A Missing Heart (18 page)

“Things
were
really hard,” I tell her.

She looks down at my hand and lifts it up in front of my face as she presses a finger into my wedding band. I’m trying to ignore the warmth of her fingers clamped around my hand, but it’s like a song that reminds you of a moment in time. Her touch brings it all back for me. “Clearly you’re doing okay now,” she says as a smile touches her lips.

What I want to tell her is, she has no idea how not okay I am, but it’s not the time to air out all of my dirty laundry.

With the focus on my marriage, the thought of what her life has become enters my mind. Selfishly scared to see something similar on her finger, I force myself to look down and take her hand, immediately intimidated by what must be a four carat diamond ring. “And you, not too shabby, Cam.”

“It’s…Cameron, now,” she says, breaking her gaze from mine.

“Cameron,” I repeat—not as a question but as a statement. I need to hear the way her name sounds on my tongue after never calling this person I thought I knew so well by the very name she was born with. “Suits you.”

She wraps a strand of her flawlessly curled hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So, what brings you all the way back to this quaint little New England town? Surely, it can’t be me.” I laugh, because if it were me, why wait almost thirteen years?

Cammy—Cameron, looks down to her feet as I question her visit. “I am here because of you,” she says. As if six words couldn’t turn my life completely upside down, I create the space I think I need and take a seat on the couch behind us. “Are you okay?”

“Twelve—thirteen years, Cam. Do you know how many of those days you have crossed my mind?” She’s engaged or married…something, and I’m married with a son. This isn’t okay. But it’s Cammy. My Cammy. But, not my Cameron. Someone else’s Cameron.

She walks over to where I’m sitting and takes a seat beside me. “I’m here because I have something to tell you, something we need to talk about.” The lightness in her voice thickens and an anxious inflection coats the last of her words.

“Are your parents okay?” My mind races right to the thought that something might have happened to one of them, but even if that happened, why would she need to talk to me?

“Of course, they’re both fine. Still the same people, always in my business, always keeping tabs on me. You know them,” she laughs. Yeah, while I should know them—the grandparents of our estranged daughter—I only know of them. She places her hands over her lap and knits each of her fingers tightly together. Her pale skin brightens into a light pink, closely matching her polished nails, and I’m becoming anxious and impatient for her next words.

“I give up, then, what is it?”

Cammy takes in a sharp breath and closes her eyes. “Ever, she’s…she came to find me.”

“Ever?” I feel every muscle on my face tighten, questioning each word that spills out of her mouth. “Ever? You mean our Everything?”

She inhales, placing a long pause between my question and her answer. “It’s really her name, AJ. After you left the hospital room, when I made you leave, the adopting parents insisted that I give our daughter a name. “I could only hear your words playing through my head at that moment: ‘
She’s my everything
.’ Because of that, I named her, Everything. The adopting parents were a bit put off by my decision, but rather than argue, the woman asked if they could call her Ever for short. It sounded like the most beautiful name.” I want to tear through the house like a tornado with anger and resentment, after all of these years I’m only now finding out that Cammy knew our daughter’s name. But, I’m not moving, and I’m not unleashing because she named her a perfect name. Her name is short for everything, and I’m just short
of
Everything. “I didn’t tell you because you were already going through so much turmoil, and to be honest, I was seventeen, AJ. I wasn’t making the brightest decisions. I can apologize for the hormonal seventeen-year-old I was, but it won’t change anything now.”

“Wait a second,” I say, stopping all of my thoughts because my world just imploded. It’s spinning around me, and I’m in the center watching my life spiral out of control. “Did you say…our daughter came to find you?”

Cammy lifts her face and I see that her eyes are filled with tears. Her bottom lip juts out slightly, and it’s quivering like the rest of her body is. In an instant, all I see is an upset seventeen-year-old girl. A sound like someone just tied a knot around her throat escapes as she begins to cry, and it breaks everything inside of me. Whenever Cammy cried, I felt like crying too. I couldn’t stand it when the girl I loved was in pain, and I couldn’t do anything to fix it. Her tears still seem to have a similar effect on me. “She came to find me—us.”

I close my eyes, feeling them fill up with tears that I will not be able to control, not if my life were to depend on it. “Did the adoptive parents find you or something? The adoption was closed, and I thought that was the end.”

“No,” Cammy says softly. “It was just Ever.”

“But…only—she’s only—today’s her birthday. She’s only thirteen, and…D.C., she wasn’t living in D.C., right?” I ask, having a hard time putting words together. Everything feels hazy, like I’ve been whacked over the head with something heavy.

“She came to find me on her own. I don’t know how she found me, AJ, but she found me.”

“Where is she now? What does she look like? Is she okay? Is she—” I’m frantic, panicking, completely discombobulated.

Cameron holds her hands up, gesturing for me to relax. “Okay, okay. I know this is a lot. I almost passed out when she came to my front door. It was the strangest thing, AJ. She was standing there, and I could have—should have—assumed she was a random kid, selling Girl Scout cookies or something, but the moment I saw those eyes—your eyes, those crazy Caribbean blue eyes of yours, I knew it was our daughter. I didn’t even confirm it…I just threw my arms around her and didn’t let go for a long time. She let me hold her, AJ. She didn’t make me let go,” she croaks through harder cries.

I don’t know what else to do other than wrap my arms around her and hold her as tightly as I’ve wanted to hold on to her for so long. “Can I meet her? Where is she right now?”

“With Casper,” she sniffles. “At the hotel down the street.”

“Casper?” I question, sucking in a breath. “Casper?”

“My fiancé,” she says.

“Casper?” I ask again. “Like, the ghost?”

She laughs through her tears. “He’s never heard that one before,” she jokes, waving a finger at me.

“You’re engaged to a Casper?”

“Yes,” she snaps with a small smile. “I am.”

The smile has fallen from my face, though. “Is he good to you? He could be named Dog Shit for all I care, as long as he’s good to you.”

She presses her lips together, and the smile lines tracing her mouth deepen. “When I see him, he’s great. Works a lot, travels even more. You know how it can be. He’s an attorney.”

“Your dad’s dream, huh?” I add in. I never knew much about her parents, but I know nothing was ever good enough for their Cammy.

“Yeah, Mom and Dad love him,” she shrugs.

“Do you?”
Too far, AJ. Too far.
First time speaking to this girl in over a dozen years. This is none of my business.

“Of course,” she says. The conversation comes to an awkward pause, and I take the hint about dropping the relationship questions as she puts her hands over her eyes. “Anyway, how about you? You have a wife. Any kids?”

“Yeah, I have a wife, Tori, and we have a one-year-old little boy, Gavin.”

Cammy gives me a genuine smile and places her hand on my knee. “It makes me so happy to hear that you got over your promise of never having another child. I always thought you would make a great father.”

“Wasn’t planned, but everything does have a reason for happening. That’s for damn sure.”

“And I’m going to take a guess that you’re working for your dad now?” Her fingers pinch at the shred from the knee-hole of my jeans.

“Hunter and I are running the show, but yeah.”

“Your life looks pretty perfect to me, AJ.”

“Looks aren’t everything,” I tell her. Her eyes sag a bit with despair, maybe recognizing the truth in my words, maybe feeling sorry for my words, maybe feeling them for herself.

“So, Ever, did she run away?” The questions pop into my head, one by one. It isn’t okay that our thirteen-year-old daughter showed up at Cammy’s house on her own and out of the blue. Something must have caused that to happen.

“Yes, she ran away from a foster home,” she says.

I stand up from the couch before my mind has a moment to tell me to breathe and stay seated. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She had only been there for two weeks.”

“Why, Cam—Cameron? Tell me why she was in foster care for even thirty seconds?” I’m pacing the living room, feeling ready to run out the front doors and find those fucking assholes who took our daughter and promised to care for her.

“They died. They were in a private jet affiliated with the man’s company, and it crashed. Eight of the ten people aboard died on impact. I’m sure you heard about it on the news a couple of weeks ago. In any case, those are all the details I was able to get out of Ever.”

I did see it on the news. Watching the updates made me feel sick for the families involved. Oh shit… “Was she in—” I stop pacing to ask this question.

“No, she was with her nanny.”

“I need to see her, now. I need to see her. Okay?” My chest is rising and falling at a rapid rate, and I feel like everything within me is erupting with a fuel of anger, resentment, excitement, and utter happiness. I’m out of control, and I’m afraid of waking up from this dream—the only dream I’ve fucking had since that little girl was brought into my life.

“Okay, I’ll take you to her.”

I fall to my knees because they’ve given out, and I wrap my arms around Cammy’s calves, thanking her over and over again. “Thank you. Thank you,” I breathe out.

The only wish I have for my daughter on her thirteenth birthday is to sit down at a table and share a cupcake with me—and for her to blow out her own candle. This year, my wish is coming true.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I’M SITTING IN
Cammy’s BMW, staring out the window, retracing my steps from the moment I woke up this morning. I had no clue my day would end up like this. “So,” I say, looking over at Cammy in her dark Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. “What did you decide to do with your life?” Other than become stinkin’ rich and more beautiful.

“I’m an attorney,” she says, grinning with pride.

“Oh yeah? You any good?”

“Depends,” she says, her smirk growing a little wider.

“On what?” I laugh.

“If you’re the good guy or the bad guy.”

This reunion feels like nothing between us has changed, like no time has passed at all. I feel like myself, and I feel so proud of her.

We pull into the parking lot of the only four-star hotel in the area. “Casper is cool with meeting me and stuff?” I ask. The last thing I want is to cause any issues between her and this ghost but I’m seeing my daughter whether he’s cool with it or not.

As she puts the gear in park and turns the ignition off, a nervous blush fills her cheeks. “Casper isn’t thrilled at the moment. We had plans—life plans, and Ever wasn’t part of them.”

“Did he say that?” I ask, feeling pissed already. That’s my daughter, and anyone, who doesn’t want her around should just go the fuck away.

“No,” she says quickly “But I’ve been with this man for six years and…”
And, you’re still engaged
? “I know when he’s not happy about something.”

“I see.”
Keeping my mouth shut
.
Best thing for both of us
.

I follow Cameron into the hotel, then the elevator, and up to the top floor. As the doors open, my stomach sinks.
I’m going to see my daughter, the little girl I never thought I would see again.
Cameron stops in front of the hotel room door and turns to face me. “Act as normal as possible. She’s fragile. The only people she knew as her parents just died three weeks ago.”

“Cam,” I interrupt her before turning back toward the door. “Does the foster care know you have her?”