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Somewhere on the far side of the room, the doula laughs. Looking back at Beth, I can’t help but agree. I reach up to tickle her chin. “Sorry for the masculine nose, sweetheart,” I tell her, which earns an even bigger laugh. This one from more than just one person.
I look up to find our family spilling in. My dad, my sister and my brother all hurry to our side, and Devan’s right behind them. She must have gone to fetch them the moment the baby came out. Before we can protest, we’re enveloped in tight hugs from all directions.
I lose track of time that day. Melanie feeds the baby, before we pass Beth from family member to family member, introducing them all one at a time. Someone brings snacks, someone else brings champagne, and we all toast to Mel, to Beth, to our new family. To the future we’ve built together. A future I could never have imagined, but one that I now can’t even picture living without.
Somewhere in the midst of all the celebrations, Dad catches my eye and nods toward the door.
I wait until a break in the conversation, before I lean down to kiss Melanie’s cheek. “If you need me, just let the nurse know to grab me, okay?” I whisper in her ear. “I’ll be right back.”
She glances up at me curiously. But then she spots my dad waiting, and smiles, nodding just once. “I’ll be fine,” she murmurs, and tilts her face to mine so I can kiss her softly. Sweetly. That kiss makes me want to stay right where I am. To not leave her side for a second. But there will be time enough for many more kisses like that in our future. For years to come, in fact.
I cross out of the room, pausing to hug my sister and then my brother on the way out, the latter slapping my back and muttering a whole string of congratulations to me before I finally manage to extricate myself from the room for long enough. When I do, I find my father waiting by the exit door. He leads me down to the courtyard outside the hospital, to a little square marked “Smoking Section’, which makes me frown in confusion. My father has never been a smoker.
But then he withdraws a Cuban cigar from his pocket and clips the end. “Family tradition,” he explains. “My father smoked one of these with me the night you were born.” He grins and takes a long puff, before he holds the cigar out to me.
I take a slow puff, and keep my gaze on him, waiting. He didn’t bring me out here just to smoke. I know my father better than that.
After another pass of the cigar, he sighs out a sweet-scented puff of tobacco. “I just wanted to tell you congratulations, son. And to tell you how proud I am of you.”
I suppress a laugh at that. “Don’t get all sappy on me,” I warn him, even though that’s pretty much my father’s MO.
He smirks. “Look, I know that I… that my methods, were harsh. With the bookstore. I regret what I did, trying to force you into a certain way of life. When your mother first died, I was lost too. I’d lost my partner, after all. The woman who I’d expected to have with me until my dying day.”
He blows out another puff of smoke. “But when I saw the way you reacted, holing yourself up in that store, refusing to get out into the world or to live, well… I knew I couldn’t let you do that, son. Because your life had barely even begun.” He shakes his head slowly. “But I was wrong to do it the way that I did. Kicking you out so forcibly, and forbidding you from even seeing the store or going into it at all in the meantime…” His eyes cloud over now. “I just worried that you were going to fall back into that habit, you know? Of mourning and never really living.”
“I get it, Dad. Really.” I lower my voice and try to catch his eye. “And… yes, I was pissed at you. Furious, actually. When you first took the store away, it felt like losing Mom all over again. But I get it now. Really, I do. Because…” I let out a faint laugh, and my gaze drifts away from my father, back up to the hospital windows above us. Somewhere up there, my wife and my newborn daughter are waiting for me to return. To come back to them and the life we built together.
A life I might never have considered starting if it hadn’t been for my father’s insane rules.
So I smile and meet his gaze once more. “Without your forcing my hand, Dad, I might never have wound up where I am today. I might never have gotten together with Melanie. And she’s everything to me. So… I get it.” I grin. “Just don’t try and force me into doing your bidding anymore, okay?”
