Life and Other Inconveniences(58)

The money, unfortunately, was gone. Millions and millions of dollars, squandered in ten years.

But Genevieve . . . she had an endless supply. If she was taking care of Emma, maybe she’d soften toward him and give him some more. Yeah, Genevieve would see that Emma was a good kid. Maybe she’d put him on the payroll or, better yet, just cut him a check. She had piles of it, the hateful old bag.

Emma would be happier in Connecticut, at Sheerwater. Fucking huge house, staff, the pool, the Sound . . . better than the little shitbox where her other grandparents lived. They could visit her if they wanted to.

It worked. Genevieve gave him money and off he went again. Was it hard to say goodbye to Emma? Sure, but that would pass. He knew he was supposed to feel more for her. He just didn’t. He blamed Genevieve. How many shrinks would agree that she’d basically ruined him after Shep died?

He came back at Christmas to collect his check and see his daughter and be criticized by his mother and see Donelle, who told him Emma was a good kid and he was right, it was better for her here.

Even so, he felt ashamed. To drown out that feeling, that echo of not good enough, he did what he always did. Traveled. Drank. Lied. Avoiding thoughts of his daughter became habit. Days passed without his thinking of her. She became a small fact in his big life.

But sometimes, in the middle of the night, he’d remember his own father, and how Garrison had made him feel safe and loved and . . . enough.

Clark had given his child away.

Then he did it again.

Years later, millions later, when apparently he was a grandfather, he had another daughter. And this one . . . she was sick. She had problems. Bad problems. He was a middle-aged man, for Christ’s sake! He hadn’t been equipped to take care of a regular baby, let alone Hope with all those issues and needs and special care. The money it would take to keep her healthy and safe was a gut punch. Even with the allowance from his mother, he didn’t have it.

But Genevieve did. Always her weapon, the mighty checkbook. Back he went, and it was horrible, telling her about Hope, her prognosis, telling her that he needed her money again, knowing he had failed on every front a man could. He cried as his mother looked at him in disgust.

It didn’t matter. Hope would be cared for. The mother, Kellianne, who had clearly seen Clark as a meal ticket and lied about birth control, was more than happy to sign away her maternal rights.

Funny that he had sobbed uncontrollably when they took Hope to Rose Hill. That he finally knew what love felt like, and it sucked, literally sucked the soul out of you.

He had failed Emma years ago, and Emma had become a cliché, a teenage mother, living with Paul Riley in Chicago. He failed Hope months after she was born. Oh, it would’ve been great to think that finally he could’ve become a gentle, kind, selfless man, caring for his special-needs child.

But he just couldn’t, not after all the years in his emotional wasteland.

That just wasn’t how life worked.





CHAPTER 17


    Emma


Ialways thought Jason and I would get married. Right up until he told me he was engaged, I thought we’d be husband and wife.

Color me stupid.

We’d dated from the age of sixteen, starting at the tail end of our sophomore year, losing our virginities to each other over the next Christmas break. By then, I was so in love I could barely see straight. Every night, I fell asleep with the phone tucked against my ear. Every day, my heart walloped in my chest at the sight of him. He was so happy all the time. So sweet and fun, up for anything from rock climbing to swimming in the Sound to watching Brat Pack movies from the ’80s. More than anything, Jason was blissfully . . . uncomplicated.

Given my family history, there was a lot to be said for that. My memories of my mother told me she’d been happy, so they obviously couldn’t be trusted. I hated and loved my mother so much that it was hard to think about her . . . the woman who had sung during my baths, made the best forts, colored with me for hours and then one day decided to kill herself and let her eight-year-old child find her body.

My father had seemed like a good enough dad when she was alive. Granted, he was away a lot, but he’d bring me toys from his travels, give me the occasional piggyback ride . . . but when I needed him the most, he simply dumped me at his mother’s. When he came to visit every Christmas for his annual twenty-four-hour visit, most of his time was spent arguing with his mother and sighing when he looked at me. After the initial year of waiting for him to come get me, I realized he wasn’t . . . and by then, I didn’t want him to.

The day my mother died, my father had been delayed at the airport or something. He didn’t get home until hours after our neighbor Mrs. Fitzgerald made me call 911, and I was in shock. Pop had gone to the morgue, and Grammy had me wrapped in a blanket, and she and Mrs. Fitzgerald were talking in gentle voices.

Then my father came home.

Rather than take me in his arms and comfort me, he just fell apart, making the worst day of my life that much worse. To see him sobbing, shaking, crying so hard snot ran down his face, saying, “I’m sorry, April, I’m sorry!” when even I knew that she couldn’t hear him. Later, when I heard the term drama queen, I always thought of my father in that moment.

It was Pop who’d said, “We’ll get through this, honey,” even when his face was gray and his eyes teary. My grandmother, who could still hold me on her lap at that time, stroked my hair.