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“I like that idea,” Lily says.
“Do you have a favorite color for the walls?” I ask as I snap pictures with my phone.
She looks around. “I always wanted a dark, dusky purple, but my grandparents wouldn’t let me paint my room. It was just boring white.”
Alex finally looks up. “You can paint it any color you want. It’s your room. I want you to like it.”
“How am I going to get paint?” Lily asks, her face crestfallen. “You don’t drive. I can’t walk from town with gallons of paint.”
Alex’s wide shoulders sag. Having Lily in his life is shining a spotlight on things I don’t think Alex really wants to see. But maybe he needs to start seeing them.
“I’ll call Kelley and have him bring some paint and brushes over. Just look up the color online so I can tell him what to get. We can start it tomorrow.”
I’m surprised Kelley hasn’t duct-taped Alex behind the wheel of a car already and forced him to start driving again.
Lily looks at me with a hint of hope in her eyes. “Can we do it? If you’re not busy?”
“I don’t have any plans,” I say. “I’d love to help you.”
Alex picks up some of the furniture pieces. “Suit yourselves. It’s probably gonna need a few coats. I’ll see if Kelley can get the stuff here today so you can get it prepped.”
When Alex is gone, Lily flops back on her bed and gives me a weak but grateful smile.
“Thanks for all your help,” she says. “It’ll be cool to have a room that's really mine. At my grandparents, it was the same weird shit. I was in my mom’s old bedroom that she grew up in.”
“Hopefully, this can be a new beginning for you. For both of you.”
“I’m sure you noticed he and I don’t exactly talk.”
“I think things will get better. He’s trying.”
“As he should. I mean, he abandoned me.” Resentment coats every word.
I hesitate, debating on how much I should say. Lily has a right to be upset, but she seems to be missing parts of the story. Maybe if she knew more, she wouldn’t feel so much anger and animosity toward Alex.
“He didn’t abandon you, Lily. Not like you think.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. “What other way is there to think? He didn’t want me.”
“That’s not true. He did want you, but he was hurt during the accident. He lost his eye and he was grieving the love of his life. He didn’t know how to take care of a newborn by himself. Your grandparents were only supposed to be helping him at first, and then they sued him for custody, knowing he couldn’t afford to fight them. They told the courts—and him—that he’d be a shitty father. They refused to let him see you.”
She stares at me, her lips slightly parted. “How do you know all this?”
“He told me.”
Looking down at her hands in her lap, she says, “I don’t know, Penny. My grandparents never told me any of that. They told me he didn’t want me, and he just left me at their house. I’m not sure why they’d make all that up.”
“I don’t know why either, Lily,” I say softly. “But I know he wouldn’t do that to you, not after what happened to him when he was little.”
Her head snaps up. “What happened to him?”
Sighing, I peer down the hall to make sure Alex isn’t upstairs. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” I say in a hushed voice. “I probably said too much already.”
“Tell me. How else am I supposed to understand him? I’m not at a place with him where we’re having heart-to-hearts, Penny. We probably won’t ever be.”
I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but I want Alex and Lily to understand each other and be close. This wall between them seems so wrong. They’re all each other has.
“Okay.” I relent. “But please don’t tell him I told you. I don’t want him to get mad at me. I’m only telling you because I think you need to understand his side.”
“I promise I won’t say anything.”
Emotion wells up in me as I remember how Alex’s deep voice wavered when he told me about his childhood. “When Alex was ten, his father left him and his mom. He just took his stuff in the middle of the night and disappeared. A few weeks later, his mother went out to get groceries, or so she said, and never came back. They just left him there all alone with his dog. He didn’t have any money or any relatives. All he had was what little food that was left in the kitchen. When that ran out, he had to go through people’s garbage. He was afraid to tell anyone, so he lived totally alone for months. The electric and phone got turned off and everything. That’s being abandoned.”
