“I think the trouble you’re referencing was your own fault, Pop.”
“True enough.” Donovan pulled another swig, but before he could catch one more, his father pulled the bottle from him.
“I wasn’t done with that.”
“Yes you were.” The clear liquid ran out of the decanter as his father tipped it upside down over the railing, then placed the empty bottle gingerly next to him on the balcony. “Nasty stuff.” Donovan watched him pull a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe away the liquid from his fingers, moving his chin to the picture next to Donovan’s knee. “That from the Ireland trip?”
“Yeah. Ten years ago.” He handed it over and watched his father’s eyes dance, thinking that he must be remembering that time, when Layla’s father was still the best friend he ever had.
“Ah, well, those were some fun years.”
“For you.”
Donovan had always liked his father’s laugh. Not the one raspy from whiskey or the occasional drunken party cigars he smoked, but the sober, truly amused laugh he released. He hadn’t heard it often, and certainly not lately, but he still thought it was nice; a crisp, contented sound. “I remember you two teased each other relentlessly. God, for years and years.” He handed the picture back to Donovan. “That trip was no exception.” Donovan remembered it too. Some stupid local boy with wide ears and too many freckles flirted with Layla all through dinner and Donovan had retaliated, stupidly blaming her for nothing at all. He never thought either of their parents believed him spilling his cider in her lap had been an accident.
Jesus, had they always been such a disaster?
“I ah, had breakfast with Sean Mullens this morning.”
Donovan’s gaze quickly slipped to his father, checking to see if perhaps he was cracking a bad joke. “Why?”
A small shrug and his father leaned forward, resting his shoulders against the railing. “He called me as I was headed into the office. Told me he needed to have a word. He wanted my advice.”
“Yours?”
“It might be hard to believe, Donovan, but once upon a time I was a good man. Sean remembers that, I suppose.” He scratched his chin, his gaze unfocused as though he was trying to remember all the stupid things he’d done to change that good man so drastically. “Sean wanted to speak with Layla. He wanted to mend fences and I suppose he thought I’d know something about that.”
Donovan didn’t comment. His father had a way about him, sometimes filling up the silence between them with a memory, always something that he thought might make Donovan smile. But the apologies he’d made for betraying an eighteen year old Donovan had never seemed enough. That pain still ran deep. It wasn’t that he still felt anything at all for Jolie anymore, he didn’t. It was that his father had been at the center of his first heartache. The man who was meant to protect him from the ugliness of the world had been the one to first deliver it to Donovan.
“That must have been awkward.”
“It was. At first. Funny thing about knowing someone your whole life, son. You go back to the kids you once were. Despite the stupid shit you do to each other, you always go back to the people you were. If you want to. If you can let go of your grudges.”
That was true enough, it seemed to Donovan. He and Layla had fought and cursed each other for years. There had always been so much damn anger and heat between them. And then, there was just heat. Seeing her today, knowing with one look that she didn’t want him, didn’t want the baby he’d given her, had reminded him so much of the girl she’d been when her rage, her offense had her screaming at him for whatever stupid prank he’d pulled on her.
You always go back. Until there’s nothing left to go back to.
“Sean told me about the baby.” Donovan frowned at his father, instantly wondering if there was something wrong with her, if in her anger Layla had kept something from him. When his frown deepened his father smiled. “I mean that it’s a girl. Your… um… you’re having a daughter.”
“No. We’re having a girl. She’ll be someone else’s daughter.” Donovan closed his eyes, let his forehead fall onto the railing. He didn’t want to think about that baby. He didn’t want to obsess as he had been for months on all the things he’d miss from her life.
“I can relate, Donovan.”
“Yeah. I guess you can.”
The tree limbs in front of them moved, rustled and brushed against the roof and in the break between the leaves, Donovan caught sight of the sky above them, the clear pattern of stars visible so close to the mountains. That knot in his throat, the one that had vanished the night Layla turned up on his front landing with her bags in her hands telling him he was all she had, returned the second he watched his tiny daughter moving under the sonogram in that doctor’s office. He’d been awed by the sight and then immediately terrified when realization hit him that she wouldn’t be his. Not really. How had he forgotten that his father may have felt the same once? “You ever wonder about her?”