Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(78)

I had no children because I wanted no fears. I had no children because attachment is a hindrance. I worked this out analytically, so let me explain: I list the possible positives of having Ema in my life—love, companionship, someone to care for, all that—and I list the negatives—suppose something happens to her?

When I review this equation, the negatives win out.

I don’t want to live in fear.

“You okay?” Ema asks me.

“Groovy,” I say.

She rolls her eyes.

Her real name is Emma, but she always wears black clothes and black lipsticks and silver jewelry, and in middle school some dumb kid noted that she looked goth or “Emo” and so her classmates started calling her “Ema” and thought they were being clever and perhaps mean, but Ema turned the tables on them and embraced it. Ema is a high school senior now, but she’s also taking classes in art and design in the city.

When Ema’s mother, Angelica Wyatt, became pregnant, she didn’t inform me. She didn’t inform me upon Ema’s birth. I wasn’t angry or the slightest bit annoyed when Angelica finally told me. She understood how I felt about kids and respected it, but a few years back, she came clean, so to speak, for three reasons. One, she figured that enough time had passed (meh reason); two, I deserved to know the truth (ugh reason—I don’t deserve anything); and three, if something happened to Angelica—she had a breast cancer scare at the time—I would be there should Ema need me (decent reason).

What’s my point in telling you this?

I don’t deserve this relationship with Ema. I wasn’t there when it mattered, and if I had been given the choice, I wouldn’t have been. That is why I call her, even in my head, my “biological” daughter. Ema is magnificent in every way, and I can take no credit for that. I do not have the right to bask in the parental glow of her greatness.

I didn’t ask for this relationship. I don’t really want it either—I explained to you the pros and cons—but for now, this is Ema’s choice, and I need to respect that.

So, like it or not, we do meals like this.

Addendum: Ema gets me.

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

“I don’t want to know.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“It’s what I’m like.”

“No advice?”

I put down my fork. “Boys,” I say, “and by boys I mean ‘all boys’—boys are creepy.”

“Duh, like who doesn’t know that. What’s your take on teenage sex?”

“Please stop.”

Ema stifles a laugh. She likes teasing me. I don’t know how to behave around her because I feel like the blood is leaving my head sometimes. At some point, Angelica decided to tell Ema about me. No great plan on Angelica’s part. Perhaps Ema had reached an age. Perhaps Ema had simply asked who her father was. I don’t know and it’s not my place to ask.

Angelica is some mother.

You hear the following a lot: When your child is born, your life changes forever. That’s why I avoided fatherhood. I don’t want something in my life I care about more than me. Is that wrong? When Ema finally told me she knew—when she asked me to dance at Myron’s wedding—I was knocked off-balance. It was hard to breathe. When Ema and I stopped dancing, the feeling didn’t totally go away.

It still hasn’t.

In the vernacular of a teenager: That suuucks.

I think about my own parents now, especially my mother, what she must have gone through when I cut her out of my life, but dwelling on past mistakes is not good for anyone, so I move on. Ema puts her fork down and looks at me, and while this is obviously some kind of projection, I swear that I see my mother’s eyes.

“Win?”

“Yes?”

“Why were you in the hospital?”

“No big deal.”

Ema makes a face. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re going to lie to me?” She stares at me hard. When I don’t say anything, she adds, “Mom says you never wanted to be a father, right?”

“That’s true.”

“So don’t start being one now.”

“I’m not following.”

“You’re lying to protect me, Win.”

I say nothing.

“That’s what a father does.”

I nod. “True.”

“You never know how to act with me, Win.”

“Also true.”

“So cut it out. I don’t need a father, you don’t need a daughter. Just tell me: Why were you in the hospital?”

“Three men tried to kill me.”

If I’d expected her to recoil in horror, I would have been disappointed.

Ema leans forward. Her eyes—my mother’s eyes—light up. “Tell me everything.”

*



And so I do.

I start with my attacking Teddy Lyons after the NCAA Final Four and my rationale for doing so. I move on to the Ry Strauss murder, the Jane Street Six, the recovery of the Vermeer, the monogrammed suitcase, Uncle Aldrich, Cousin Patricia, the Hut of Horrors, being attacked by Trey and Bobby Lyons. I talk for a full hour. Ema sits rapt through all of it. I confess that I am not this good a listener. I lose focus after a while and drift off. I get bored easily, and people see it on my face. Ema is the opposite. She is a great listener. I don’t know how much I planned to tell her—I do want to be honest because, well, why not?—but something in her mannerisms, in her eyes, in her body language, makes me more open than I intended.