Emerson (Annie's father)
I wiped my palms on the sides of my pants and debated not answering it for a minute. What would I say to her? How would I go about telling her what needed to be said? How would she take the news?
I didn’t know the answer to these questions and my side with less courage told me that I didn’t have to know the answers to these questions if I didn’t want to. But the other side of me told me that she needed to know. And that was the only reason that I picked up the phone that day.
“Hello?” I said, trying to keep my vocie even and official, as if I didn’t already know who was on the other end of that line.
“Hi.”
Damn, the back of my mind swore. It had been hoping that it was a salesman or someone else. Someone that wasn’t her. Anyone but her.
“Andrea?”
“Annie,” she said back.
“Pardon?” It wasn’t her?
“Annie,” she repeated. “Everyone calls me Annie now.”
“Oh.” Did she have to throw that at me so quickly?
But she didn’t even spare me of the point of the conversation with the next thing she chose to say.
“So...Why did you call?”
There was a pause as I tried to work out how I was going to go about telling her this. I remembered back to the time I had told her her beloved hamster, Fritz, had died but the sweet, sugar-coated, “It’s okay, honey. Fritz is probably happy where he is right now. We’ll get you a new hamster if you like” wasn’t particularly appropriate. Even if she had said no to the last statement.
“Dad?” she said. “Are you still there?”
“I’m still here,” I said.
There was another pause.
“It’s not Mom, is it?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” I said. “Your mother is fine.”
I looked over to where my wife, Laura, was watering her plants. She looked up at me when she heard herself mentioned. She gave an encouraging smile and waved.
“Then what?”
“Andr...Annie, this isn’t going to be easy for me to tell you,” I said, beginning to twiddle with the phone cord, as I usually did when I was on the phone and nervous.
“Just tell me,” she said gently with a slight note of impatience.
I sighed, knowing that there was no stalling anymore.
“All right,” I agreed. “Look, um, do you remember Collin Windsor?” I knew she would. How could you forget a person like him?
“Of course,” she whispered. I knew she knew what was to come next.
I sighed again. “He, um, he died, sweetie.” It had been so long since I had called her sweetie that, for a moment, what I had said didn’t sink in for either of us.
Then it hit.
“Collin....died?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I guess he’s had cancer for a long time. He died just this morning.”
“Oh my Lord.” Her voice was shaking now. “How do you know?”
“I was working at the hospital this morning. Karen--you remember her, don’t you?--told me. I guess she’s been working with him for quite some time, but it only occurred to her this morning after he passed that I had mentioned him before.”
There was a deathly silence at the other end of the line.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I can’t believe it. After all this time. And he’s dead when I finally find him again.” I should’ve seen a hidden message in that statement, but I didn’t.
“Well, there’s more.”
“There’s more?”
“Yeah. His family is also requesting that you come to his funeral.”
“Why?”
“They know you, Andrea,” I said. “They remember you.”
“Oh God,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t do it. I...”
“I’ll be there as well.”
“Yeah.” She sounded remote. The thought brough her little comfort.
And you can bring Reese with you as well, if you two are still together at all.”
“Dad, we’re married,” she said, sounding somewhat miffed.
“Oh.” I tried to conceal my hurt.
“I don’t know. How can I go?”
“Andrea...”
“Annie,” she corrected me.
“Annie,” I corrected myself, sighing. “Annie, he would have wanted you there. You can’t just not go.”
“I’ll see,” she said.
“So you’ll think about it.”
“Yeah...I’ll think about it. It’s just...”
She sighed and after that there was a long pause. I found my mind slipping into thinking of Collin Windsor....and who he was to Andrea. Who he had been. What he had meant.
“It’s just waht?” I said, realizing she hadn’t finished her statement.
“Nothing,” she said. “Well...No, it’s nothing.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s it, then,” I said. There seemed to be nothing more to say even though we had hardly said anything.
“Yes, I guess,” she said reluctantly.
“Maybe I’ll see you there,” I said uselessly. I had a bad feeling that I wouldn’t and an equally bad feeling that I would.
“Mmm-hm,” she acknowledged without committment.
“Bye,” I said quietly, remembering the last time I had had to say good-bye to her. It was the last time I had ever seen her.
“Bye,” she said back.
I sighed, taking the phone from my ear and beginning to lower it back into its cradle when I heard a sudden, unsure, “Wait, Dad?”
I immediately lifted it back to my ear.
“Yes, I’m still here,” I said.
She sighed to herself and then I heard her take a deep breath.
“Dad, um, I have something that I have to tell you,” she said.
“Oh no,” I said, automatically sitting down. It had become almost an instinct to sit down whenever Andrea said those words to me. It never meant anything good. At least not usually.
“It’s not....bad necessarily,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked, in no mood for beating about the bush like we used to. Dancing around the subject so that she wouldn’t have to admit that she was doing drugs or in jail or pregnant or anything like that.
“I...uh....I found....them,” she said slowly and hesitantly, as if she didn’t know how I would react to her words.
As I listened, I wasn’t sure if I had heard her right. When I realized that it was a strong possibility that I had, my heart began to race and my palms began to sweat. But first, I had to make sure.
“Who?”
“Them,” she said. “The twins. I found them.”
I stood up immediately.
“You found Parker and Jordan?” I said ecstatically. My wife looked up from what she was doing, her eyebrows raised. In disapproval. “Well? Where are they? Have you met them? Do they know?”
“Slow down,” she said. “First of all, they’re both right here....in Tulsa. They found each other. One was with Gina Lowell....The other, Taylor, not Jordan I guess....he was with Walker and Diana. You knew that though. Taylor knows, Parker doesn’t.”
“You told one but not the other?” I said. “That’s not good.”
“No,” she agreed. “But Taylor found out by mistake. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but I guess it did.”
I began to pace the room with the phone in my hand.
“I want to meet him,” I said.
“Dad, I’m not....”
“No, Andrea, I want to meet him,” I said firmly. “He’s my grandson, I have every right to see him.”
“Dad,” she said. “I’m not so sure he could take that. I mean, this whole thing has been thrown at him pretty fast. He didn’t even know he was adopted until a few months ago. This would...”
“So am I to take it that he’s not invited to Collin’s funeral?” I said, growing angry with her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the whole reason I have to decide whether or not I’m even going first.”
“Look, Annie, I want to meet him,” I said. “Just give me a time or place. I don’t care. Andrea....,” I trailed off, not being able to convey to her in words how much it meant to me to be presented with the opportunity so see my daughter’s son once again. Twelve years after I had last seen Jordan. I had had nightmares about that day. I hated myself for it. For letting him go. My wife and I could’ve taken him in if we wanted to. We could’ve raised him. I had always had a strong urge to tell him how sorry I was that that wasn’t the way things had turned out. He probably wouldn’t understand...but I needed to say something. I needed to see the kind of person he had grown to be. I needed to see what he looked like.
I guess with only the way I spoke her name, my daughter knew what I meant.
“All right,” she said. “I understand.”
“When?” I said.
“I don’t know. Right now they hate me.”
“Who? The twins?”
“No. Walker and Diana. They really don’t like me too much at this point. You know, for showing up after so long.”
“I can imagine,” I said softly.
“Yeah,” she said without self pity. “I’ll let you know, though.”
“Fine. I’ll be there. Just give me the time and place.”