Lex and Lu (16 page)

Nina bounded forward, as was normal for her. She greeted her grandmother, her aunt, and her uncle. Lu, who could tell that the atmosphere in the room was heated, entered the room gingerly, and closed the doors behind her. Although she would have preferred to be anywhere else, this was the inevitable conclusion to the turmoil of the day. Without trying to, she found herself watching Lex. He was struck still.

After Nina finished hugging Pete, she stopped in front of Lex. Lu was about to make an introduction, but Nina stared up and him and said, “Hello.”

Lex, still dumbfounded by her presence, managed a “Hello.”

“I’m Nina,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I guessed that,” he said as that smile of his lit his face.

“Are you Lex Pellitteri?” she asked.

He nodded. “I am.”

Willa, Pete, Jo, and Lu all watched, fascinated with the exchange, each holding hope in their hearts that somehow this could reach a happy resolution.

“Grampa Mike told me all about you,” she continued.

Everyone was surprised, but no one more than Lex, and it showed in his expression. Feeling awkward towering over her, he went down on one knee, resting his elbow on the other leg, and leaned forward.

“What did he tell you?” Lex asked, completely curious.

“That you are really special. You play soccer.” She held her hand out and with each point, she counted them on her fingers as if trying to remember everything. “He said you’re smart and funny. But he said the most important thing about you is that when I finally get to meet you that you are going to be a really good dad.”

They all reacted to this. Jo choked on a suppressed sob, Pete smiled, suddenly feeling lighthearted, Willa looked to Lu, concern lining her face. Lu just watched Lex. She saw how that one sentence seemed to lift him up. It restored his swag. And then she couldn’t watch anymore. She found Willa’s gaze, silently asking for help, then slipped from the room.

Lex, who had thought he couldn’t love his father any more, felt his heart fill. Leaning in to his daughter, he said, “You know how he knows that?”

She shook her head.

“Because he taught me, and he was the best father in the world,” he confided to her, his eyes damp.

She smiled, obviously agreeing.

“Granny was getting me some ice cream. Do you want to have some ice cream?” she asked.

“I’d love some.” Lex stood up then got back down. “Can I ask you a favor first?”

“Sure,” she answered.

“Any chance I can get a hug?”

She didn’t answer. She just threw herself into his arms.

Jo found her some time later, sitting on the refurbished swing set that had been updated to accommodate Nina when she came to visit. Lu sat with one foot gently pushing, slowly, the moment it encountered the ground. Lost in her thoughts, Lu didn’t see Jo approach and jumped in surprise when she spoke.

“Well, that certainly went better than I expected,” she observed as she sat in the swing next to Lu.

Lu nodded without taking her eyes off the toe of her shoe. “Yeah,” she said shortly.

“Are you OK?” Jo asked, concern obvious in her voice.

Lu glanced up ruefully at her. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Probably,” Jo concurred. “But I’m thinking the changes in your life are going to be more numerous and just as difficult to deal with as mine.”

“Yeah,” Lu said again. “But you can’t change what happened.”

“Neither can you.”

“Are we going to argue about whose situation is worse too? Because, not to make you feel bad, but yours is much worse.”

Jo laughed, a genuine laugh. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

Lu smiled at the picture Jo made, sitting on the swing with her sad eyes smiling. “Did you know that he told Nina?”

Jo shook her head. “No, sweetie, I didn’t. We didn’t really talk much about the situation. It’s crazy to think about now, with him gone. Which, let’s face it, I’m never going to get used to that.” Shaking her head, as if to clear it, she continued. “It was the one thing in our marriage that we never resolved.”

“That seems weird to me,” Lu commented.

“Me too. But nevertheless, it is what it is. And now there’s nothing I can do to fix it. But you can.”

“I’ve done my part. They’re together now. How we’re going to sustain that, I’m not sure.”

“She took right to him. They’re in there eating ice cream, chatting like they’ve always known each other.” Neither one of them spoke for a couple of minutes. They sat, gently swinging, each lost in her own thoughts. “What do you think the plan’s going to be?”

Lu kicked the dirt with her foot in frustration. “Who the hell knows? He lives in England for God’s sake. And to top it off, he hates me.”

“Lex could never hate you, my dear. He’s angry, which is not something he’s had to deal with, ever. When he’s had some time to think through everything, when he gets some distance, he’ll forgive you. It’s not his nature to hold a grudge. He devotes too much energy to other things to try to sustain a grudge.”

“It doesn’t matter as long as he and Nina can figure their way around each other.”

“That will take time too,” Jo said sagely.

“Do you think it’s odd that Nina never told me that she knew who her father was? I mean, she never even asked me.”

“I thought about that briefly. I wish I could shed some light. I wish Mike had told me that he’d spoken to her about it. From what she said, it seemed like they had spoken about it often. She was just so comfortable and confident about him being her father that I feel like it’s something she and her grandfather spent a lot of time discussing.”

“I agree. I was completely thrown when she said that to him. It felt like I was watching a Hallmark Channel Christmas special.”

Jo laughed. “Well, let’s hope we get our happy ending.”

“Problem with that, Dr. J., is that I’m not sure what a happy ending would be.”

“Don’t you?” Jo asked.

“No, not anymore. What my happy ending was forty-eight hours ago and what it would be now are totally different,” Lu said, staring out at nothing.

“Louisa May?” Jo said, calling in the motherly tone.

Lu looked up directly at Jo, a slight smile on her face. “Yes?”

“What exactly did you do? Why is Lex not mad at me?”

Had Jo asked her that question at another time, a time when she felt stronger or more hopeful or more generous, she would have answered differently. But she didn’t have any strength, hope, or generosity left in her reserves to call upon. So she looked directly at Josephine Pellitteri and said, “I sold a bit of my soul to save all of yours.” With that, she pushed herself off the swing and moved away, seeking solitude so she could sulk without an audience.

Lex sat at the counter with Nina, totally enthralled. He had a difficult time thinking that he had a part in her creation and he wondered how often his parents had thought that throughout his and Pete’s childhood. In the brief time he’d spent with her, she seemed to be equal parts him and equal parts Lu. The combination of their features in her physical appearance made him wonder how those genes got all mixed up and spit out. It seemed to work on her and he vaguely wondered what his life would be like as the father of a sixteen-year-old who looked like her.

He saw his mischief reflected in her green eyes, but he could already tell that she had Lu’s thoughtfulness and innately cautious nature. That in itself would be a most interesting combination. She would have Lex’s craziness but would temper it with actually thinking through her actions. He smiled, thinking again of the teenage years.

Lex hadn’t spent much time with children, so he felt a little out of his league. Ice cream he could do, but he’d sputtered a few times trying to think of appropriate things to say to her and to ask her. She always picked up the slack, asking questions that had sometimes caught him off guard. He was able to handle the “Why do you play soccer?” and “How much do you practice?” He managed “What’s England like?” and “Do you have a best friend?” He’d completely blanked on “Will you always play soccer?” and “What will you do when you don’t play soccer anymore?” Did all eight-year-olds talk like this or did she have Lu’s super brain?

He’d already fallen in love with her, but when she asked if he thought Grandma Jo was going to be OK, he felt his heart grow, like the Grinch’s.

“I think Grandma Jo is going to be OK. But it might take some time,” he answered.

“I’m gonna miss Grandpa Mike,” she said sadly.

For the first time since he’d met his child, her face was marred by a frown. Again, feeling out of his league, not sure what to say, he hoped he could manage this conversation without having to resort to calling his brother over. “Me too. I will miss him every day.”

She looked at him quizzically, her eyebrow cocked. Oh shit, Lex thought, she inherited the eyebrow.

“But you didn’t see him very much because you’ve been gone for so long.”

Lex felt wounded, but wasn’t sure if that had been her intention … Running his hand over his short hair, Lex fumbled through an explanation. “Well, I’ll still miss him. Even though we didn’t see each other every day, I talked to him almost every day, and he was one of the closest people to me.”

“Oh,” Nina said. “So is that what we’ll do now? Will we talk every day?”

Lex wanted to reach out and pull her in to a hug, but he didn’t know how that would be received. He wanted to assure her that they could have a good relationship even with an ocean between them. He wanted to know the right thing to say and do, but without the last eight years of experience he felt helpless. And that’s when he got pissed all over again. That’s when the seed of his plan began to take root.

Lex called up his reserves: his patented smile and charm, which had seen him through every difficult situation in his life. Smiling the same smile that she would use, he said, “We’re going to figure all of that out. We’re coming up with a plan. OK?”

He thought the look she gave him was calling bullshit. But, again, without knowing her the way he should have, he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to reassure her, but he didn’t want to have it be a lie later. So he kept it vague. “Your mother and I are working on it. Promise.”

“OK,” she said with a shrug.

Reluctant to step away from her, Lex looked around, hoping for an out so that he could get some control of his anger. Pete wasn’t far away. Throwing him a “please help me” look, which he knew his brother would catch, he waited for Pete to walk toward them.

“Hey, Little Bit. Does Uncle Pete get some time today?” he asked, with a natural ease that came with familiarity.

Unreservedly, Nina got up off the bar stool and went into his arms. “Can we go on the swings?”

“You bet.” Looking at Lex, Pete said, “OK if I steal my favorite niece away?”

Nina giggled. And Lex knew this was an inside joke with them.

“Uncle Pete, I’m your
only
niece,” she responded in a well-rehearsed way.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said, looking sheepish, as was part of the joke. “You’re just too smart for me, Nina.”

Another giggle.

Lex watched it all, fascinated. His brother was obviously a permanent fixture in Nina’s life. A streak of jealousy shot through him. This was fucking torture and too much to take.

“We’re going to head outside,” Pete said, asking his brother for permission with his look.

At Lex’s nod, Pete turned to leave. Lex stopped him. “Know where I can find Will?” he asked.

Pete looked at him questioningly, remembering their last encounter.

Lex rolled his eyes, indicating it was OK. So Pete acquiesced. “She ran next door. You may want to wait until she gets back.”

Lex knew that code. “OK. Can you let her know I need to chat with her?”

“Yup. I’ll send her over.”

Pete left and Lex made his way back to his father’s office to wait for Willa. Closing the doors behind him he moved to Mike’s desk. Sitting there, he took stock of everything. He was angry. He was jealous of everyone’s relationship with his daughter. He was infinitely sad over the loss of his father. He’d never felt so out of control in his life. Emotions completely foreign for him beat at him from every angle. He longed for a return to normalcy—practice, a game, a focus. But even as that thought flew through his mind it dawned on him that his normal had been infinitely redefined. Struggling with a new vision of what his life would look like, the soft knock at the door indicating Willa’s arrival caught him completely off kilter.

Willa never waited for permission from anyone, so when she sat down in the chair across from him he smiled at her out of a great appreciation for the woman that she’d grown to be. They’d been close. His intimacy with Lu had changed that, but not in a bad way. Now, facing her across his father’s desk, Lex knew that any road back to that closeness would be littered with causalities of this war that he was about to wage. As he gazed at her, he felt a millisecond of regret, but then that unfamiliar anger that had become his companion today took over. Fuck it, he thought.

“I guess I should apologize for slapping you earlier, but I just can’t bring myself to do it,” she started.