Nicole Young - Kiss Me If You Dare

Mom and I at the beach, compliments of Candice LeJeune Photography. I really needed that reminder of Candice’s ploy to infiltrate my life, only to destroy it. I slapped the picture onto the comforter.

The two of us on the woods path. Me on a swing. Each photo only made me angrier. I flipped to the next one- and froze. Brad and I. Sharing a Coney at Sam’s Diner back in Rawlings. I’d never seen the picture before. Brad looked so handsome in his polo shirt and khakis, so full of life. And I had a huge smile on my face. I squeezed my eyes closed, remembering how it felt to be happy. I opened them and tried to remember when the photo had been taken. Must have been a Sunday after church. We’d always gone with a crowd to eat and visit. I flipped it over.

Brad, thought you’d want this! Love, Pastor John.

How had it gotten among my things? It belonged to Brad. I bit my lip. He must have gotten rid of anything to do with me. I looked at the shot, tears pouring down my cheeks. I could understand why Brad hadn’t kept it around. Who wanted to be reminded about what might have been?

From deep in my chest, a wail gushed up. I threw the photos to the bed. They scattered across the comforter. I flung back the covers and got up, pacing the room, wondering how I could get rid of this pent-up rage. What had Candice told me one day over tea? That it was best I’d been raised without my father’s influence. It gave me a chance to escape the Russo family curse. Well, it hadn’t mattered. Father or not, the curse had found me. Everything had gone wrong with my life. Maybe I shouldn’t waste my energy taking things out on Candice. Maybe I should just end my agony here.

The thought splashed like a bucket of water across my brain. What was I thinking? Where was I headed? Time to step back and take a breather.

I turned on the shower, hoping I’d get a fresh perspective after a good dousing. I gave the water a chance to warm up, heading back to the bedroom to clean up my mess. I gathered the photos, careful not to let any of them register in my mind and fan the flames of my fury. But despite my efforts, one image leaped out at me. I took the picture in my hands. It was my mom and dad, sitting together at the Watering Hole the night my mom died. As I squinted at the photo, studying my father’s features, I realized I’d just seen an older version of that face. It belonged to Roger Jamison.

Hands shaking, I drew in a breath and blinked away the insane thought. But there was no denying it.

I’d found my father.

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.