chocolates. It was rich and sickly sweet, too much and not enough. “That’s nice,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

A lock of hair fell out of my bun, but before I could reach for it, Leo’s fingers were there, tucking it behind my ear. A careful, caring touch, a moment of respite.

“You have…” Jamie started.

I stared blankly as he stuttered, giving him exactly the amount of lifeline he deserved right now.

He looked down at the table and took a deep breath. “Fucking hell. I’m sorry about all this. I’m so sorry, love.”

I flinched. “Don’t call me love.”

“Of course, I’m sorry.” He swallowed hard.

“If I apologize too many times, it’ll be meaningless.

I hope, I hope you know that this is as overwhelming for me as it is for you.

I was going to say that you have Lisa’s hair.

She was always trying to push it out of her face, said it was like a living thing, had a will of its own. ”

Memories like camera flashes. Her long waves tickling my face as she bent down to kiss me good night.

Always patting herself down for bobby pins, or digging in her purse, only for Greg to pull some out of his pockets with a knowing smile.

Of her gently combing out and detangling my hair after my bath, promising she’d teach me how to take care of it myself when I was old enough.

From a mile away, Jamie said, “Graham showed me her obituary. I’m sorry you lost her so young. That wasn’t fair, that you didn’t get to grow up with her.”

I shook my head hard. “Wait. When did she talk to you about her hair?”

“What do you mean?”

“She said it was one night. That she was blackout drunk, and barely knew who she was, let alone who you were. But you said ‘always.’”

The shock on his face at my bluntness was painfully satisfying. Now he was hurt, too.

“Night?” He shook his head hard. “No. No, no, no.”

Then a puzzle piece clicked into place. “And she said that you didn’t know each other’s names. But you definitely knew hers?” The light shifted on the cheerful, smiling image of my mom that had lived in my head for so long. What else had her smile been hiding?

Jamie reached inside his coat and pulled out a rectangle, pushed it across the table.

I recognized the view of San Francisco from the Marin Headlands in the old photograph, the red spires of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A summer day, thick with drifting fog. My young mother laughed at the camera in a black flowered dress and jean jacket.

Jamie was wrapped around her, a man whose boyhood wasn’t a distant memory.

His cheek was pressed to hers, his expression utterly shocked and overwhelmed by his luck.

“I was on holiday with my best friend when she found me in a bar in the Marina,” Jamie said as I studied the picture.

“I was twenty-three. An immature twenty-three, so shy I could barely speak to girls. She was that bit more grown-up, and beautiful, and sparkling, and being with her was like taking three vodka shots in a row. I felt so special.”

I remembered my mother’s generous laughter, the intensity of her gaze as I told her about learning long division or taking care of the class guinea pig. “Like you were the only person she cared about.”

“Yeah. And I thought she felt the same way about me. She wanted to know absolutely everything about England, my family.” His eyes were tender, sad.

He pressed his fingers into the table, like he was grounding himself in the present.

“For a week, we were inseparable. She showed me all the places she liked, took me to the beach, to those hills in the picture.

“By the last day, I was off my head. Couldn’t bear that I had to go home without her.

I babbled out the most rubbish marriage proposal in the history of the world, told her I’d take care of everything, told her she’d love London.

She laughed it off, told me it was far too soon, to ask her again later. And the next morning, she was gone.”

Back to Greg, I realized. Back to her great love story. Jamie and I were just casualties. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around myself, looking for some kind of comfort. Leo tugged me into his side, and I let myself nestle into him for a second before I pulled away.

“It was a shock, learning she’d been married,” Jamie said quietly.

“She and Greg were on a break when you met,” I said. “I have a lot of memories of yelling and slamming doors, but they always made up.”

“So she had you, because it was possible you were Greg’s child?”

“Yeah. She even named me after Greg’s mom, to tie me to him. Mari’s short for Marilyn. But they knew right away I couldn’t be his kid, because of my blood type.”

“It’s a pretty name,” Jamie offered.

I shook my head. “I hate it. She was mean to me until the day she died.” I swallowed back the sob I could feel pressing on my throat, kept to the facts.

“Mom and Greg tried to have their own child but couldn’t.

They did all these fertility tests and he found out he was sterile.

So I was a reminder of all the things that had gone wrong. A cuckoo in his nest, his mother said.”

All of a sudden Jamie’s face turned red and his shoulders got two inches wider. “That fucking… cow . You were a child .”

I put my hand up to block his feelings, all that righteousness decades too late. “I don’t want your anger. It’s what happened to me, and it’s done. I’m fine now.” Though I was starting to hate the saccharine taste of “fine” in my mouth.

Jamie let out a long exhale. “All right. I may have to go to the boxing gym later, but all right. So after Lisa died, Greg looked after you?”

“Sure. I went to school, had a roof over my head, had enough to eat.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s the bare minimum, Mari. Victorian orphans got that.”

“No wonder I liked David Copperfield so much,” I said coolly.

“I spent as much time as I could at my local bookstore. Suzanne, the owner, she let me hang around and talked to me a lot about books I was reading. I started officially working there when I was fourteen, but I’d been learning from her for years before that.

That was where I grew up, not Greg’s house.

He left Loch Gordon seven years ago and didn’t leave a forwarding address, so he’s a great big nothing, anyway. ”

I didn’t tell him the way the house echoed when I got home from school, the way Greg’s mouth had turned down when I tried to bring friends home, or when I’d had to ask him to drive me to Target because I’d had a growth spurt and my jeans and T-shirts didn’t fit anymore.

How he’d disappeared just before I’d graduated from college, and the emptiness had left me spinning, desperately grasping for any kind of lifeline.

Jamie buried his face in his bands. “Fuck, what a disaster.” He breathed, and his face when he uncovered it was a pained mask.

“But then why didn’t Lisa try to track me down before she died?

She knew my name. She knew we lived in Walthamstow, that I was going to be a teacher.

For God’s sake, I even gave her my mum’s phone number. ”

He looked bereft, blasted, lost, an echo of my own bewilderment. Why would she have hidden this huge, fundamental truth? Hidden it from Greg, from Jamie, most of all from me?

Because the person she loved more than anything was Greg.

Not me. Maybe she thought he could more easily forgive one night’s drunk mistake than a passionate affair with someone who’d wanted to marry her.

Maybe she thought Greg would take better care of me, that he would learn to love me, if there wasn’t someone else in the picture.

“She didn’t want to hurt my stepdad’s feelings,” I said finally.

But she’d been wrong. She’d lied, and it hadn’t done any good. Greg saw me as an obligation with a time limit. Not a person.

The tears I’d been holding at bay for what felt like hours were a fierce pressure under my eyes. It was like sleeping with Leo had chipped away at the stone that protected me, and all my emotions were so much closer to the surface.

I was on my own, always had been, and it hurt .

“Mari, do you need a moment?” Leo asked next to me, his brow furrowed.

“No.” The lie came out fraying, like rope pulled too tight. “I’m okay.”

“If I had known about you,” Jamie started.

I put my hand up again. “You didn’t. I was all right on my own.”

“No, you bloody weren’t,” he said stubbornly.

“Again, you were a child . Your mum, Greg, even me, we failed you. Badly. But if I had known about you, I would have done whatever it took, Mari. I know it would have been complicated, expensive, getting a visa for you, or flying back and forth between England and America. But I would have done it, no questions asked.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I didn’t know this man, and hindsight was always perfect. “Because of my mom,” I said flatly. My mom had been the force of nature, the charmer.

But Jamie shook his head hard. “No. She was the woman I had an affair with. Looking back, I know what I thought was love was just infatuation. But you’re my daughter, and to be part of your life would be worth any price.” Deep-blue eyes stared into mine. “ You are worth any price.”

I sat there, his kind words like knives, the story I’d been telling myself for two decades in shreds.

All this loneliness, all the putting on a brave face, all the self-denial, just so my mom and Greg could preserve the myth of their great love.

When I could have had a real dad, younger brothers, a grandma, a family .

The tears surged up, and I stared hard at my hands as I felt one traitor drop after another trickle down my cheek.

“Darling?” Leo asked.

“Mari, love, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Jamie said, his voice loaded with so much sadness, so much regret.

Everything inside me twisted at the apology. All of it was too little, too late. “I told you, I’m not your love,” I snapped. “You don’t know me. You weren’t there .”

He put his hand over mine. “I know, but let me make it up to you. Please .”

I yanked away like his touch was poison, and started to stand. “I have to go. I have to go right now.”

“Wait, wait .” He grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen out of his pocket. “This is my mobile number.” He tore the napkin in half, then held out the pen. “Give me yours.” His mouth, my mouth, was firm. “I can’t lose you again, Mari. I won’t .”

I paused. Something in his vow, the steadfastness, and I heard Leo’s voice, gentle and sure.

I have you . You’re safe with me.

I took Jamie’s pen, wrote the correct number. When I was done, I threw it down and, before he could say anything else, bolted blindly out of the café.