Page 124 of My Unfinished Heart

I’ve moved past defensive. I’m pissed. “How did you find my cell phone number? After I left home?”

Staring straight at me she says, “I hired a private detective.”

“Un-fucking-believable. And the blanket? You mentioned a blanket? What did it look like?”

She gives me a grim look, lips pressed together and a glint in her eyes. The look is probably because she’s just poured half of her heart onto the kitchen table, and I have yet to acknowledge it. But when you find out you’ve been someone’s pet project your entire life, how are you supposed to react? “It was blue. Archer, there’s a reason I’m telling you all this.”

“Yeah?” I snap. “What? Why?”

She leans closer, absorbing all of my anger and paying no attention to the bitterness in my tone. She reaches across the corner of the table and pulls my arms out of their stiff fold on my chest. She takes my hand in an arm wrestling grip.

“Baby boy, I love you. I’ve loved you your whole life. When I saw you that first day, I wanted you to be my child. My baby. Maybe it was my hormones or the backlash of having lost so much, but I fell in love with you so fast, it felt like God himself put you in front of me.”

My eyes start blinking rapidly. Her words are catching up with me, gaining resonance. I can hear her, but everything in my field of vision gets jumpy. I can’t focus, and my ears hurt—like they’re being assaulted with battering rams. Nausea takes over my gut, and the room spins. I find myself nodding. Moving my head, up and down, over and over, like okay, yeah, you love me, I know...

But I don’t know. Turns out I’ve never known anything.

“West told me your stupid theory. About the chimps and the wire mothers. I know you think that because your mother didn't love you that means you can't ever love anybody, but you’re wrong. First of all, you were not a chimpanzee, you were an exhausted little boy. Second, you didn’t have a mother made out of wire. You had me.” Her voice breaks, and something inside me shatters.

“When you were a baby—when you were with me—I told you how much I loved you every time I saw you. And you know what? Your mouth actually does know how to form the words. You said it to me enough times. Not lately, granted, but I remember well enough. Don't you shake your head at me.”

How can I stop? I don’t even feel my body anymore.

“There’s a whole lot of love in that big heart of yours, and I don’t want you to lose that wonderful young man out there because you keep telling yourself you don’t have what it takes to love him back. And you will lose him if you keep on thinking that. That feeling you have for him—that he’s got for you? That’s called love. He’ll give it back to you if you let him. I just want you to open up your heart, baby boy. Love is what we’re put here for. What you’re meant for.”

The raw emotion chewing at my insides is so difficult to tolerate that the only right response—the only thing I know how to do is shut it down.

I stare at the table. I’m inhaling, and I’m exhaling. It might be loud, like I’m running a marathon, but I’m breathing, and that’s the important thing. She presses her fingertips into the palm of my hand. “Archer Michael, I love you like you’re my own son. It’s why I never have been able to let you go. I want your happiness as much as I want West’s. More than I want my own.”

My face is wet, and I buckle under the loss of control. I’m spinning and breaking apart. My eyes close because hearing is enough right now. Is too much even.

Her other hand rubs my arm, grounding me in reality. “Sweet baby boy,” she says, her voice soft. The way she says it—like a mother should—it’s the final blow, and I collapse beneath it, taking my hand from hers to cover my burning eyes.

The pressure shifts in the room when the silent, swinging door opens. I hear the scrape of a chair across the floor, and then Tristan’s hands are pulling at me. My arms wrap around him as one pathetic sob wracks me, but that’s the only one that gets out. I stuff the rest back down.

Tristan presses a soft kiss beneath my ear, his hand running over my hair.

I feel no love. All I feel is the same old emptiness.

His cheek presses into mine. He tightens his grip around me.

Helen’s hand moves up and down my back, like we’ve all just witnessed a miracle together.

That may be how it looks, but it’s not how it feels. “I need to go,” I whisper, so quiet in Tristan’s ear, I’m afraid he won't hear me. He pulls away. Concerned, he stares at my face and uses the fingers of both hands to wipe my cheeks.

He turns to Helen. “We're gonna go. I’ll take care of him.”

“I know you will, sweetheart. I know.”

Tristan stands and offers me his hand. I take it to rise up beside him. I look down at Helen, tears in her eyes as she gazes at me like I’m her own son. She’s been looking at me like that my entire life. How have I never noticed it before?

“I love you,” she says again, standing, taking her turn to dry my face.

The light of her love for me shines so bright it blurs my vision. “Nell, I can’t.”

“You can. Of course you can. You’ll see.”

“Thank you so much for dinner,” Tristan says, but his voice sounds different. He gives Helen a long hug. I can hear their whispers, but not the words.