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“I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather do,” I giggle, feeling my skin heating under their gaze.
Jason claps his hands together, brightening up. “Alright, so! I heard there’s a cheesecake we need to deal with. The last thing I want to do is deprive our child of their wants and needs.”
“Let’s not forget the mother of said child,” Matthew replies.
Laughter rings through the dining room as Jason and Sully clear the table, leaving only the dessert plates and the drinks, while Matthew brings in the cheesecake on a porcelain platter, and I add the eggnog bowls to the center. It smells fantastic, the nutmeg and orange zest filling the room with a playful and exhilarating dance of scents.
After all the trials and tribulations, I find myself bathing in love, in emotional safety, in the purest form of happiness. I’m scared of what’s to come, becoming a mother, bringing a new human into this world. I know I want to raise them and make sure they get everything I never had without overloading or spoiling them. I want to build a home and a family with three men who have made it crystal clear that they want to make this work.
Once we’re done with dessert, we settle in front of the fireplace for a few more cups of eggnog and Christmas carols. Sully adds more logs to the fire, and we spend the evening talking and sharing stories from our pasts. My history is vastly different from theirs, but as the flames crackle and I listen to their words, as I look into their eyes, I feel as though I’m right there on the battlefield with each of them, sharing their experiences.
I’m scared when an IED explodes right behind Jason, while Sully and Matthew help get the rest of the group to cover and out of the enemy’s line of fire. I’m horrified when Sully falls from the second floor of an abandoned hotel in Mogadishu, yet he manages to pull himself up and limp out of there as Jason and the rest of the crew provide the cover with a hail of bullets. I’m speechless when Matthew wakes up in the middle of the night, deep within the desert, to find the camp attacked by insurgents.
But I am delighted when Sully returns from the service and starts his first kickboxing classes at the community center in Providence. I feel his joy and tranquility as he rests easier, knowing he’s managed to take a couple of kids off the streets, in the hopes that they find their way into the halls of a community college and beyond or possibly even the military. I am thrilled when Jason bids his family in California farewell and decides to start his charter boat business off the coast in Rhode Island. I’d miss my folks, too, if I were him, but the excitement of a new life and a bountiful opportunity were far too appealing to ignore. I am filled with pride when Matthew tells me about how he worked on his frayed relationship with his father, how they were able to make amends and the old man gradually pulled him back into the family business.
It takes time to heal deep wounds, but when both parties are willing, it can be a natural process. It can happen without us even realizing it. I’ve forgiven my parents. We may be apart and barely see or hear from one another. But I forgave them.
It’s my turn to share. “When I was sixteen,” I begin then take a deep breath, “my sister Maddie and I got into an accident. I’d run off from home to go to a party. All the cool kids were there, and I’d just been told that I would never become a professional tennis player because of my knee injury. My dreams had just been shattered along with my kneecap. I was young and angry… at myself, at life, at everything.”
Matthew nods slowly. “I think we’ve all been there in one form or another.”
“Maddie had just gotten her learner’s permit. She wasn’t supposed to be driving without Mom or Dad in the car with her. But I called her and begged her to come and pick me up without our parents knowing. I was drunk, I wasn’t even supposed to be out of the house at that hour. I was selfish and I didn’t want to suffer the consequences of my own actions,” I continue.
“You were a teenager,” Jason kindly reminds me.
My eyes fill with tears. “I guess. But I was selfish. I didn’t think of the consequences. I didn’t care that Maddie didn’t have the experience to drive on her own. What’s worse, we got into an argument in the car. She was upset with me for turning to alcohol as the answer in dealing with my heartache from losing my tennis career. She’d done me one hell of a favor coming to pick me up, and all I could do was berate her for reprimanding me. All it took was one moment… she looked at me instead of watching the road and…” I lose my voice as I relive that night once more, the pain too much to bear.
In an instant, Matthew has his arms around me, holding me close, while Jason scooches closer on the sofa and Sully kneels before me, hands resting on my knees. I cry my heart out as they each comfort me with physical touches that mend my soul in ways I didn’t think were possible. Part of me knows that it’s time to let go of this old wound. It’s time to stop punishing myself for something that was never meant to hurt anyone. It was an accident.
“I was so mad that I’d lost my future—the only future I knew at the time, the only future I wanted. I didn’t see the pick-up truck coming. It happened so fast,” I manage between sobs.
“Selina, you were both kids,” Jason says. “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you are not responsible for that accident.”
“I lost my sister that night. Had I not called her, she would’ve been safe, at home…”
“The past cannot be undone,” Sully says. “And you can’t keep revisiting it to punish yourself for something that was out of your control. Maddie made the decision to get into the car. You didn’t force her, she chose to do that because she was your sister. She loved you and wanted to help.
“She could’ve told your parents, but she was protecting you,” he says, and I nod once. “Now, I’m not saying Maddie was responsible, I’m not saying that at all. That’s the thing with accidents, they happen and we can’t control them. One split-second, one micron of lost focus, one wrong move, and things can be changed forever. That’s life, Selina. You either survive it, or you don’t. We don’t get to decide when it’s over. We don’t get to choose. Life decides for us, and we never have a say in it.”
“I could’ve—”
“No, Selina. It’s done,” Sully insists. “Once you accept that, once you honestly accept that you can’t change what happened, that’s when you can finally move on. There’s nothing you could have done. It can never be taken back, and it wasn’t your fault. No matter how your parents felt, no matter what they said, or how they behaved afterwards, it still wasn’t your fault.”
“Honestly, baby, your parents failed you horribly after the accident,” Matthew adds, his brow pulled into a shadowy frown. “You were scared and hurt, you were grieving and you were riddled with the kind of guilt that no kid your age should ever have to deal with. They were supposed to be there for you, to help you forgive yourself, to love and protect you. Instead, they allowed their own grief and guilt to eat away at them until there was nothing left for you. Yes, you made a mistake. But so did Maddie. And your parents made the worst mistake when they left you to shoulder the weight of her passing on your own. There is no easy fix for how you feel, I know and understand that. But you can’t torment yourself for a lifetime. It won’t bring Maddie back.”
“It won’t bring your parents back, either” Sully sighs deeply, gazing into my eyes.
There it is. The cold, hard truth that I’ve been denying for so long. I suppose my inner child thought that if I’d spend every living moment feeling sorry, feeling guilty, it might make my mother and father love me enough to come back to me. It obviously didn’t work. And Sully is right. It’s not on me.
“They were the adults,” Jason says. “They should’ve known better. You and Maddie were just kids. Your decision-making abilities were ridiculously underdeveloped at the time. But they were the grownups, Selina. And when they had to bury one daughter, they were supposed to remember that they still had another, and that she needed them. Desperately.”
“Honestly, this makes me angry,” Matthew replies, the grief thickening his voice. “They should’ve been there for you. No wonder you’re hyper-independent. No wonder you are so strong and resilient, so alone in this world. You couldn’t rely on your primary caregivers for the much-needed comfort and love you sought.”
I give him a long look, a smile tugging the corner of my mouth. “I’m not alone anymore, though. Am I?”
“No, not anymore,” he says.
After an emotional but much needed discussion, we find ourselves in the master bedroom.
