Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Adam
Z
I rushed up the stairs, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. My heels slapped against the carpeted hallway until I reached our room. Lily was sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, her small sneakers sitting neatly on the floor beside her feet. She was trying to pull her socks on, but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn't stretch the elastic over her heels.
"Let me help you, baby," I whispered, dropping to my knees in front of her.
My hands were shaking as badly as hers. I took her tiny, cold foot in my palm and gently pulled the white cotton sock over her heel. She was so light. Every week she lost another pound, her bones becoming more visible under her papery skin.
"Who was Dad talking to down there?" Lily asked, watching me with her big, dark brown eyes. She had Adam’s eyes—wide, inquisitive, framed by thick lashes that even the chemotherapy hadn't entirely taken away. "He looked mad."
"He wasn't mad, sweetie," I lied smoothly, forcing a smile that felt like a crack in my face. "Just... stressed about packing the car. We have a flight to catch."
"Is that old man with the white hair a friend of yours?"
I froze. My thumb paused over the ankle of her sock. I slowly raised my head. "What?"
"I saw him from the balcony," Lily said simple-mindedly, swinging her legs over the bed frame. "He was staring at me when I called down to you. He was crying, Mommy. Do you know him?"
The air in the room felt suffocatingly thick. Outside, I could hear the faint hum of traffic from the highway, a cruel reminder that the world was still spinning while my reality was falling apart in slow motion.
"He's..." I swallowed down the lump of bile in my throat. How could I explain ten years of hatred to a ten-year-old girl who was running out of days? How could I tell her that the man downstairs was the father of the dead boy whose picture sat on her nightstand back home?
"He's someone I used to know a long time ago, Lily," I managed to say. "A very long time ago."
A soft knock sounded on the open door of the hotel room.
I spun around, expecting Tony. But it wasn't Tony standing in the doorway.
It was Robert.
He looked even taller up close, his broad frame somewhat bowed by age. He was wearing a dark grey suit jacket over a crisp white shirt, completely out of place in a sun-drenched Florida resort. He held his coat in his hands, his knuckles raw and red. Standing right behind him in the hallway was Tony, looking like a man awaiting an executioner.
"Claire," Robert said. His voice was deep, gravelly, and broken. "Please. Just five minutes."
"Get out," I said, stepping between him and Lily, shielding my daughter with my entire body. "Get out of our room, Robert."
"Mommy?" Lily murmured behind me, her small hand reaching out to clutch the fabric of my jeans. "Who is he?"
Robert’s eyes shifted past my shoulder, landing on Lily. The moment he saw her face—really saw her face up close—his breath hitched. He staggered back an inch, his hand reaching out to catch the doorframe for support. Tears welled up instantly in his faded blue eyes, spilling over into the deep grooves of his face.
"She looks just like him," Robert whispered, his chest heaving. "Dear God... she has Adam's exact eyes."
"Don't you dare speak his name in front of her," I snarled, my voice dropping an octave, pulsing with a venom I hadn't felt in a decade. "You don't get to come here after ten years of silence and play the grieving grandfather! You forfeited that right when you sent me that letter after Adam died! You told me I was a mistake! You told me Adam was planning on leaving me before the crash!"
Tony stepped forward, his eyes wide with shock. "Wait... what? He said what?"
Tony looked at Robert, then back at me. "Claire... you never told me he said that."
"Because it was a lie!" I shouted, turning my glare to Tony. "It was a vicious, cruel lie meant to tear me down while I was seven months pregnant with a child whose father was rotting in the ground! And you—" I pointed at Tony—"you let him buy his way back into our lives for park tickets and a ocean view!"
Robert closed his eyes, bowing his head as tears streamed freely into his silver beard.
"I lied," Robert confessed quietly.
The room went dead silent. Even the air conditioner seemed to cut out.
"What?" I whispered, my voice barely audible.
"I lied in that letter, Claire," Robert said, opening his eyes. They were full of a unbearable, raw agony. "I was insane with grief. Adam was my only child. My wife had died of cancer five years before, and Adam was all I had left in the world. When that driver killed him... my whole world blew up. I saw you, young and pregnant, and I was jealous. I was bitter that you got to keep a piece of him, and I was left with nothing but a cold headstone."
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Robert dropped to his knees right there in the doorway of the hotel room. An old, wealthy, proud man, kneeling on cheap resort carpet.
"I wrote those awful things because I wanted you to hurt as much as I was hurting," Robert sobbed, pressing his palms together in a gesture of absolute surrender. "It was evil. It was the worst thing I have ever done in my life. And I have spent ten years dying inside because of it. Please... Claire... I am dying too."
