The Secret 04 The Ever After of Ella and Micha (11 page)

The whole baby talk with Ella was a little weird, but it needed to be talked about, I guess. I’d never thought that much about it, but having kids wouldn’t be so bad, down the road of course. It’s not like I worry I’d turn into a shitty father like mine. I think I was always a bit more like my mom than him and I’m glad. But I want to make sure that Ella and I are both in the right place if we decide to have them.

I meant everything I said. Either way, kids or not, I’ll be happy as long as I’m with her. But I think now I really need to talk to her about my future in music and the tour coming up. I should have probably told her right after the baby talk since we were talking about our future. It would have been a good time, but I was scared and nervous of what she would say—or what she wouldn’t say. Music is my passion, my emotional outlet in really hard times, and Ella knows this and I know she’ll be supportive, but what I don’t know is if she’ll come with, and if she does, will she be doing it because she wants to or because she thinks it’s what I want? And if she doesn’t, then that means I have to give it up—give up my dream. And knowing that makes me want to avoid it as long as possible.

With the tour and our future still lingering in my mind, we enter the kitchen with our fingers linked, the fresh aroma of coffee in the air. I feel like I’m seven years old again and Ella and I are telling my mom how we broke our next-door neighbor Mrs. Millerson’s garden gnome because we wanted to see if it was a real gnome. Mrs. Millerson had caught us and told us we had to get her a new one. We thought we were going to get yelled at but thankfully my mom always went a little easy on me due to the fact that my dad bailed out and she’s always had a soft spot for Ella.

But now instead of telling my mom about the broken gnome we’re telling her that we want to have a wedding in five days and how we almost got married without her. My mom flips out at first, more than I thought she would, but her anger turns to excitement when I remind her that yeah, we were going to get married without her but we decided not to.

Thomas, my mom’s boyfriend who’s a little younger than her, is in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal at the table while all this goes on. He looks a little more cleaned up than when we last saw him, at least he’s wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans without holes in them. My mom is still dressing like she’s younger—her shirt has all this flashy diamond shit on it and there’s some on the trim of her pants. But I don’t say anything about it. I get that she’s happy and even though I still think Thomas is an idiot, especially when he drips milk on the front of his shirt, he seems to make her happy.

“So we’re really going to do this?” my mom asks with a grin on her face as she pours a cup of coffee.

“Do what?” I ask, exchanging a confused glance with Ella, who shrugs, as confused as I am.

My mom shakes her head at me as she sets the coffeepot down on the counter near the sink. “Get married.”

I press back a smirk. “I didn’t realize it was a
we
thing.”

She sighs, like I’m a silly little child, and walks past us, making her way across the kitchen to the fridge. “I didn’t mean
we
as in all of us.” She opens the fridge door and takes out a gallon of milk. “I meant
we
as in you and Ella.” She beams at Ella as she pours milk into her coffee. “The daughter I never had. God, this is going to be so much fun.”

Ella steps back, tensing, shying away because my mom’s enthusiasm is scaring the shit out of her. “What’s going to be so much fun?” she asks.

“Planning your wedding.” My mom glances at Ella and me as she puts the milk back into the fridge. “You two are going to have the best wedding. I’m going to make sure of that.”

I pull Ella toward me and circle my arms around her waist, trying to ease her panic. “You know you have only five days to plan it and then we have to return home, right?” I tell my mom.

My mom clasps her hands together and glances over her shoulder at the snowflakes drifting down from the cloudy sky. It’s early afternoon but with the lack of sunlight it looks like it’s late in the day. “Five days is perfect.” She returns her attention to us. “I can do a lot in five days.”

“And we’re all broke,” I remind her, pressing Ella’s back against my chest. She’s being really quiet and it’s making me nervous. I’m not sure if it’s all the wedding talk that’s freaking her out or the fact that we just had a baby talk.

“I have some money saved up.” My mom collects her cup of coffee from off the counter. “And besides, you can have a nice wedding without spending a whole lot of money.” Her eyes land on Ella. “Do you have a dress already?”

Ella shakes her head and then blinks at my mom distractedly. “What?”

“A dress, sweetie.” My mom looks at me questioningly from over the top of her cup as she takes a swallow. “Does she have one yet?”

I lean over Ella’s shoulder to catch her eye and I’m startled by the layer of water in her eyes. There’s something wrong and I need to find out what. “Yeah, she has one,” I say to my mom and then grab Ella’s hand and lead her toward the hallway, calling over my shoulder. “Mom, we’ll be right back.”

Ella absentmindedly follows me. Once I get her into the hallway and out of my mother’s gaze, I stop us and whirl her around to face me.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” I ask, examining her watery eyes.

She stares over my shoulder at a few framed pictures of my mom and me hanging on the wall. “It’s nothing.”

I place my hand on her cheek and force her to look at me. “It is something; otherwise you wouldn’t be about ready to cry.”

“I don’t…” Tears bubble in the corner of her eyes and her voice cracks. “It’s just that… God, this is so stupid.” She rubs the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Nothing you say is stupid,” I assure her, wiping a stray tear away with my thumb.

She frowns doubtfully at me. “Even when I told you that I was pretty sure we could push to one hundred miles per hour when there was a foot of snow on the road?”

“Yeah, well, we all have our drunk moments,” I say, recollecting the night she’s talking about. How she was a little drunk and a little excited over the fact that some dude told her she had a nice ass. She would never admit that was what was making her all cheery, but I could tell it was and it was fucking annoying.

“Go faster,” she’d begged from the passenger seat with her head against the dashboard as she watched the night sky through the window. “Go, like, a hundred.”

“No way,” I’d replied, shifting into a lower gear as the engine grumbled. The road was dangerous going twenty-five, the car barely able to keep any sort of traction as we slid up the vacant street, heading home.

“Oh come on, Micha Scott.” She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. She had on a leather jacket and a black shirt underneath it that had a low collar and I could see the curves of her breasts. The sight made me hard, which pissed me off because another guy had put a smile on her face. “Just try it. If things get too crazy, you can stop.”

I shook my head, ripping my gaze from her cleavage. “You’re drunk and thinking stupid.”

“Hey, that’s not very nice.” She’d pouted. I hated when she pouted because she looked ridiculously sexy and it made it difficult to deny her anything she was asking for, even if it meant us getting killed. She propped her elbows onto the console and leaned over, putting her face only inches away from my cheek. “Come on, just do it. For me.” She had this amused, drunk look on her face. She was too gorgeous, perfect, beautiful for her own good. If I could, I would have told her that. Told her how amazingly perfect she was and how I could spend thousands of hours writing lyrics about how beautiful she was and it wouldn’t even begin to describe it.

My eyes may have been on the road but all my attention was on her. “Pretty girl, I’m not going to kill us, no matter how hard you beg.”

Her lip popped out even more as she slumped back in the seat. “Fine. Don’t have any fun.” Propping her boots on the console, she’d slouched back against the seat. “And I don’t know why you keep calling me that.”

“What, pretty girl?” I smiled amusedly as she nodded with a frown, her eyelids drifting shut as exhaustion took her over. I took a chance, telling her the truth, knowing that she probably wouldn’t remember it by morning. “It’s because I think you’re beautiful, but I can never get away with calling you beautiful without you kicking my ass, so I settled for a more milder version of the truth.” I sighed as she passed out, her knees slumping to the side and falling off the dash and onto the floor. Then her head lowered down against the console and she wiggled it to the side until it was pressed against my ribs and her hair was on my lap. Smiling, I slowed down the car and took my time getting home. The night actually turned out to be pretty fucking perfect.

“I’ve had a lot more stupid moments than you.” Ella’s voice jerks me from the memory.

“Oh, I doubt that,” I argue, bracing my hand on the wall beside her head. “And I doubt that whatever you’re going to tell me is going to sound stupid.”

She rubs her hand over her face, leaving red lines on her skin. “Part of the reason…” She clears her throat. “I’m just thinking about mom stuff. That’s all.”

“About the journal?”

“No… about getting married… without a mom around.” She wavers. “It’s part of the reason why I wanted to get married here. So we would be close to her.”

My heart sinks into my stomach. Through all of this, I’d never even thought about that. About how she must be feeling about her mom not being around for all of this.

“See, I told you it was stupid,” she says with a heavyhearted sigh. “I should just keep my mouth shut.”

“No, it’s not stupid. Not at all.” I pause, considering my next words carefully because they’re important. “Do you want to have it somewhere near the cemetery?”

She quickly shakes her head. “No, I like by the lake. It’s just nice knowing she’s in the same town. God, this is so weird. I’m talking about her like she’s still alive.” Her voice quivers at the end and she looks away, avoiding eye contact with me.

“Hey.” With my hand, I turn her head back toward me. “Nothing about wanting your mother near you is weird, whether she’s alive or not.”

She smiles sadly, but it’s nice to see her smile while we’re talking about her mom, even if it’s a sad smile. “Well, I still want to have it at the lake,” she tells me. “And my dad will be there, so I guess it won’t be so bad.”

“What about Dean and Caroline?” I ask. “Should we invite them?”

“Caroline’s pregnant so I’m not even sure she could and it’s super short notice,” she says.

“It’s up to you.” I give her a quick kiss on the lips and then step back. “If you don’t want to invite them, then fine. But, I mean, you do get married only once, you know.”

Her lips creep into a malicious grin. “Oh, I plan on getting married a lot. At least ten to twenty times. You’re just my practice husband.” She playfully nudges me with her shoulder.

I embrace her and catch her off guard as I tackle her to the floor like I used to when we were kids. My hand snaps out before we hit the carpet and I catch her weight. Then I hold my body up slightly away from her so I don’t crush her.

“Micha.” She laughs, her legs opening up so my body falls in between them. Her fingers span across my shoulder blades as I press on her lower back, our legs entangled. “Get off me. We’re too old for this.”

“No way,” I say. Heat radiates between our bodies and her hair is sprawled around her head and across the carpet, and the tears that were in her eyes moments ago are gone. “We’ll never be too old for this. Ever. I will still tackle you when we’re ninety years old.”

She stares up at me for a moment, her expression unreadable, her pulse hammering through her fingertips. “You make me happy,” she says in a shaky voice.

It may seem like such a simple statement, but for Ella to admit she’s happy is a huge, major, life-changing event and gives me hope that everything will end up okay.

“And vice versa,” I say and then kiss her.

Telling Micha’s mom was a piece of cake. Well, except for the part when I told Micha my strange thought process about having the wedding in Star Grove because I’d feel closer to my mom. That was a little weird. But Micha being… well, Micha, he made me feel okay about feeling that way. Lighter. Which is good, because there’s a chance that after I tell my dad, not just about the wedding but about my grandmother and the box she sent me, the lightness may shift to graveness.

Micha goes over to my house with me, our fingers entwined like we’re kids about to tell something really bad to our parents. But we’re not kids and getting married isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes talking to my dad can turn that way. Although it hasn’t in a while. He’s actually been really nice and chatty lately.

When I enter the house, I nearly drop dead on the floor because it’s clean. There are no alcohol bottles littering the yellow and brown countertops. He’s bought a new kitchen table, too, a new-used kitchen table anyway. It’s white and has a bench on one side and two chairs on the other. The floor is still stained, but it has recently been swept and mopped, the air smelling like Pine-Sol mixed with cinnamon. There aren’t any past-due envelopes on the counters or table. I remember the last time I was here how the house was going to get foreclosed but he managed to get it out of it, working overtime and paying the amount past due.

“Wow,” Micha says as he turns in a circle, rubbing his jawline as he examines the kitchen. “I feel like I’ve entered an episode of
The Twilight Zone
.”

I let go of his hand and cross the kitchen to the table, picking up a decorative ceramic rooster. The head pops off and it starts to make a loud rooster noise as I glance inside. “Oh my God, there’s homemade cookies in it.”

Micha laughs as he strolls up behind me. “You sound so adorable.” He sweeps my hair to the side and his lips caress the back of my neck. “Getting excited over cookies.”

I take a cookie out, put the rooster head back on, and then set it back down on the table. “So what? The only cookies I ever had when I was growing up were Oreo cookies.” I bite down on the homemade chocolate chip cookie and turn around to face him. “And you would always make us share those and then would take the half with all the filling. You always gave me whatever I wanted except when it came to those damn cookies.”

He steals a big bite of my cookie. “What can I say? I may love you but I love frosting just a little bit more.” He swallows the cookie and then opens his mouth to steal another bite but I stuff the entire cookie into my mouth, lifting my eyebrows, giving him an arrogant look.

Arrogance rises on his face too and then he covers my mouth with his, slipping his tongue between my lips, trying to steal bites of chewed-up cookie.

I jerk back, laughing, and making a repulsed face. “You are so gross,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

He licks his lips and then grins. “I win.”

I stick out my tongue, which has gooey chewed-up cookie on it. “That is what you just ate.”

His tongue slips out over his lips again. “And it was so, so good.”

I shake my head, but can’t stop smiling, and then I roll my eyes at myself because I’m turning into one of those girls who gushes around their boyfriend… fiancé… soon-to-be husband. Reality suddenly slaps me in the face and my eyes widen.

“Holy shit, I’m going to be Ella May Scott.” I breathe, not sure whether I’m panicking or just surprised.

Micha’s mouth sinks to a frown, the arrogance dissipating. I’m not sure if it’s because he just realized that too or because of my alarmed statement. I open my mouth to say something, but then my dad enters the kitchen and my words get stuck in my mouth.

Despite the clean sight of the kitchen, my dad still looks grungy and rough around the edges. He’s wearing an oversized plaid jacket over a holey navy-blue shirt and his jeans have paint on them, along with the boots he’s wearing because he works as a painting contractor now. His face is unshaven and he looks a little heavier than the last time I saw him a year ago but his eyes are clear, not bloodshot, and while he does smell like cigarette smoke, it’s not mixed with the smell of booze.

He stumbles over his boots when he sees me standing in front of the table and then catches himself on the door frame. “Holy shit.” He takes a good look at me as he blinks. “What are you doing here? I thought you couldn’t make it home this year for Christmas?”

I huddle closer to Micha, almost as a defense mechanism. Even though I know my dad is doing much better, I can’t entirely forget the past. When he was drunk. When he blamed me for my mother’s death. When he wouldn’t even look at me because it hurt him too much.

“Yeah, we had a change of plans,” I tell him as I feel Micha’s fingers brush my own.

My dad lets go of the door frame and steps up beside the counter. “Well, I’m glad, Ella,” he says awkwardly, a trait that is very common whenever we’re around each other. He massages the back of his neck tensely, glancing around the clean kitchen. “If I would have known you were coming, I’d have stocked up the cupboards and stuff with food or something.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “We’re actually staying over at Micha’s house anyway.”

My dad’s gaze flickers back and forth between Micha and me. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”

Silence draws out between us and I can’t help but think about what my mom said in the journal about him. How she wasn’t thrilled to be marrying him. How her mother didn’t want her to marry him. How depressed she was. Did he know about all this? Because he once told me things weren’t always bad, that things used to be good between them. Was it because my mom hid her depression and dark thoughts from him? Is that how I am with Micha since I can’t seem to talk to him about my fears of getting married and having a future?

Finally Micha clears his throat and jabs me in the side with his elbow.

“Oh yeah.” I shake my thoughts out of my head. “I actually have something to tell you.”

My dad looks bewildered as he leans against the counter and folds his arms. “Okay.”

“You remember how I told you a couple of weeks ago that Micha and I were getting married?” I rub my finger along the stones of the ring, trying to calm the nervousness in my voice. I don’t even know why I’m nervous, other than that I’m worried that my dad is going to say or do something that will ruin the amazingness I’ve been feeling lately. I think it’s just scars from my past that are causing the worry, but they’re still there.

My dad nods. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, we were going to get married in San Diego, but we decided to come back and have the wedding here,” I tell him. “This weekend actually, on Christmas day.”

His eyes enlarge and then travel down to my stomach. “Ella, you’re not…” He shoots Micha a dirty look as he stands up straight and looks around the kitchen, avoiding eye contact with both of us, appearing uneasy even for him. “You’re not…”

As it clicks what he thinks I throw my hand over my stomach. “What? No. I’m not… I’m not pregnant. God.” I can’t believe he’d think that. I’ve been careful not to let that happen and have been on the pill for a year now.

He frowns, looking unconvinced. “Okay.”

Micha chuckles under his breath and I narrow my eyes at him. “This isn’t funny,” I hiss, but laughter threatens its way up my throat, too. I know it’s not funny, especially since I found out that my mom and he got married because she was pregnant with Dean, yet it is. He’s acting like a dad and it’s hilarious because I’m twenty years old and this is the first real time I’ve seen him come even remotely close to playing the part.

“I promise she’s not pregnant, Mr. Daniels,” Micha says, shooting me a quick grin. “We just decided it was time.”

Mr. Daniels?
I mouth at him.
Really?

Micha nonchalantly shrugs and gives me an innocent look, mouthing,
What?

My dad’s gazes flicks back and forth between Micha and me. “But you’re… you’re so young.”

“So were you and… mom,” I point out with hesitancy because it goes against what I’m trying to prove, but he doesn’t know that I know about mom being pregnant when they said I do.

“Yeah, but…” My dad trails off, staring at the back door. “That was different, though… things between your mom and me… they were complicated.”

“Because she was pregnant.” I reveal that I know the truth, unable to keep it in any longer. When his eyes snap wide, I add, “Mom’s mom… my grandmother sent me a box of her stuff and it had this… mom’s journal in it.”

There’s a pause where I can hear everyone breathing and a car revs its engine from somewhere outside.

“That wasn’t from your grandmother,” my dad says with a heavy sigh, unfolding his arms. “Well, it was, but she didn’t mail it to you. Her lawyer did.”

“Her lawyer?” Micha and I say at the same time.

My dad nods, looking very uneasy. “She actually passed away about a month ago and I guess there was this box found in the nursing home with your name on it. The lawyer handling her will called me up, looking for you so he could send it to you.”

She’s
dead
? I’m a little shocked and I feel strangely saddened, which is weird because I never spoke to the woman. But still she was my grandmother.

I don’t know how to react because I didn’t know the woman at all, yet it makes me sort of sad, knowing I’ll never get to know her. I’d even considered it for a brief second, when I’d read over her note in the box, and now the possibility is gone.

“Why didn’t you give me a heads-up?” I ask my dad and Micha protectively scoots closer to me, like he can sense something bad is about to happen.

My dad reaches for his cigarettes in his jacket pocket. “Because it’s hard to talk to you about that stuff… especially about stuff like death and certain people.”

“About my grandma?”

“And about your mother… because it was a box of her stuff and I wasn’t sure how you’d react or how I felt… feel about it.”

My mouth makes an
O
as my dad opens the pack, plucks out a cigarette, and plops it into his mouth. He pats down his jeans for the lighter and finds it in his back pocket. Once he gets the cigarette lit and inhales a soothing cloud of smoke, he looks more relaxed.

“It’s a touchy subject for both of us.” He reaches across the counter for an ashtray near the sink. He taps the cigarette on the side and then holds it in his fingers, smoke filtering through the room and erasing the delicious cinnamon scent. “But my… therapist says I should start working on talking about it more, especially with you.”

“You’re seeing a therapist?” I’m surprised. “Since when?”

He looks over at Micha with reluctance, then sticks the end of the cigarette into his mouth and takes another drag. “For a month. My sponsor thought it’d be a good idea.” His phone rings from inside his pocket and he holds up his finger. “Just a second,” he says as he retrieves his phone. He checks the screen and then answers it, walking out of the kitchen.

“God, are all the Daniels seriously messed?” I mutter under my breath. “He’s seeing a therapist, too? First my brother, then me, and now my dad. It could be like the family motto: enter my family and your head’s going to get messed up and you’ll have to have a shrink put it back together again.” I peek over at Micha.

“Don’t even think it,” he warns. “You’re not crazy and you’re not going to ruin my life. You’ll only ruin it if you leave me.”

His words remind me that I’m not that person anymore, the one who pushes people away.
I need him and he needs me.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” I blow out a breath. “But can you give me a minute?” I ask him. “I think I need to talk to my dad alone.”

He seems reluctant. “Are you sure? Because I don’t mind hanging around even if it means enduring your dad’s awkwardness.”

I nod and give his hand a comforting squeeze. “I just want to ask him a few things about my mom and I think he’ll answer more easily if it’s just me.”

Micha remains still for a few seconds longer and then, nodding, he backs away, holding onto my hand until we’re far enough away that our fingers slip apart. “If you’re not back in, like, an hour,” he says, opening the back door and letting snow and a chilly breeze gust in, “then I’m coming back for you.”

“Micha, what do you think’s going to happen?” I joke. “It’s just my dad.”

He intensely holds my gaze, making a point without saying it. There have been many times where painful, hurtful things have happened between my dad and me.

“All right, see you in an hour,” I promise and he steps outside, drawing his hood over his head as he shuts the door.

I pull out a chair and sink down into it, then steal another cookie from the rooster jar. I’m stuffing the last bit of it into my mouth when my dad walks in, clutching his phone.

He glances around the empty chairs. “Where’d Micha go?”

I swallow the cookie and brush the crumbs off the table. “Home for a little bit, so you and I could talk about some stuff.”

“Yeah, we do need to talk.” He sits down, then glances at the rooster on the table without the lid on. “I see you found the cookies.”

“Yeah, but who made them?” I wonder curiously. “You?”

He shakes his head as he puts the lid back on. “No, Amanda did.”

“Who’s Amanda?”

“This woman I met while I was staying at the alcoholism treatment center.”

“Was she another recovering alcoholic?” I ask.

“No.” He pushes his sleeves up and rests his arms on the table. “She was the secretary there.”

“Oh,” I say. “So… are you, like, dating her?”

He scratches his head. “Um… sort of… I guess.”

“Oh,” I say, at a loss for words. It’s weird he’s dating because he’s my dad and the only person I’ve seen him with is my mom, but then again their relationship was beyond rocky. “Is she the one who cleaned the house?”

His hand falls from his head to the table. “No, I cleaned it. Why?”

I shrug. “Just wondered. It looks nice.”

He gives me a look, like he wants to say more, but then he changes the subject, relaxing back in the chair. “So what was in the box?” he asks rigidly. “I know it was stuff that belonged to your mother, but what exactly?”