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Kali’s hands covered her face, her shoulders shook, tears streamed below her fingers.
Lincoln shifted over and wrapped his arm around her. Kali wiped her hands across her face. “We never saw Jason again. Not alive, anyway. Two days later divers finally ... it had to be a closed casket.” She choked and gasped. “I’m sorry. I haven’t let myself relive this in years. But it’s like ... it’s like ...”
“Yesterday?”
Kali looked to Lincoln and nodded. He reached past her and grabbed a tissue from the side table. She smiled weakly, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, then pressed her hand to her forehead. “Those men, they had to hold Derek back. It took three of them, pulling him farther and farther from those black rocks as he fought, yelled, tried to jump back into the ocean to save his brother.”
Kali sat straighter and turned to Lincoln. “He was different after that. Everything was different. The news called him a hero. He hated that. I hated that. Jumping into that ocean, it wasn’t heroic. It was reckless. Stupid.” Kali’s voice rode a wave of emotion so strong Lincoln could almost feel it, the fear and tragedy of that day, the anger and thankfulness and confusion. “He got his brother killed. He could have killed himself. And for what? Strangers. A fool-hardy boy. Neglectful parents.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think Derek saw that side of it. I bet to this day he thinks it was the right thing to do. But it wasn’t. It killed his brother, and that’s what he couldn’t get past. Couldn’t forgive himself for. I can’t even count the number of times in the weeks and months after I heard him muttering it should have been him. He should have been the one to die. Right in front of me, he’d say it, as his child got bigger and bigger inside me every day, he’d say that. Like we didn’t matter. Like Theo didn’t matter.” Her body shook again, the tears resuming.
“Everyone said he was a hero. They wanted to do news pieces, but he wouldn’t talk. He stayed in his room once he was out of the hospital, letting me do everything. He didn’t go to work. Jason and he had just opened a small mechanic shop, but it stayed closed. He didn’t make a meal or help out around the house. He barely showered or changed his clothes. Amazingly, he had nothing but some nasty scrapes and bruises from the rocks, a mild case of pneumonia. On the outside there was nothing wrong with him, but inside he wasn’t Derek anymore. The man I’d married had died.”
Kali took a breath. She straightened in her seat.
“Then one day I came back from classes and he was gone. I was hopeful. I thought it was a good sign: that he was ready to come back to life. And he was.” Her mouth tightened. Her voice lost its sadness as anger took over. “He stepped in the door with a smile on his face and told me he’d enlisted in the army. He said it was the perfect plan. That he’d save other people’s brothers, that he’d help protect us all. He said the income would be good too. But what was income when he’d be away for months at a time? When he might die?” Kali shook her head. Her jaw tensed and twitched. “With all of his basic training and land course and occupational training and whatever else, it’d be almost eight months before he’d even be posted anywhere. I was due in less than four. But that didn’t seem to matter to him, the fact that he’d be deserting me for the last three months of my pregnancy. The fact that his training meant he’d miss the first four months of his child’s life.” Kali turned her gaze again, staring at the wall or the floor, Lincoln couldn’t be sure.
“I told him no. But it was too late. He’d already done it, signed up, without talking to me.” Kali shook her head again. “I lost it. Said if he was leaving, to never come back. We were done.” Kali paused. “He left. And that was it.”
Kali leaned back against the couch and returned her gaze to Lincoln. He took a breath. “You never saw him again? Until today?”
“He came to my mother’s funeral. We talked for maybe five minutes. That’s all.”
“In over four years?”
“He sent cards and letters from time to time.”
“The last card was sometime before we moved in with you. I didn’t bother getting my mail forwarded. Almost everything is online these days. So who knows if he tried again?”
Lincoln’s fists clenched. “And he didn’t send money or ... He didn’t want to see Theo?”
“Money? No.” Kali’s voice came out clipped. “Theo. Yeah. At least at first. I only opened the first letter, about a month after Theo was born. He wanted to see him. I stopped opening them after that. I didn’t read the Christmas or birthday cards either, just saved them while giving Theo the gifts they came with. In that first letter Derek said he could come home on leave for a visit, or fly us up to see him. I never replied. When he left I told him I never wanted to see him again, that he made his choice and I made mine. If he thought he was abandoning us, he shouldn’t worry about it. We weren’t his anymore. There was nothing to abandon.”
Lincoln nodded, unsure what to say. It couldn’t be this simple. He wanted to hate the man. But the way he’d looked at Theo earlier today, the way Marvin had wrapped his arms around him, it couldn’t be this simple. Also, it seemed unlike Kali, to keep her son from his father. To hold onto hate so hard ... or whatever she was holding onto. Maybe it was fear? That if Derek got to know Theo, fell in love with Theo, he’d take him away?
“What did you say to Theo about the cards? The presents?”
“Nothing. I gave him the presents. The last ones came when he was three, but there wasn’t much to explain. A present’s a present. He didn’t care where they came from. Like I said, I kept all the cards for when he was older, when he started asking questions.”
“And Marvin, did he think ... he knew Derek was alive?”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. They might have kept in some contact. I’m not sure. I told Marvin I didn’t want to hear about him. That I had to move on. But they must have had some contact ... the police knew where to call.”
Lincoln nodded. “So, that’s what brought him back?”
Kali shrugged. “I guess so.”
“How long has he been back?”
“A few weeks.” She leaned toward him. “I didn’t know. I thought, maybe ... outside the hospital that day, and I thought I’d seen him from a distance once. But I didn’t know.”
Lincoln shifted so he faced her head on. “But you suspected. And you didn’t tell me.” He paused, the anger and betrayal creeping back like a cat ready to pounce. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kali looked to her lap, silent.
“Do you love him?”
She raised her head and their gazes locked as several breaths passed. “I did.”
“Do you?”
She inhaled and shook her head. But the movement was slight. Uncertain. Lincoln’s chest constricted.
“Could you? Again?”
Silence surrounded them.
“I never stopped. That kind of love ... it never stops.”
Lincoln turned away, his hands on his knees, his throat constricting as if a vice had wrapped around it.
Kali reached for his wrist, her voice desperate. “But not like that. Not like ... it’s what I said before, about hate and love, the way they intermingle. He was my first love. He’s Theo’s father.” Her eyes closed. “He says he’s back. That he wants a chance to actually be Theo’s father. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it over the years.” Kali hesitated. “I think I was wrong. Proud and hurt and stubborn and wrong to keep Theo from him. And as soon as he said it, that he was back, that he was sorry, that he’d do whatever it took to be a father, the hate, the anger, it was still there, but the love was too. For my son’s father. Nothing more.
“I don’t want to be with him but I have to try to let Theo get to know him, to let go of enough anger for that. It doesn’t change anything for me and you. It doesn’t have to. But I have to try. I owe them both that.”
Lincoln pulled his arm away. “It’s getting late. Theo and Marvin must be hungry.”
“Lincoln.”
He stood.
“I’m trying to be honest. I can’t say there isn’t love somewhere inside me for Derek, but it doesn’t mean ... anything. Not for you. Not for us. I told you I wanted to try, to see where things go between us, and I think they’ve been going well. Derek, he doesn’t change that.”
Lincoln turned from her. She was wrong. It changed everything. He turned back. “He’s coming again tomorrow? To see Theo?”
Kali nodded.
Lincoln stepped toward his room. “I haven’t been to the lot in a while. Seems like a good time to visit.”
“Lincoln.”
“You all need time. To figure things out.”
“Lincoln,” Kali stood and stepped toward him, “this is your place. You don’t need to leave.”
“Yeah.” Lincoln sighed. “Yeah. I do.”