“You don’t say.”
“Oh, yes, he was such a ladies’ man before he met Tara, his ex-wife.”
Only mildly prepared, I walked out onto my porch at the same time Ian returned to it. He had several photo books in his hand. Rowan whispered in my ear as if he could hear her. “I was never really that fond of her, she seemed a little cold compared to his warmth.”
Ian pulled pictures from the books and began to burn them one by one. Something in my chest split as he walked around Rowan Kemp’s burning kitchen cabinets, tossing away what I was sure were irreplaceable pictures.
He had lost his shit. It was, without a doubt, Ian’s doomsday.
“Don’t!” I screamed from where I stood.
Ian ignored me as he tossed an entire book into the fire before shaking another so that the pictures fed the flames.
“Koti? What is it?” Rowan said anxiously on the phone.
“Oh nothing, I was just…”
“Is everything okay?”
“Oh, fine,” I said, as I paced the porch watching her son destroy his mother’s memories. He must have found the pictures in the linen closet. The Kemps had very few of their own things in the house.
“Rowan, I’m going to ask him if he needs any help.”
“Okay,” she said hesitantly. “But please ask him to ring me.”
“Will do.” I was already running toward the small bonfire just as Ian tossed another picture into it.
“What are you doing!?”
“Privacy,” he said through thick lips. “That’s all I asked for.”
“Kind of hard to ignore you, Ian. Since you’ve gone all Tom Hanks Cast Away—me man, me make fire!” I reached for the picture in his hand as he tossed it in. I watched it burn. It was a shot of a woman in her wedding dress who I assumed was Tara. She looked beautiful as she smiled at her groom. I was only able to admire Ian in a well-fitted tux for seconds before the fire engulfed the photo.
Jesus, what could have happened?
“Ian, if you want to talk about it…”
He picked up another book and took a few pictures out shoving them into his pocket before he tossed it into the pile.
“Leave.”
“Please stop. You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
Blazing eyes scoured me before he looked back at the fire. “I know exactly what the fuck I’m doing.”
Sweat pooled on his forehead. He was covered in splintered wood. Ian Kemp had cracked, and he wasn’t coming back until he was ready.
Way too far into his headspace, he ignored me standing next to him.
I walked back to my house and watched him dismantle years of memories as he stared at the fire until it went out.
And then the house next to mine went completely quiet.
I SAT IN THE DARK living room staring out the window at the brightly lit ocean. Thousands of stars littered the night sky as the sea swept the shore. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t temper the anger. I couldn’t bring myself back to some semblance of the man I was just days before. It was a new beginning I didn’t ask for—that I hadn’t planned on—but I could feel a part of me coming to the surface, a part of me that I had ignored for years. The selfish part.
The last fifteen years of my life had been a series of compromises, and mostly on my part to be the man I was raised to be—a good husband and doting father. The things I swore I wanted. Another crack deep within bled freely when I thought of all that time I spent believing my family was a gift and purely my own. The irony is my ex-wife had been lost to me for years, a stranger before I left her and asked for a divorce. And my daughter… I scrubbed my face as I fought the threatening explosion within.
I would give anything to take those minutes at that hospital back. With everything in me, I wish I would have played dumb, instead of recognizing Tara’s guilt and figuring it out. Not only did I have the knowledge that Ella wasn’t mine, her mother was now threatening to tell her the truth. Threatening to reveal to my little girl she didn’t belong to me in the biological sense. This was no doubt Tara’s plan in an attempt to transition her boyfriend into being a family man. I didn’t need a paternity test to know that Daniel was Ella’s sperm donor. Tara had been dating him her whole life up until the month we met. It seemed as though their relationship didn’t end when ours started.
Rage boiled again, refusing to let me feel anything else in that moment. If the look on Koti’s face when she watched me unravel the last few days was any indication of my well-being, I was safer sitting in the dark dealing with my temperament alone.
I left a loveless marriage for the sake of all three of us. Though Tara fought the divorce and claimed to love me even after the papers were signed, I still cared for her enough to set her free to find something more than the shackle of obligation we felt.
I wouldn’t let my daughter suffer another needless argument. I refused to stay together and set that horrible example for her. It wasn’t blissful or comfortable. It was waged war and over the simplest things. Everything I’d ever done, including the dissolution of my marriage, had been for Ella. I had no woman waiting.
But that was now the case. I had a little woman waiting. I had to go back. I had to go back and fight for what was right for Ella, but I had nothing inside me but hate and the taste of betrayal coating my tongue and clouding my vision. I would not abandon my daughter, but she would not recognize the man I was now.
As starlight struck the water and twilight hit, I couldn’t see the beauty. I couldn’t fixate on the awe-inspiring light, I only saw the darkness in-between.
Soft music drifted from Koti’s bedroom as I slapped the water away from my eyes. I moved to the kitchen to see her bedroom clearly lit. On her stomach with a book in hand, her knees bent and bare feet up, she swung them back and forth to the melody. In that moment I envied her ability to live only for herself and the freedom that came with it. I wanted that. I’d just been granted that freedom in the cruelest of ways by Tara’s confession. But I could never embrace that freedom because of the loss I would surely suffer. Still, the idea of it appealed to me more than anything. Not the loss of Ella but the need to do things differently, to finally make my life my own, about me. Anger blurred my vision as I sat back in the shadows of the house. The dark would have to do for now.
A DAY WENT BY WITHOUT a glimpse of him, and then another. I spent a good amount of time staring into the darkness watching for any movement, a trickle of light, but came up empty.
I tried to muster up any excuse to check on him but had none. He asked for privacy and I had to admit when I arrived on the island, I wanted the same.
Rowan called nightly and I assured her with a false update that her son was fine.
But after a third day, I no longer felt safe in assuming the best. When my alarm went off that morning, I grabbed some clothes and made my way to the house next door. After my knock went unanswered, I began to pound. “Ian?”
Nothing.
Fear crept through me as I stood on the porch for a solid five minutes knocking. Desperate, I glimpsed through the window and saw him lying on the couch with his eyes to the ceiling. “Ian. Open the door, please.” His eyes drifted to mine and my heart skipped a beat. Reluctantly, he moved to get up and a few seconds later, we were face to face. His jaw was covered in dark stubble, his hair a scattered mess, expression unreadable. I scoured him from his sad gray depths to his shirtless chest, to his bare feet. He was fine, aside from looking completely desolate.
“What is it, Koti?” It was a different tone, equal amounts of defeat and exasperation.
I lifted my folded clothes. “I’m out of water and running late for work.” It was a lie but a damned good excuse. I peered into the house behind him, before I made my case.