Chapter 6: What Luke Needed to Say
He called three days later.
I let it ring twice before I answered.
Brucie was asleep in the oak crib Grandpa had built, and the cottage was quiet in the way it only got in the early afternoon when the light came low through the kitchen windows and everything felt briefly suspended.
"I'm not going to make excuses," Luke said.
No greeting.
No preamble.
"Good," I said.
"I need to say some things.
You don't have to respond.
I just need to say them."
I sat down at the kitchen table.
"Go ahead."
A pause.
"When you told me you were pregnant, I was terrified.
Not because of the baby.
Because of your name.
Clover Hadley.
I had heard that name my whole life — not yours specifically, but Hadley.
My uncle used it like a warning.
Like a word for someone dangerous." He stopped.
"I know how that sounds now."
"It sounds like you believed a lie and used it as a reason to abandon your child."
"Yes." No hesitation.
"That's exactly what it was."
I didn't say anything.
"I drove for six hours that night," he continued.
"I ended up in a motel outside of Pittsburgh.
I sat in the parking lot for two hours before I even went inside.
I kept picking up my phone to call you and putting it back down." His voice tightened.
"I told myself I was protecting you.
That if I stayed, my family's history would follow you.
I told myself a lot of things."
"Luke."
"Yeah."
"You were protecting yourself."
The silence that followed was long enough that I thought he might hang up.
"Yes," he said finally.
"I was."
Outside, a truck moved slowly down the road.
The oak tree shifted in the wind.
Brucie made a small sound in the other room and went quiet again.
"I hired the investigator in March," Luke said.
"Before Dad showed me the letter.
I already knew I had to find you.
I just kept telling myself I needed to wait until I had something to offer — some reason for you to let me explain.
And then the letter came and I realized I'd been waiting for a reason when the only real reason was that I had a daughter I'd never met and a woman I'd walked out on who deserved better."
"What do you want, Luke?" I asked.
Not harshly.
Genuinely.
"I want to be in her life.
If you'll allow it.
Not because of the Sterling name or the trust or any of that.
Because she's mine and I left and I want to spend however long it takes making that mean something different than it does right now."
I turned my coffee mug in my hands.
"I'm not going to make that easy," I said.
"I know."
"You'll have supervised visits.
Scheduled.
Consistent.
If you miss one — one, Luke — without a genuine emergency and twenty-four hours' notice, we're done."
"Okay."
"Brucie decides, as she gets older, how much she wants from you.
Not you.
Not me.
Her."
"Yes.
Absolutely yes."
"And you're going to tell her the truth someday.
When she's old enough.
Not a softened version.
The truth."
Another pause.
"I will."
I stood up and walked to the doorway of the small room where Brucie slept.
She was on her back, both arms thrown wide, her mismatched eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of someone with no idea how complicated the world waiting for her already was.
"She has your curls," I said.
Luke made a sound I wasn't prepared for.
Something between a laugh and something that wasn't a laugh at all.
"I'll send you the schedule," I said.
"First visit is here.
Grandpa will be present."
"That's fair."
"Luke." I turned back toward the kitchen.
"If you ever disappear again — for any reason, any excuse, any fear — I will not give you a third conversation.
Do you understand me?"
"Yes," he said.
"I understand."
I ended the call and stood in the kitchen for a moment.
Then I went and picked up Brucie, even though she was still sleeping, and held her for a while because I needed to.
May you like
She didn't wake up.
She just settled against me, warm and solid and entirely herself, and that was enough.
