Chasing Abby(7)

When I met Brian my senior year at UNC Chapel Hill, he was working as an electrician for a company the university had hired to upgrade the lighting in the campus theater. I was twenty-one, talkative, and thin as paper. He was twenty-five with broad shoulders and hardly spoke a word the first three weeks we dated. There was a quiet gentleness about him that I found so completely enthralling. I wanted to crack open his shell and devour his secrets. He’s still a quiet person, but he’s been very vocal about Abby’s right to know her parents lately.
Still, I wish he would say something instead of just shoveling salad and steak into his mouth. I wish he’d show me just a few words of support. More than anything, though, I wish he’d come off this idea that Abby is old enough to know Chris and Claire Knight. She’s only thirteen.
She’s struggling to push the last few bites of salad into her mouth. She hasn’t been able to eat much with the new medication they have her on, but it seems she’s determined to put all that food away so she can leave.
Her new meds may make her sick, but they saved her life. Brian didn’t want to try this drug, afraid the risk of more liver toxicity outweighed the possibility that she would come back to us. But I was right. And I’m not the type to say I told you so, but this would be the perfect time to say it. I was right about Abby being too sick to continue playing in that soccer game. I was right to take a risk on this new medication. And I know I’m right about keeping her from meeting her biological parents.
“Stop doing that. You’ll make yourself sick,” I say, putting down my fork as I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.
She gags as she swallows the last bite of salad and rises from the table with her plate in hand. She disappears into the kitchen without a word and I stare at her empty chair as I listen to the faucet come on in the kitchen, then the opening and closing of the dishwasher door. Then silence.
I glance at Brian and his elbows are resting on the table as he stares at Abby’s empty chair. I want to ask what he’s thinking, but I don’t want to know. Soon, he stands up and reaches for my plate.
When the dinner dishes are clean, I lean against the counter in the kitchen and Brian leans against the island across from me. I stare at his feet for a moment before I look up. He’s wearing that expression I fell in love with twenty years ago, that hardness that masked the vulnerability underneath.
“She’ll get over this,” I whisper, hardly able to bring myself to say the words aloud. “Eventually, she will get over it.”
“Will we?”
“Don’t say that.”
He takes a step forward, his bulky frame towering over me as my back is pressed into the counter. “I don’t want to lose either of you,” he says gruffly as he lifts my chin. “But it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. And you’re the only one with the power to stop it. It’s not too late to make the right decision, Lynette.”
He lets go of my chin and leans over. I close my eyes as I anticipate his lips on mine, but the kiss never comes. When I open my eyes, he’s gone.
If I give in to Brian, Abby will find out her birth parents are young, rich, and famous: a rock star and an author. How can a middle-class electrical contractor and stay-at-home mom ever hope to compete with that? I know we’re not competing for Abby’s love, but that’s exactly what it will feel like once Abby finds out their identities. Every time she speaks of them excitedly, I’ll wonder if she speaks about us like that to Chris and Claire. And she will speak of them that way.
They’re practically perfect. They donate millions to charity; they’re in their mid-thirties and still look like they’re in their twenties; and they’re still madly in love. You can see it in every photo of them ever taken. And the worst part: They live twenty minutes away. She’ll be able to see them whenever she wants.