The One Who Stays is the Hero
Keith sat at the counter glaring at the phone in his hand. "Lianne, where's Veronica?" he asked, his voice tight with an emotion I couldn't quite place. Foreboding? Fear?
By the time I finished saying, "She took Backup out," he was out the door. They both keep telling me that everything's fine, but it's obvious that it isn't. And it's more than just the awkwardness of the three of us together again. That's there, of course. Things we can't say to each other. Stories that trail off because they touch on one of the hundreds of sore points we're dancing around. Looks that pass between them that I don't understand. Keith sleeping on the couch, me hiding behind the vodka in my bottled water, and Veronica trying too hard to make it seem normal. I think he was moving on. Not that either of them have said anything, but there's a different cologne on his dresser and a pair of earrings in the drawer. Two signs of a girlfriend. Some sick part of my mind could gloat that she's the one on the outside now, but I know he's not doing this for me.
When the three of us are the in same room, we're all sneaking covert glances at each other. I'm drinking her in – trying to see the daughter I knew in this sharp, aggressive girl so happy to see me, yet so guarded. Who surprises me almost every moment, but just when I start to think she's a stranger, I see a flash of something familiar. She's watching both of us, gauging our reactions and looking for the formula that'll put our family back together. He doesn't look directly at me very often, and when he does, I can't read the expression in his eyes. But he watches her when she's watching me – and so I know. He's doing this for her. Because it's what she wants. And I'm doing this….why am I doing this? Because I'm desperate. Because I'm scared and I don't know where else to go. Because I'm out of money and tired of being alone. Because when she left Barstow, my heart broke. Because despite being a lousy parent, I love my daughter and I can't stand being away from her any longer. Maybe even because some small part of me still loves Keith, too, and is too ashamed to face him without her between us. And maybe because once upon a time, right and wrong seemed like solid things, but now they don't. But I've figured out that when you're running from yourself, it doesn't matter where you are.
And so here I am, in this apartment. Neither of them have noticed the alcohol yet. They come in late and rush out at all hours. I went down to the office once – at eleven o'clock at night – and found Keith bent over his computer and Veronica sitting on the edge of his desk pointing out something in a file. Theoretically, she's the receptionist, yet somehow I doubt she'd be there at eleven at night if all she does is answer the phone and handle the filing. Their relationship's changed. Keith still exudes the overprotective father vibe as strongly as ever and he's still her hero, that much is obvious, but they treat each other like equals now. They're still father and daughter, and she still relies on him, but they're partners, too, and he depends on her as well.
There are gaps in this life they've created, but I can't fill them. I don't fit into the spaces left. When you leave, the place you filled doesn't remain open. The people you left grow together to fill some of the gaps and the others just stay empty. Even if you come back, all the shapes have changed. Veronica still loves me, but as much as she wanted me to come home, now that I'm here, she doesn't quite know what to do with me. Nor does her friend Wallace, who is polite, but rarely looks me in the eye. He quickly leaves the room when I come in, almost as though he's afraid if he stays, he'll say something he shouldn't. We talk, we laugh, and I ask her about her life, but her answers don't tell me anything. It always dawns on me later that she deflected every question I asked with some sort of sarcastic aside or clever rejoinder. She's witty and dazzling and seemingly fearless, and so very much in control, but sometimes when she thinks no one's watching, her eyes fill with a look of such overwhelming sadness that I have to look away. She tries not to let Keith see it, but he does. And he blames himself for her pain.
But I don't reach out to her – I'm too guilty, too sure she'll push me away, too aware that I'm still using both of them, and too afraid to know what kind of hell could possibly have put that look in her eyes. Keith reaches out to remind her that he's there – he'll put an arm around her shoulders or drop a quick kiss on the top of her head. She'll snap herself out of it and smile at him. And in those moments, her guard drops and her eyes reveal that he's the only person in the world she truly trusts, the only one she lets herself love without reservation. Her rock.
I should have expected that. Veronica's always been "Daddy's little girl." Even back when things were good, when we had a relationship that most mother/daughters would have envied, her bond with Keith was always different. Deeper, somehow. Looking in from the outside, people might have assumed that she was more like me – beautiful, popular, friends and boys always around – but they understood each other in a way I never fully understood either of them. Their minds worked along similar patterns. They had the same quirky sense of humor, the same quickness to see connections that most people miss, and the same determination that sometimes makes people admire their tenacity and other times curse their pig-headed stubbornness. Most of all, perhaps, they had the same fierce loyalty to the people they loved. They couldn't stand to see anyone they cared about hurt or ridiculed. The only time she ever brought a note home from school was the day she punched a bully in the stomach for tormenting one of her friends. She was half his size, but she made him cry. The whole thing disturbed me, but Keith couldn't bring himself to scold her for it.
He cried the first time he held her. Unlike most of my friends' husbands, he was a hands-on kind of father, sharing midnight feedings and changings and pacing the floor with her for hours when she had colic. When she cried in the middle of the night, he grumbled, but he usually got out of bed more quickly than I did. She took her first steps holding his hand, and as soon as she got her feet under her, she followed him everywhere. When she got hurt, she'd run to him and bury her face in his shoulder. Most kids cling to their mothers when they go through their shy stage, but Veronica clung to her father instead, attaching herself to his knee for weeks on end. When she had nightmares and couldn't get back to sleep, he'd lie on her bed and do shadow puppets on the ceiling, making up silly voices for them until she finally dropped off. More than once, I saw him chase the monsters under her bed away with an oven mitt and a baseball bat. I knew he'd do the same thing with boys ten years down the road. Minus the oven mitt. And he did. He always made a point of being in uniform when her dates came to the door, to up the intimidation factor. It worked. He didn't actually say much, just stared them down until they started to sweat.
He taught her to ride a bike, kick a soccer ball, cheat at cards, and drive a car. He wasn't at all hip, and she used to beg him not to try to be funny around her friends, but she adored him nonetheless. They constantly played practical jokes on each other, and he was never prouder than when she blindsided him. When she was eight, I caught him teaching her to play poker with goldfish crackers, making her a card shark before her time. Unsurprisingly, he never understood why her friends' parents resented this. To his great dismay, she was never very good at his beloved game of baseball, so he got in the bad habit of standing too close when he pitched. The first time she finally hit the ball, she nailed him in the face. Blood everywhere. She cried. He laughed. She was fascinated with the sheriff's office, so he bought her a set of walkie-talkies and taught her police code. For two weeks, every conversation in our house involved a walkie-talkie. His bedtime stories usually involved highly edited versions of "how to interrogate someone," "how to tell if someone is lying," and "how to track down someone who doesn't want to be found." She loved it.
For all of that, he was stricter than I was – mostly because he always knew what sort of awful things were happening or could happen in Neptune – and he wanted to protect her. Remembering the Homecoming dance when she and Duncan and Lilly and Logan stayed out all night, I'm grateful now that she has the memory, but at the time, we worried ourselves to distraction. He yelled a lot after he brought her home that morning, but she told me later how much it meant to her that, unlike Celeste and Jake, he didn't rake her over the coals in front of her friends. I think we grounded her, but we all knew that for her, the actual punishment had been stepping out of the limo and seeing the disappointment in his eyes.
She and I covered the regular mother-daughter territory. We talked, we shopped, and she told me about the boys she liked. I promised her that adolescence doesn't last forever. Keith being Keith, we schemed for ways to get him and his sidearm out of the front hall when her dates came. Usually with minimum success. I taught her sign language and she kept me up to date on which expressions never, ever to use in front of her friends. I saw a little of myself in her – the tendency to compartmentalize, the need to solve her own problems, and the habit of keeping things to herself. Keith rarely compartmentalized. He dealt with things upfront – as they were and how they impacted all of the other areas of his life – and then he moved on. And although he kept most of the details of his work to himself – he always tried to shield us from the ugliness of police work – it was easy for him to share his emotions and his heart. I don't know if that's true anymore. Not after everything that's happened. When I look into his eyes, I see a wall – and I know I'm largely the one who put it there. I don't know what Veronica sees.
Whatever I've done to him over the last twenty years, I truly did love him when we got married. I don't know if it was the "man in uniform" phenomenon, but he made a part of me come alive that no one but Jake had ever touched. I loved the way he made me laugh, how fast his mind worked, and the intense way he listened. He wasn't my usual type, and maybe that's why he caught my eye. For a man who spent his days breaking up domestic disturbances, wrestling violent criminals into handcuffs, and ensnaring drug traffickers, there was something fundamentally sweet and gentle about him. For an average-sized man, he was surprisingly effective in a physical confrontation, but he only pulled his gun when necessary, preferring to outwit people rather than overpower them. After years of the roller coaster that was Jake and I, he was everything I wanted. When he said he loved me, I knew I could trust that he would stay.
When Jake came back into my life, I swore that I wouldn't throw away everything I had for the relationship that never worked, no matter how many times we tried it, the one that just never turned out right in the end. But I did. I'd blame Jake Kane for everything I've done since, everything I've become, except for that small piece of my conscience I've never been able to drink into silence that reminds me that I was there, too. That I'm the one who chose to cheat on my husband. That I'm the one who couldn't walk away – who let one night become years of nights. That I'm the one who can't tell my daughter who her father is. That I'm the one who spent the night throwing up when she told me that Duncan Kane had asked her out. That I'm the one who fell apart when Veronica needed me most – that when I should have been taking care of her, she and Keith had to take care of me. That I'm the one who further humiliated them in front of the entire town by causing scenes in bars when Keith would come looking for me – the disgraced ex-sheriff trying to get his alcoholic wife out the door – people ate it up. That I'm the one who once threw an empty beer bottle at him and then turned around to see my sixteen year old daughter standing in the doorway. That I'm the one who abandoned them. And that I'm the one responsible for the fact that the most important person in my daughter's life may not be her father at all.
And as wrong as it is, a part of me always looked for Jake in her – in her features, in her personality, in her aptitudes. I never wanted to know for sure either way. Somehow, not knowing eased my guilt toward Keith and allowed me to imagine that I had a part of Jake that I could never lose. But I so often wanted to think of her as Jake's. I'd watch her with Lilly and search for similarities, and when the weeks stretched between the times that we could see each other, I'd look at Veronica and try to see him in her face. Then I'd watch her with Keith and realize again what it would do to both of them if she really was Jake's daughter. I'd hate myself all over again and I'd drink a little more that day.
It's horrifyingly ironic that Keith now makes his living telling other people that their spouses are being unfaithful to them. Before the investigation into Lilly's death, police departments and sheriff's offices all over southern California called him in as a consultant when they hit dead ends. You might wonder how someone with Keith Mars' reputation as a detective never suspected that his own wife had an affair. It simply never occurred to him to doubt me. He trusted me - so he never tried to fit the pieces together.
She stood there in the doorway of her bedroom, her shoulders slumped under the weight of whatever it is that's turned her into this combative, vulnerable, wise-beyond-her-years person, and then quietly closed the door, shutting me out. And in that moment, I knew that I'd used up my last chance with my daughter. That she'd always love me, that maybe someday she'd even forgive me, but she'd never come looking for me again. That I'd burned the only bridge back to the person I used to be, finally alienated the one person who still believed in me.
And then I slipped out the door with the remainder of her college money – without asking again what had happened, whether she was all right, or how badly Keith was hurt. Despicable, I know. What kind of person – what kind of parent – does such a thing? But all I have room to care about any more is what I need.
At that moment she confronted me, though, suddenly I knew the answer to one of my questions. There's more of me in her than she'd like to admit – an instability, a profound recklessness, and an inability to ask for help – and an increased chance of someday turning to alcohol to solve her problems. But there's far more of Keith – his strength, his intelligence, his courage, his devotion to the truth, and his moral compass. In the end, I don't need a blood test to tell me who her father is. I'm leaving him with a terrible responsibility – the need to somehow compensate for my failure as a parent by being perfect in every way. By always being that rock in her life who will never ever let her down. And there's no way he can do that. Much as he loves her, he'll screw up someday. He'll disappoint her, maybe badly. I just pray that when that day comes, she'll have healed enough to forgive him. To be disappointed and angry, but at the end of the day still give him her faith and trust.
Ultimately, however, she's her own person, distinct from both of us. Heartbroken, jagged, and vulnerable, and maybe a little vengeful, but also passionate, courageous, and whip-smart. Sarcastic and edgy, but still a champion of those who don't have her strength. A crusader for justice. Loyal and determined, and committed to the truth at any cost to herself. And underneath all of that, still soft-hearted and kind despite her tough demeanor - able to love other people and sacrifice for them. With a core of strength I can't begin to fathom. She can't be cowed. The girl has steel in her spine. So for all she may have inherited from me, she'll never be like me. That's the image I'll take with me for the road.