Page 46 of Mending Fate
We did still have one more thing we needed to do before we could truly focus on what we wanted to build together, but that was set for tomorrow. Lumen had brought me in to the plan that she, Eoin, Hob, and Mai had created to stop the police officer who had assaulted Soleil. I didn’t like it, but there didn’t seem to be another way to go about this.
At least with Eoin there, I was fairly confident that he and I could keep the others safe. He was also supposed to talk to Brody about helping too. We’d all agreed that bringing another of my brothers along would be wise since we had no idea how things with Clyde would play out. A man who could do what he’d done was capable of anything.
Once Evanne was finished with her homework, we all settled in to watch one of Evanne’s favorite Pixar movies. She sat between Lumen and me, happily wedged into a space that allowed her to snuggle against both of us.
If I hadn’t seen the movie half a dozen times, I wouldn’t have known a single plot point by the time it was done. My attention had been solely on the pair next to me. I felt as if I’d somehow tricked the universe into giving me far more than I ever could deserve. A wonderful woman and an equally wonderful daughter. A family I was only now realizing how much I’d taken for granted.
No more.
I would still work hard and refuse to compromise on quality, but MIRI would no longer be the center of my life. It would be Evanne and Lumen who would make up that core. My rational mind said that Lumen and I were still new in our relationship, but my intuition rarely steered me wrong, and it said she was the one.
This time, I planned to listen.
When the credits began, Evanne looked up at me, her hopeful expression alerting me to what would come next. She didn’t disappoint.
“Can we watch the second one? Please.”
“Not tonight,” I said. “You have a playdate with Skylar tomorrow, remember?”
“I forgot.” She bounced to her feet, her eyes wide with renewed excitement. “And it’s like with my birthday. I have to go to sleep for tomorrow to get here.”
“That’s right.” I stroked my hand over her soft hair. “Now, you brush your teeth and get ready for bed.”
“Can you read me a story?” Evanne turned those big blue eyes on Lumen. “It’s a new one, and Daddy doesn’t know it yet.”
Lumen looked at me, and I nodded, trying not to let either of them see how much that comment hurt. Not because Evanne had meant anything cruel. When I’d explained my dyslexia to her, she’d offered to help me any time I needed it. No, this was all my issue. I hated the fact that I couldn’t pick up any book Evanne wanted and read it to her without extreme difficulty.
I watched Lumen and Evanne go up the stairs and then set about tidying up. It didn’t take long, and when I returned to the couch, I started flipping through channels, trying to find something that would distract me. Jealousy overshadowed all the warmth and contentment of the evening, and I hated it.
I didn’t want to be jealous that Lumen could give Evanne something I couldn’t. No one could truly be everything to their child. Everyone had strengths and weaknesses, ways they compensated for things they were unable to provide. Unfortunately, that fact didn’t make me feel like any less of a failure.
I finally settled on a history special about World War II and tried to get my mind focused on that. I’d only been watching it for ten minutes or so before Lumen came back into the room and sat next to me on the couch. She didn’t say anything as she leaned against me, and we watched the rest of the special in silence. Only after it was finished did she speak.
“She doesn’t think any less of you, you know that, right?”
I didn’t need to ask what Lumen meant. “I know.”
She sat up, turning toward me. “I mean it, Alec. To Evanne, you’re still the biggest person in her world. The most important. The strongest. The smartest. You are everything to that little girl.”
I didn’t take my eyes from the television. “Every day, she has people telling her how important it is to be able to read and write. She’ll study it all the way to graduation and perhaps even beyond that. And every time she hears someone say how necessary it is, she’ll remember that her father struggled to read her children’s books.”
Lumen put her hand on my cheek and turned my face toward her. “No, Alec. What she’ll remember is that you memorized books just so you could tell her the stories. She’ll remember that you were open and honest about things that were difficult for you. She will know that you love her more than anything else in this world and that she can come to you with any problem without having to worry about losing that love or disappointing you.”
If Keli, or any other woman I’d been with, had said anything like that to me, I would have dismissed it as flattery, pity designed to make me feel better about myself. With Lumen, I realized it would never be that. She would tell the truth, perhaps tactfully, but it would be honest. And never pitying. If anything, she wouldn’t allow me to pity myself.
“I love being a teacher.”
Before I could wonder at the shift in conversation, she went on to explain.
“But I hate the way education too often confuses knowledge with intelligence. How the way we determine how ‘smart’ a child is based on subjects the system has deemed the most important, from measurements that have more to do with retention and repetition than anything else. We’ve created a society where we evaluate a person’s worth based on how far they went in formal education, how many letters they have behind their name, their class ranking, or GPA.” She reached over and took my hand, threading her fingers between mine. “You are a brilliant man with a first-rate mind. You do things I couldn’t even dream of accomplishing. Having a learning disability isn’t even the smallest fraction of who you are. It’s no more an imperfection than this scar.”
She traced the scar that ran through my right eyebrow.
“Some people would consider a scar an imperfection,” I said quietly. I wanted to believe her, to think the way she did, but I didn’t know if I could get past a lifetime of struggling to see myself as anything but flawed.
“Some people are idiots.” She leaned forward and kissed my forehead, right where my scar began. “The parts that make us into the complex, amazing people we are, aren’t only the nice and pretty parts. We’re so much more than a single piece.”
God, I adored this woman, and I didn’t even bother to keep what I felt for her off my face. “Have I told you how much I love you?”