AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is dedicated to the lovely kpfun on tumblr, who said in a review on the first fic in this series, rhapsody in blue, that she hoped that Lyla would forgive Thomas even after everything he had done. If I had the Connelly family reconcile in this is ground control to major tom, I should do the same for the Novaceks here. Some serious damage has been done, yes, but they're adults after all.
The title is from "It's Quiet Uptown" from Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda
As Starbucks bustles around him, Thomas wonders if his daughter is keeping him waiting on purpose.
He honestly doesn't blame her.
Thomas sits at the small round table in the corner for fifteen minutes past their scheduled meeting time before a harried Lyla finally comes through the door. She slips through the line and approaches him, but there's no heartfelt apologies he knows she would give to anyone else. His daughter stands there by the table, every muscle on edge as if she is about to bolt, and he doesn't hold that reaction against her, either.
"I had to drop Evan off at school," she offers, voice tight. In those eight quiet words, he hears her say my son comes before you in my life as clearly as if she had screamed it through a bullhorn. "And then I had to go the grocery store, and traffic was so bad today. It was worse than usual, really."
"Well, it is the Big Apple," he replies, making sure to keep his tone light. Lyla's call asking him to fly out to New York had been a bolt out of the blue. But it has been years since he had seen her last, and he's not going to turn down this opportunity to even be in the same room as her; everything he had done was because he loved his daughter, no matter if she agreed with his choices.
After a moment, Lyla finally pulls out the chair on the opposite side of the tiny table, setting her purse on her lap and holding the leather bag. She sets her cellphone on the table, light reflecting from the ceiling onto the dark screen. "Thanks for coming all the way out here."
"No problem." He knows he's treading on thin ice by simply being within ten feet of her, but having a nearly fatal heart attack has taught him plenty in the past two years. "How's it going?"
"Fine."
She's still tense, and he offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile. But Thomas has never been good at being comforting, and he doesn't know if it works. "How are Evan and your, uh, husband?"
The ring on her finger is as obvious as the sun in the sky, and he'd seen a few of her wedding photos on Facebook. She hadn't ever responded to his friend request in the years between her car accident and now, but he'd managed to see some of the pictures of the Central Park ceremony through his sister's account. The most memorable image of all, however, had not even been the utter joy practically radiating from Lyla and her new husband; it had been Evan walking his mother down the aisle.
"They're doing great," she answers.
"How old is my grandson now?" It's odd to say the word even after all these years. He's known Evan has probably been alive for well over a decade, but he had also pretended the boy hadn't existed for eleven of those years. Old habits die hard.
"Fourteen."
"Is he enjoying high school?"
"Evan's actually still in eighth grade. He had to repeat the sixth for… various reasons," she replies. In her pause and vague statement, Thomas gets confirmation of his own place in her world all over again, and knows he'll be on need to know basis for the rest of both of their lives. Yet even sitting with her in a carefully public Starbucks is better than nothing. "But he likes it," she adds.
"That's good."
An awkward silence falls, and he leans forward. "Lyla, I have to ask…"
She waits for him to continue, and for the first time he falters under her gaze. That had usually been the other way around, and he isn't used to not being in control of their conversations with Lyla holding all the cards now. But he has to try.
"Why did you want to meet? Why now, after everything I've done?"
She looks a bit surprised that he even has admitted his wrongdoing, and the old Thomas Novacek's pride would have never let him even allude to apologizing. But things are different, and he is different; nearly dying has that effect in reprioritizing what is truly important.
"Ever since I became a parent," she begins, and stops herself. "Of course I've been one for almost fifteen years, but now that I am involved in actively raising a child, my thought process has changed. I have to set an example for Evan."
Lyla looks down at her nail polish. "He hasn't had many good role models in his life, especially before Louis and I found him. And Evan's a good kid. He has a huge heart. But there's some… issues he's been working on in counseling that we've been trying to help him with. One of those is forgiving those in his past who hurt him, and I realized that Evan needs to see examples of forgiveness. He needs to watch people in his life extending it to others, no matter how deep the hurt."
She finally meets his gaze. "And Evan is going to look to his parents first."
Thomas doesn't dare speak up.
"Louis reconciled with his family a couple of years ago, and I decided I needed to do the same," she admits. "It just took me longer to bring myself to do it. We've been going occasionally to this church whose pastor helped Evan out before we found him. And some of Pastor James' sermons got me thinking." She takes a steadying breath, and then Lyla says the three words Thomas never thought he would hear.
"I forgive you."
He swallows hard. "You don't know how much that means to me." Even though the corner of her mouth turns up so slightly no one else would see it, it is enough for him.
They sit there in silence again as the coffee shop bustles around them, but the tension, so thick they could cut it with a knife, has started to dissipate. But one thing that will never change is Thomas being uncomfortable showing emotion – he had been a professional cellist himself back in his day, not an actor – and when a lump forms in his throat, he gets to his feet.
"A latte like usual?" he asks without thinking. Thomas mentally kicks himself for supposing her order is the same after all these years, because it was his assumptions that had gotten them into this mess in the first place "Or maybe something else? Whatever you want, really."
Her mouth twitches into a smile at his scrambled recovery. "A latte is fine. But I'll get it. You stay at the table-"
"It's fine. My doctor says light exercise is good, and it's not like it's ten miles to the counter."
But as he stands in line, he hears Lyla's distinctive Beethoven ringtone sound with the force of a full orchestra. When he reaches the counter to place his order, she is deep in conversation with Lizzy. But there's an odd look on her face as she congratulates her former college roommate, looking like she is going to cry at the same time. By the time he pays and leaves the counter, Lyla is all but choking out an almost convincing cheerful goodbye, and lowers her phone to stare at it like it has turned into a dead body.
"Is everything alright?"
When she looks up, he sees actual tears in her eyes. "Yeah, it's just…" She clears her throat as he returns to his seat. "Lizzy just called to say she and Jack just found out they're… they're expecting."
"You don't seem happy."
"I am," Lyla says almost fiercely, as if trying to prove that she is. "Of course I'm happy for them. I just can't help thinking that, um," she adds after a moment, drawing a ragged breath through her nose. "That she's going to get to raise her baby from day one, but…"
"But you didn't get to," he finishes.
Even a few minutes ago her words might have been sharpened darts aimed at him. But the world has been shifted on its axis by Lizzy's news, and Lyla doesn't seem to be directing her pain at him now. They both know who is responsible for the fact that she didn't get the same experiences her best friend will now have, but she doesn't seem to be lashing out at him now like she did that night in Central Park. She's more shaken than furious.
"A latte and a black coffee for Thomas," a teenager behind the counter calls.
Thomas silently gets up, but when he comes back with the order and a handful of napkins, Lyla's hands tremble a bit when she takes her drink.
"Thanks," she says in a thick voice, and he makes himself wait for her to continue. If he wants to be involved in her life again, he has to make choices that won't drive her away, and that starts now.
"Do you know how much I wanted to be a mother?"
He knows the answer, but doesn't say a word.
"Do you know how much I wanted to just hold Evan? Other parents complain about being exhausted, but I would have traded all the sleep in the world just to get up and see him every night. I wanted to see every milestone, watch him grow and learn. I wanted everything - the messy, the good, and the bad. I wanted it all." She swipes at a tear that falls down her cheek with trembling fingers. "I am beyond grateful that he's alive and that I found him again. But I never got to see his first step or his first word. I never got to be with him when he needed me most."
She presses a napkin to her nose, fingers trembling, as Thomas cautiously suggests, "You and Louis could have more kids."
She shakes her head, wadding the thin paper. "I don't want to have another baby just to be a stand in for what we missed with Evan. That wouldn't be fair to any of us."
Lyla gets up to throw away the napkin, but she pauses. "You know why I didn't come home after the car accident? Well, one of the reasons is because Evan's nursery was there. It would have killed me to come back and look at that when I had no use for it anymore. It literally took me years to even be able to handle looking at the color blue. I couldn't wear it for five years straight."
She crosses the room to a trashcan, and Thomas looks at the clock on the wall that reads ten forty. And so when Lyla returns, he reaches for her hand, but she instantly pulls her arm away. As he makes a mental note to be more careful about even casually touching her, he asks, "Does Louis have a normal lunch break hour?"
She looks up, surprised by his question. "Yes."
"I think you should call him."
Half an hour later, Thomas and Lyla go up to the receptionist at the bank where Louis works.
"Can you tell Mr. Connelly that his wife is here?" Thomas says. As the girl behind the desk nods, reaching for her phone, he glances at Lyla. His daughter is more composed than she had been at the Starbucks, but he had been an expert in reading her for eighteen years before the car accident and he can tell now she is struggling not fall apart at the seams.
Which, in a major way, is his own fault.
Louis is the first one out of the packed elevator only two minutes later, and he crosses the room straight to his wife. "Lyla–"
"Let's talk outside," she says, but when she takes his hand, Thomas can see her grasp on Louis' fingers is tighter than normal. Her father hesitates in following, but she offers him a faint smile. "Come along, Dad."
Only then does Louis even acknowledge Thomas' presence, clearly only deciding then that his father-in-law is not the cause of Lyla's woes, but the older man is glad to see his son-in-law is so focused on Lyla. The trio exit the bank for the sidewalk, and only when they are inside a taxi, headed for a restaurant Thomas has never heard of for some relative privacy, does Lyla finally speak up.
"So, Lizzy called." Her voice tightens. "She and Jack are expecting."
Louis wordlessly puts an arm around her as her shoulders start to shake. As they hold each other as best they can in the backseat of the taxi, Thomas realizes that Lyla and her husband seem to understand each other perfectly, their thoughts and emotions more in tune in Thomas' ten minutes of observation than the father and daughter had ever been in her entire life. He has never been on for sentimentality, but it is beyond clear to even him Louis and Lyla belong together.
But he doesn't say a word, because this is not about him.
Louis doesn't seem to care about Lyla's tears on his blazer, and when they get out of the taxi at their destination, he ignores the crowds around them to pull his wife into a long embrace. "You okay?" the Irishman asks gently, and her father realizes Lyla had never looked at him with as much trust and open vulnerability as she now looks at Louis.
"I'm okay," she says in a low voice, and smiles when Louis wipes away one of her tears with his thumb.
"You're not alone in this, Lyls," her husband says into her hair as they cling to each other, and even though they are in the heart of New York City, Thomas feels like he is watching a private, intimate moment. "I'm at your side every step of the way," Louis adds, Thomas doesn't know if he has ever said words of that kind to Lyla, or if she would ever want him to.
At least she has someone now who does, and that's all that matters.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the final installment in this series, unless I actually write the one other fic idea I've had but that I can't quite get down on paper. Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed!