Convincing You I'm Me

Chapter 41: There's Something

It'd be easy to say I knew, it'd be easy to say I always felt something there, but the truth is, I didn't. I want to hate myself for not realizing sooner, for being so wrapped up in a new relationship that I couldn't see what was right there before my eyes, but I can't. I can't feel guilty, I can't hate myself, because I can't wipe the smile from my face.

After hours of talking like the old times, like the true old times, I had to leave. I had ten missed calls from the kids and Jamie's birthday had inevitably slipped from my mind. 

I walk through the house with a new spring in my step, with a skip, with a jump, with every happy emotion a man can feel at once. I whistle a beat of a song, I sing some lyrics that don't make sense, I meet the eyes of my startled children without paying attention to their annoyance.

"Where have you been?" Jade is the first to fold her arms. "We've been calling you."

"I got held up." I say, still smiling, making them narrow their eyes. 

Jessie works it out, she looks harder than the other two. "At the drug store?"

Okay, maybe not.

"No," I chirp, searching the fridge for what I need, I bring out the bottle swinging it sideways so they can see. "Whose up for some champagne?"

They exchange looks with each other, making me straighten. "What?"

"Something's different," Jade says. "You're. . . smiley."

"Very smiley," Jamie winces. "It's weird."

"Can't your Dad be smiley on his son's twentieth?" I say. "I remember when you were five and throwing cereal bowls all over the place. Now, fifteen years later, my son is a man. My daughters are women, and I did that."

I grab some champagne glasses from the cupboard and I wiggle myself in between Jessie and Jade at the table. 

"Dad," Jade whispers. "I have to be going soon."

"Me too," Jessie says. "Lincoln's working late and I need to feed the dogs."

"Well aren't your sisters fun?" I laugh to Jamie, pouring them all a glass anyway. "Just one won't hurt."

"One," the twins say at the same time, grabbing their glass.

"A toast," I say loudly, making them halt their glass at their lips. I bring mine into the middle of the air. "To family."

"To family," they say and we all clink our glasses.

There's a slight silence that follows as they drink quietly, each of them remembering that ghost at the table, each of them wishing she was here to share it. When they were old enough to fully understand how she died and why she died, they bombarded me with questions. They wanted to know her, because they couldn't remember her. They wanted to know about how we met: our first date, our first argument, what music we danced to, her worst personality qualities (to which I replied labor) and her best personality qualities, to which I replied everything but labor. They found it funny, thankfully, and not a looming darkness because of her second labor. I've always shown them picture books and photographs, but every time they looked at them again, it's like they were looking for the first time. After the very first discussion about her death, I told them about the compensation money I had deposited into separate saving accounts for each of them. They just nodded. Any other teenager would have been jumping to the roof that they had over twenty five grand in the bank, but that was the moment I realized I had raised them well.

Jade used to it for college and travel expenses, including a deposit on a posh flat in Washington. She was the first to leave home. Jessie used some of it for beauty school, then dropped out and opened up her own salon and bought her own house with Lincoln, who she had been dating since she was sixteen. And Jamie is still figuring it all out.