Kiss Me If You Dare

34

I’d come here to find Candice LeJeune. Instead I found Jacob Russo. I collapsed on the edge of the bed.

His hand. I’d touched his hand and I hadn’t even known he was my father.

Somewhere above my twisting stomach was a lump that pushed against my heart. The pressure threatened to crush the delicate organ.

The man who had been a cloudy, faceless blur in my memory was right here. Right here in Churchill Falls.

I didn’t even know what to do with that information. He wasn’t some homeless bum on crack. He was a responsible member of society, an employee at a power plant, a husband to Suzette… a father to-I raced to the bathroom and wretched into the toilet, the convulsions stopping only when the sixteenth birthday party was flushed away. Wracked with chills, I crawled under the shower and scrunched up like an infant in the tub, letting the heat warm my bones. Steam filled my lungs and I struggled to take slow, even breaths.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

I let the chant block any thoughts from my mind. Water pelted my face and body. The constant drone against the painted metal blotted out all other sounds. But the sensory barrier was only temporary.

Despite my efforts, Monique’s face exploded into my head.

All those years.

All those years that I had been without a father, she’d had one. She’d had mine.

I couldn’t stop the little whining sounds from coming out of my throat, like a sad little puppy left out in the cold.

Monique looked about the same age as her friend Renee. My fingers wiggled as I did the math. When I was seventeen and graduating from high school, Grandma Amble the only family member in the audience, my father was having a baby with another woman. I did some calculations. That would have made him thirty-sevenish. Just a little older than I was right now.

My fist smacked the water puddled in the tub. How dare he?

He was supposed to be with me.

“Me.” I said the word out loud.

Didn’t he know Mom died that night and I was all alone? Didn’t he care that I cried myself to sleep a whole year? Didn’t he hear me calling for him in the night?

“Daddy. Daddy, please, come get me, Dad. Don’t leave me here. Dad, I want to be with you.”

One night, somewhere around eleven years old, I told myself that he must be dead too and that’s why he wasn’t coming and I was completely alone in the world. And as long as he’d been dead or destitute, I’d been okay. But now-how could this happen? How could he be fine and doing well and living life? All without me?

It was wrong.

Spiraling into shock after an overdose of reality, I sat up in the tub, as if stuck on automatic, and wiped the streams of water from my face. I washed up and dried off. With a towel around my hair, I stepped to the bedroom and slipped into comfortable pajamas.

The remote sat on the bedside table. I clicked it and stared at the blur of images across the TV screen, not caring what was on. The hours slipped by. At some point I escaped into sleep.

My eyes flicked open, alert after a sound penetrated my slumber. I lay still, listening. The heating system hummed, doing its job. A few minutes passed and I decided the noise had been imaginary. Only in my dream.

The digital clock read 6 a.m. Way too soon to be moving. But my mind was already awake and processing its latest information. I felt better this morning, ready to put the kibosh on the whine-and-cheese party and take some action instead.

I dressed for the day, contemplating my next move. I had to confront Roger Jamison, alias Jacob Russo. The man was not getting off the hook a day longer. Thinking back over his first reaction when he saw me, I realized he had known who I was. He’d known I was his daughter. And what did he do? Run to the bathroom.

And his wife Suzette. She’d known who I was too. I was sure of it. Only Monique and I suffered in ignorance.

Monique. I even liked her name better. What kind of name was Patricia anyway? Everybody was named Patricia. If it hadn’t been for the saving grace of my nickname Tish, the name my mother had always called me, I would have made myself a Sabrina or a Victoria or a Genevieve. Something a little more romantic than Patricia.

Still, that was the name Puppa called me. Patricia. He made the word formal, proper… important. Special even. I kind of liked the name when it came from Puppa’s lips.

Puppa. In the bathroom mirror, the brush paused, inches from my hair. Monique was his granddaughter too, but she had never known him. She’d never been to the lake house, ridden horses, eaten supper, or harassed sick people with him.

My cheek quirked a smile at the memory of Puppa congratulating me on kissing my sleeping prince.

The brush continued through my hair. Monique had no idea what she’d been missing. We lived opposite halves of the same life. She got-I swallowed hard at the thought-she got our father. But I got our family. Puppa, Joel, Gerard, Grandma Olivia. Maybe I should be feeling sorry for Monique instead of myself.

With the new perspective, I realized there were plenty of things Monique missed out on. Summers at the lodge on Valentine’s Bay, the Fourth of July celebration in Port Silvan, playing ambush with cousins on pine-needle covered trails… Maybe when she found out about Dad’s family back in Michigan, she’d feel as gypped as I did when I thought of growing up without a dad.

That in mind, I decided to go easy on Monique when I told her the truth about why we looked like we could be sisters.

We were sisters.

I inhaled a sharp breath at the thought, somehow realizing for the first time that I had a sister. A little sister. We shared only half blood, but blood nonetheless.

While I plotted my strategy for chastising my deadbeat dad, I also planned how Monique and I could become friends. More than friends. Sisters.

Finished with my morning routine, I scoured the bedside table for the local directory. It only took a second to find the number for Roger Jamison on Osprey Avenue. I picked up the phone to dial. But at the sound of the tone, I put down the receiver. What was I going to say?

“Hi, this is your firstborn, Patricia Amble. Can I come by for a cup of coffee?” I’m sure Suzette would be thrilled to welcome into her home the daughter of her husband’s ex-fling. Dear Old Dad would probably spend the whole time in the bathroom with the dry heaves, anyway.

No. I’d go with the more intrusive, in-your-face approach. I’d just show up at their door and throw a tantrum on their snow-covered lawn until they asked me inside.

Yeah. That was mature.

I put my boots on. What did I care what they thought of my emotional maturity? My short time in Del Gloria couldn’t undo thirty-three years of conditioning overnight.

I tugged on my parka. They’d just have to deal with it. Love it or lump it. With my primary mission focused on dousing Candice’s lights, did it really matter which they chose? Anyway, Candice wasn’t anywhere near Churchill Falls or I’d have found her by now.

I walked to the dresser for my purse.

A rhythmic knock sounded at the door. I paused, not sure if I’d heard right. The quiet tapping came again.

It was all of 8 a.m. Who could be knocking on my door?

It had to be my dad. I stared at the door. It seemed to warp away from me, like a view through the wrong end of binoculars. I breathed into my hands, telling myself to stay calm, he was family. A final deep breath, a pasted-on smile, and I pulled back the slide bolt and opened the door.

An elderly woman stood there, bundled in a long coat and carrying an oversized tapestry tote. I recognized her loopy-curled wig. My cohort from River’s Edge.

I shook my head in utter, confused surprise. “Mrs. Callahan? What are you doing here?”

She pushed past me into the room. I shut the door, still speechless.

The old woman stood at the end of the bed. “Tish. Thank God. I see I got to you before he did.”

She pulled her wig off and I cringed. Short silver hair spiked up underneath. She peeled off some sort of rubbery stuff from her cheeks.

I gave a cry of astonishment. “Candice! It’s you.”