Comeback (35 page)

I’d also learned that forgiving was a choice. Forgiveness wasn’t a feeling. It wasn’t an emotion that I had no control over. It was a conscious choice, something I could do whenever I wanted. Not only that but allowing resentment to fester would only make it more likely that I would end up trying to escape my misery by searching out chemical relief.

“Uncle Nicky?” Hugo said, jarring me from my thoughts.

“Yeah? Sorry.” I smiled to put him at ease. “What’s up, buddy?”

“Does this mean you’re not playing in the game tomorrow night?”

Jim had told me to take as much time as I needed because family is more important than a game. Now that I knew Hugo was going to be all right, I supposed I
could
fly back to Dallas in time to play tomorrow. That would mean leaving the kids with Jessica again, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that right away.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said after taking a moment to think.

“You should play,” he said decisively. “
You
didn’t break an arm.”

WHEN HUGO AND
I made our way out to the waiting room—he got the royal treatment with an orderly pushing him in a wheelchair—Jessica was still there. I hadn’t run her off, apparently, and I was at once annoyed and relieved. Nils was in her lap and holding on for dear life, and Elin was clutching tight to her hand. There was a part of me that wanted to tell Jessica to leave. To get away from my kids. That I’d had second thoughts—and third and fourth—and maybe it was best if she just move on with her life and let us move on with ours.

I couldn’t do that, though, because I was as attached to her as the kids were.

The way Hugo had begged me not to be angry with her was proof enough that they needed her in their lives, and seeing the way the other two were seeking her out for comfort would have done the trick otherwise. There were other people here they could have gone to. Soupy and Rachel were still here with their family, and a few of the other guys’ wives had shown up, as well, so the munchkins could have had their pick of adults or their friends. But they’d gone to Jessica.

For that matter, she was the one I always went to for comfort. However angry I might be with her, the only thing I wanted to do was wrap her up in my arms and bury myself in her. Physically. Sexually. Emotionally.

She was my safety net. She was what kept me sane. She was a lot more to me than just a friend, or even just a girlfriend. I didn’t know how to put into words what she meant to me. Maybe that was why it had been so easy for her to hurt me, why it had been so easy to be so angry with her. If I didn’t care so much, it wouldn’t hurt so much. She’d said something of the sort before, when she’d told me about the other addicts in her life. Now that I’d had a chance to see that Hugo really was going to be all right and let the worst of my guilt and anger pass over, I knew that if I asked her to leave I might as well just rip my own heart out. That would be easier than letting her go.

The simple truth was that I loved her, and that complicated things. Not only that but the kids loved her. As crazy as it sounded, the fact that they loved her simplified everything.

I’d told her before that I couldn’t let the kids get close to her only to have her walk away. What I hadn’t said, but maybe should have, was that I couldn’t let myself get so close to her only to let her walk away. I was as fragile as they were. She was, too, in her own way. We were all holding one another together. Take one piece out of the mix, and the others fall apart. She was the glue that made us a family.

I supposed it was time to take my family home.

“Come on,” I said to them all. “Let’s get out of here.” I reached for Elin’s hand to lead her out to the minivan, but instead of simply taking it and coming with me, she came all the way into my arms to hug me. Nils joined us, and Hugo got up from his wheelchair to be part of it, too. One of them sniffled. Maybe more than one. I wrapped them up in my arms, holding them tight.

It wasn’t right, though. We weren’t complete. We needed our fifth puzzle piece.

I met Jessica’s eyes, still as red as they’d been when I’d first arrived at the hospital, and I held out a hand for her.

She shook her head slightly, and I regretted how short I’d been with her when I’d shown up in Hugo’s hospital room even more than I already did.

“You’re a part of this family, too,” I said softly.

“I’m not, though.”

I couldn’t fool myself into believing I wasn’t the reason she felt separate from us, the reason she didn’t feel she belonged. I was going to have to work hard to fix that. The first step was getting her in to this group hug.

I let go of the kids and took a step toward Jessica. “Help me out, guys,” I said, taking one of Jessica’s hands and tugging her to her feet. Then I pulled her into my arms, and the kids grabbed hold of her, too, and we completely surrounded her with our love.

It was just as things should be.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my head right by her ear. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. None of this would have—”

I put a finger on her lips, shushing her. “We can hash it all out at home once they’re in bed.”

She turned disbelieving eyes on me. “But I thought— When you told me to leave, I—”

“Come home with me so we can talk,” I said. Then I released her, picked Nils up in my arms, took Elin’s hand, and headed for the parking lot, knowing that the orderly would follow with Hugo in the wheelchair.

I didn’t turn to see if Jessica was coming, too, until I reached the car. I was too afraid that she wouldn’t. That I’d hurt her too much when I’d coldly sent her away. But when I set Nils on the ground and looked behind me, she was walking alongside Hugo’s chair and heading our way.

I might not deserve another chance after the way I’d reacted when I’d arrived, but she was apparently inclined to give me one.

THEY SENT HUGO
home with a prescription for Vicodin in a child’s dosage. Before he’d been discharged, they’d given him morphine intravenously, so he wouldn’t need any pain medication right away—probably not until tomorrow morning, actually—but we stopped at a pharmacy to get it filled before going home. He’d be in a lot of pain once his morphine wore off, not only from the broken arm but from all his other bumps and scrapes that adrenaline had potentially masked at first. With pain like that, I didn’t think it was a good idea to let it get too intense before we tried to tone it down.

The pharmacist handed the bottle to Nicky after he paid. Nicky immediately passed it over to me with a meaningful look. Without a word, I nodded my understanding and put the prescription in my purse. I didn’t know where I’d keep it at his house that he wouldn’t be able to find it if he really wanted to—I doubted there was any such place—but at least he wanted someone other than himself to be in charge of it. That proved to me that he was at least determined to look after his own sobriety, even if he wasn’t sure how he felt about being with me after all of this had happened.

In all honesty, I was unsure what was going on in his head. He’d been so angry when he’d arrived at the hospital. I’d never seen him angry like that before. For a moment, I’d had a brief flashback to Steve when he was drunk, and it had taken every bit of resolve I’d had to go and sit with Nils and Elin in the waiting room instead of getting a cab to take me back to my apartment.

But Nicky wasn’t Steve. He wasn’t drunk. He was worried about his nephew—understandably so—and had reacted due to fear. And he was right to be upset with me. I was angry at myself. I should have taken a few more minutes to ensure the kids were properly supervised. I should have taken my keys. The police officers who’d come to talk to me at the hospital had made sure I understood, in no uncertain terms, how very wrong I’d been on so many levels, not that I’d needed such a talking to.

So I’d gone back into the waiting room, and I’d sat with the children, and I’d tried not to let my thoughts run away with me. Doing that would only end up with me running away from my problems instead of facing them head-on, and Nicky and these kids deserved better than that. So did I, when it came right down to it.

The way Nicky had pulled me into the family hug in the waiting room, though, had left me as confused as I’d ever been.

We headed home after our stop at the pharmacy. It was late by the time Hugo had been discharged from the hospital, and it had been a long and extraordinarily trying day on so many fronts. The kids were so tired that we didn’t even bother making them take baths first. They went straight to bed without a single complaint.

I left it to Nicky to put them down, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I thought it would be good for him to have a few minutes alone with them without an outsider in the middle of things. And for another, it would give me a few minutes alone to gather my thoughts and sort out what I wanted to say.

I was in the kitchen, wiping down the counters, as was my nightly habit, when he came out. He didn’t say anything right away. He just went to the cabinet and took out a glass, which he filled with water from the refrigerator door, then turned and leaned back against the counter, looking at me.

I finished my ritual wipe-down and washed my hands before turning to face him, holding the towel in my hands as though it could provide a physical barrier between us. Lord knew there were already enough emotional barriers that it wouldn’t be necessary for me to add to them. I stared down at that towel, rubbing it over my hands long after they were fully dry, because it gave me something to do, a way to put off the inevitable.

He seemed calm when I looked up.

“The whole flight home,” he said after a silence so long and so loud I thought I might lose my mind, “I had two things running through my mind.”

“Let me guess. How much you wanted to throttle me and how you wanted to get me out of your life so nothing like this would ever happen again.”

“You’re half-right,” he said, with a wry grin coming to his lips. I didn’t understand how he could be smiling at a time like this. He ought to be kicking me out of the house right now, sending me on my way without another thought. “I had that all kind of rolled up into one, along with figuring out how to kick my own ass for being so stupid. Lucky for me, I’m not flexible enough to kick myself in the ass. I’d be just as bruised as Hugo if I were.”

“Then what was the other thing?”

“I kept saying the Serenity Prayer. Over and over again.”

I finally tossed the towel back on the counter, turning to face the sink because I couldn’t look at him right now. Looking at him only reminded me how badly I’d screwed up.

“
The wisdom to know the difference
,” he said, quoting one of the lines from that prayer, a prayer I knew as well as any addict. Maybe better than a lot of them. He moved closer to me, close enough that the heat of his body warmed my backside, but he didn’t touch me. “I know the difference,” he said, his voice as gruff as I’d ever heard it.

The difference
. Meaning the difference between things that couldn’t be changed so one had to simply accept them, and things that could be changed if one had the courage to do so.

“I see,” I said, fighting back tears, because the way I saw it, there was definitely something here that could be changed. He could ask me to leave. He could insist on me no longer being a part of his life. In my mind, I said the Serenity Prayer for myself, trying to come to terms with whatever he decided was best for all of them. This couldn’t be about me, even if my heart was breaking. I swallowed the sob that was threatening to burst free and steeled my spine.

“How soon do you want me to leave?” I asked once I thought I’d gotten myself under control.

“Leave?” He sounded shocked. “I was going to ask you to move in.
Really
move in. I want you to bring everything over from your apartment. I want you to be part of this family. You already are, as far as the kids and I are concerned, but I want it to be more official.”

My tongue was thick, and the tears I’d been attempting to quell had started to fall without my permission. I didn’t know how to process this. I’d been through every emotion under the sun today, and it was just too much. “Meaning what?” I finally choked out.

“Meaning I want to be sure the kids understand that we’re equal. That what one of us says goes for both of us. That when you tell them something, it’s as good as me saying it. Meaning we work as a team. Meaning I make it easier for you to keep the promises you made to my sister, and to Elin, and to me. I want to get the courts to recognize you as a guardian for them, not just me, because if something like this happens again and I’m not here…” He broke off, choked up. “I need them to have someone. I need you to be that someone.”

“That’s an awful lot to take in,” I said.

“I know it is. I’ll understand if you need time to think about it.”

Time wasn’t exactly what I needed. In all the time I’d sat with Elin and Nils in the waiting room, there was one thing that had broken through the fog of my remorse. “What do you think we need to do about Hugo?” I asked, specifically putting
we
in the question. If Nicky was serious about this, about wanting me to be part of this family and for us to be equal, then we needed to figure out how we would go about discipline.