Here is part II...also, a guest had a request for more of Jay with the twins, but unfortunately, I have thoroughly exhausted everything I have when it comes to Jay etc. I am officially on empty. I do appreciate the idea, but my muse has dried up. There are a few more chapters on their way that I am finishing up. Thank you all for reading.
Eighteen months later
Emma
I had more faith in Jay that he had in himself. He had spent nearly every Saturday with Liam since he was eight months old. At first it was just at my apartment, allowing me to run errands or finish up things at work. Then he eventually moved into a two-bedroom apartment and would take him home for the day, but never seemed confident enough to take him overnight—until tonight that is. Liam had celebrated his second birthday not long ago and Liam had been in a toddler bed for a while and had been asking to sleep with Daddy. So I told Jay we should amend the visitation to every other weekend, but he would have Liam from Friday night until Sunday evening. The man that had faced danger in war and on the streets, panicked. He claimed he didn't think he would be able to handle Liam's needs if he woke up in the middle of the night, or what was the best bed time or what to do if he wouldn't go to bed, or slept too late. What if he didn't want a bath or to eat dinner? All the things that he could just lay at my feet when he dropped him off at the end of the day. But I told him it was time, I needed Jay to handle this, I needed to know that he had experience because I wouldn't be here forever.
I had been dreaming about my days in Ireland. The salt air from the sea, the rocky coastline, the row houses with brightly colored doors. I wondered if she was reaching out to me for a reason. I had to know that Jay could handle our son alone. I knew already of course that he could, I just had to convince Jay.
He was a good Dad, he was on the floor, playing and interacting with Liam. Splashing in the tub. Worrying Liam wasn't eating enough. Concerned when he was too quiet. All the things that good parents were made of, but he still believed himself to be incompetent. It was time for him to dive into the deep end, even if I had to give him a push.
He worried he would be too harsh, not harsh enough as we went over the rules and expectations one more time. I told him he was a natural and waved goodbye. I knew his nights were challenging, that sleep was elusive, divided by nightmares and I believe that was what had caused the delay in taking Liam on all night, not concerns of behavior. But he had to move forward and embrace his son at all times of the day and night, not just when it was convenient.
Jay
I didn't feel much like a natural and Liam and I had our fits, him slightly more than me. But we found a rhythm and I discovered I loved being a dad, his dad especially.
I found the dazzling speed and energy level of a toddler was exhausting and we often both fell asleep like young puppies that had been romping in the yard all day. He was pretty good about staying in his bed, but I still often found him in mine when I woke up in the morning. He loved going on outings, but could get cranky midway through causing me to realize that the attention span of a young child had something to be desired. I would make up things to discuss with Emma when I dropped him off in order to spend time with her and have a glimpse of what our lives could be like if she would only let me in.
Since my return, our focus had been on Liam, and I agreed that one step at a time was the best course, but now that I had a grasp on fatherhood, I wanted it all. Maybe I felt that since I created this, I was deserving of it. There was still a current that passed through me each time we were together and I thought it had been the same with her, but she refused to allow it to take hold. I had a strong suspicion that something was in our way, something from her past, but no matter how hard I tried, she wouldn't open up.
I promised her that I would take care of her forever, let nothing happen to her or Liam. I had been a soldier, now a cop; I knew how to act in most situations. I could protect them both, if only she would allow it.
I knew she still loved me, I could see it in her eyes. And there were nights, such sweet nights that I would stay, that she would hold my hand and pull me back from the door. We had would make quiet love behind closed doors, but it was no less passionate. And each time we did, I thought it was the beginning of our next chapter; only I had no idea her next chapter didn't include me or Liam.
Emma
"Time to get up. Liam will be up soon," I said, hating the alarm clock and all it had to say at this early hour. Jay lay still, though I knew he was awake. "Come on Jay, if you get up now you'll have time for a shower."
"What does it matter that he sees me, he'll just think I came over early. He's barely five; he doesn't understand that I spent the night or even what that means." He replied sleepily, his eyes still closed.
I didn't have the energy for this. It wasn't Jay's fault it was mine. I wanted what he wanted, what we pretended we had last night, a family. But we couldn't be a family because it wasn't safe, if we were together, even once in a while we weren't safe. Was Liam ever safe? Jay being here made me think of all this which made me realize I needed to leave. If I hadn't been caught by now, chances were good I had escaped, but the possibility of detection would always be there and with that, devastating consequences. My father had worldwide connections and there was a very real risk one day that I could be found.
I shuffled off the shower berating myself at allowing him to stay last night. It wasn't fair to him to string him along, but I just couldn't seem to help it. I was putty in his hands. I had never stopped wanting him. Not for one second and it just made me hate my father even more. Many a teenage girl has stated that her father has ruined her life, except in my case it was absolutely true. I had a beautiful son, with a man I loved and I couldn't enjoy either because of him.
I stood under the warm spray feeling sorry for myself when Jay stepped in with me. "What are you doing?" I asked, my voice annoyed, but I was secretly thrilled.
"Taking a shower. You said I could if I hurried, so here I am." He said as he began to rub the shampoo that I had just put in my hair around. He knew I loved this and I hated him for it.
I couldn't help it, I leaned back into him, his arms wrapped around me and I didn't want to move. He began to nibble on my neck and one thing led to another. I was barely dressed before it was time to get Liam up. I shooed Jay out the door allowing a long passionate kiss before he turned and left and wished that my life wasn't so damn complicated.
Jay
The night was magic. We had watched something mindless on TV after Liam went to bed and when it became clear that she was in the same mood I was in, we made love. It wasn't with the same reckless abandon that we used to, but it was just as zealous and loving as it has always been; two perfect pieces fitting together as they should.
I should also say that the morning was pretty damn enchanted as well. I don't understand how she can be so happy with my presence and yet so insistent that I not be in her life on a regular basis. I had asked her a million and one questions as to why she was so resistant, why her words told me one thing while the rest of her differed. I could feel the heat coming from her, her desire and her love. So what was the problem? She was scared of something or someone and I had no idea what. I had even stooped so low as to ask Liam if there was anyone strange around that talked to his mommy, but he said no. That weekend I had taken him to the kid's museum at Navy Pier and I'm not sure who had more fun, him or me. It was great, except that I always pictured his mother along with us. In everything we did, I would conjure her up, standing just off to the side and it pained me when the reality hit that she wasn't there. Why couldn't she be honest with me?
I loved her with everything I had and I couldn't imagine loving anyone else with as much fervor as I did her. And when she touched me, I could feel her love, I could see it in her eyes and I could see it in our son. I had done a search on her name but come up empty. I didn't have any decent international contacts, but I couldn't imagine her capable of any wrong doing. Was she part of the IRA? Was her family? Was she on a most wanted listed somewhere? What was it that she felt I couldn't protect her from? Whatever it was felt like a dagger in my heart, that she couldn't trust me enough to tell me. Or was her past so violent that if she revealed it, I would be placed in an impossible situation. Was she responsible for heinous acts that she had been on the run from and I really didn't know her at all?
Emma
I had been so close to telling Jay the truth of my past. I'm sure he was thinking the worst of me. But if I told him, he would insist I stay and he just couldn't understand that he was no match of the James clan. Maybe my ego was too big for its own good, perhaps I had been easily forgotten and could just go on with my life or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Wednesday evening just weeks before I will leave, Jay drops Liam off and I ask him to stay. I want him. I need him. He eyes me with uncertainty, tired of me clinging to him only to push him away.
"Look, I can't do this anymore. I want to be with you, raise Liam together. I love you and I feel as if you love me. If there is something that you are running from, something terrible in your past, we can figure it out together."
I give him a weak smile. "You're right. I love you and I haven't been fair to you. I am sorry."
"Are you tangled up with the IRA or something? Were you involved in something that killed people? Are you on the run?"
"No, and it's complicated."
"I can protect you. You didn't blow up a school or anything. Right?"
I shake my head back and forth, though my family blew up a house in order to take out a rival and send a message to others and that it didn't matter if your entire family paid the cost for your sins. I was twelve and held the detonation device while my father, uncles and older brothers prepared everything. Did that make me an accessory? Complicit? I remember watching the flames eat away at the house while my father grinned and high fived his brothers. Six kids died that night four of them under the age of ten. How could I have ever thought I could be a normal wife and mother?
"Dammit Emma," Jay yelled, just tell me. If you believe there to be a threat, to you or Liam I need to know. He's my son."
"Yes he is and I need you to take care of him."
"Why?!" He shouted. His face looked angry and anguished before it turned softer as Liam came out of his room, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
"You woke me up. Are you having a fight?"
"Oh love, it's okay." I replied walking towards him.
"Daddy yelled," Liam said.
"I did, I'm sorry I woke you up. I was yelling at the TV."
"But it's off," Liam pointed out.
"Because I turned it right off when Daddy yelled," I lied.
"I'll take you back to bed," Jay said striding towards Liam, easily picking him up. Liam waved at me and put his head on Jay's shoulder as they disappeared from view.
It was ten minutes before he returned. "Is he okay?"
"Yes. I sat with him until he fell back asleep. But you need to tell me the truth. We need time, just the two of us to discuss whatever it is your thinking of doing."
"I have to leave," I admit.
"But you'll come back?"
"I don't think I can."
"Why? You don't have to protect me. I deal with the mafia, the cartel."
"Not like this."
He runs his hand through his hair and looks anguished. He is not used to being the one protected, left in the dark. I feel pressure to leave soon. My brother Liam and I have a shared an email account where we write to each other in drafts, so nothing is actually sent. He has said that my name was mentioned recently and an old friend has been asked to check around for any news of me. This is not good. I had been my dad's favorite. I was like him in many ways. When I was six, a light sleeper, I had woken up to discover a man prowling around outside and alerted my father. I think it is safe to assume the man never made it home that night, but I was spared the details. From that night on, my father began to hold me in high regard. I was the alert one, the one ready for action, the one paying attention. I was special.
At first, before I understood the reality, I cherished my new position as Da's favorite. It wasn't until that night when I was twelve that I truly realized just how evil he was. I tried to distance myself, spend more time at school, get a job, anything to avoid being home, but he rarely gave me much of a choice.
I never had many friends. We weren't allowed to have school chums and I wouldn't want to put them at risk anyway. He showed me how to make a bomb, how to shoot a gun and how to rig explosives. I never understood why he spent the time with me once I began to pull away; showing little interest in the family business, but perhaps that is exactly why he kept me close. Unbeknownst to him, he also taught me everything I needed to know in order to get away from him.
I look up at Jay and his expression crushes my heart. I love this man, a love that I know I will never find again. I question everything in my life. How can leaving be the right thing to do? How can staying be the right thing to do?
"You'll just leave? Leaving me is one thing, but you'll leave that little boy in there," he says pointing to Liam's room. I just stand there with tears spilling down my cheeks. "Unbelievable," Jay continues, pacing as he tries to keep his voice down.
"I don't have a choice."
"Of course you do."
"No, not really. It's like you had a choice in going to Afghanistan. You could have stayed, but really that wasn't an option. This is similar. I stay, the risk is too great."
"The risk from what?"
"Take the worst mafia in Chicago and mix it with the cartel." I explain, knowing I am blowing this a bit out of proportion. My family might not have the numbers but it certainly has the depravity. I think back to when Liam was just nine years old and our older brother put a severed foot in his bed to toughen him up. The poor kid had nightmares for months, for which he got no sympathy, only threats that next time it would be a head. I simply can't risk my son into the vortex of evil.
Jay just stands there and looks at me. "You were in the Irish mafia?"
"Born into the Irish mafia," I say and instantly regret it. But at the same time I feel lighter than I ever have. This information has never been shared outside the family.
"And you ran away?"
"Yes. But I never planned on falling in love, having a child, settling down. I was going to be in Chicago for a short time, but I fell in the love with the city and then I fell in love with you."
Jay scratches his head. "Do they know where you are?"
"I don't think so. But staying in one place is too dangerous and I've been here for years."
"You stayed because of me?"
"Yes. When you left, I couldn't disappear. I couldn't take your son away from you. I've been trying to leave ever since you first met him. But then your mom died and I thought it better for Liam to be a little bit older and then I found I just couldn't leave you. I tried, I tried to push you away over and over again, but I'm weak and selfish."
Jay walks over and sits down on the couch. His face ashen as he catches up to my life story. I let him sit for a minute before I join him and he looks up at me and says, "tell me everything."
And I do. Every wicked thing that I could remember comes pouring out of my mouth. With each story I feel weak with relief, but also angry that I cannot keep this to myself. That I am putting this on the man that I had wanted to protect. When I finish he has tears in his eyes.
"You were going to leave to go back to that life?"
"I was going to leave to protect you and Liam from that life. I have stayed hidden, but it has been eight years since I left and my brother tells me my sister has also left, upsetting my father further, leading him to say my departure has everyone believing that it is okay to turn their backs on the family.
"Jay, he will begin looking again. He has contacts all over the world. I have changed my name, took a long way around to get here, but staying ahead of technology is almost impossible. I'm on borrowed time. They will keep looking and looking harder. Eventually, I will be found."
"But if you go back they'll kill you."
"And you and Liam will be safe. I was Da's favorite. Going back to him will seem like a victory for him. He'll let me prove myself."
"You can't," he said.
"And you can't take them all on. I have seen it for myself and I know what they would do. First they will come for you. They won't simply kill you, especially since you are a cop. They will torture you in unthinkable ways. You are a tough man, but this will have you begging for death. Eventually they will kill you. They will also torture me while you watch. Do unimaginable things. And then after they are done they will kill me. Liam will be kidnapped and taken back to Ireland and be forced to do all thing things I despised. They will tell him what had been done to us and threaten to do the same to him. There is no escaping this."
"We could get married, your name would change again. We could move and then move again."
"No. I won't do that to Liam or you. Chicago is your home. You are a detective with a bright career ahead of you. I will not have us look over our shoulders every day and all night. Liam needs stability. He needs to know that he is safe. I need to know that he is safe."
"There must be something that we can do. That I can do."
"When I go back I hope to work towards a solution that will allow me to return, but there is nothing available that will get me back here before years have passed."
"No," Jay says. "There has to be a way."
"There isn't. Believe me I have thought about nothing else for five years."
We wake up to Liam standing there poking me in the arm. We had fallen asleep on the couch, Jay's arms around me. "Is it school time?" He asks. "How come you are sleeping on the couch, sitting up?"
I smile as best I can and rouse Jay. "We were watching a new show but it was very boring and we fell asleep."
"Okay," Liam shrugged and went off into the kitchen looking for breakfast. "Can Daddy take me to school?"
Jay looked at his watch as he stretched. "I'm sorry bud, I have to get to work. But I'll pick you up Friday night." He said walking to the kitchen and kneeling down to Liam's level. "I love you so much, you know that right?" Liam gave a hardy nod. "You be good for Mommy and I'll see you later." He said and kissed Liam on the head. He turned back and gave one last look before he disappeared out the door.
I dropped Liam off at school and went to work. I couldn't focus very well and said I didn't feel well and went home. I went into Liam's room first and sat down on his bed. I looked at his bookshelf and toy box in the corner full of his treasures as he called them. I looked at the picture hanging over his dresser of him with Jay on Kindergarten night. I was noticeably absent as I so often was in pictures. This picture seemed to accurately predict the future.
My head was pounding so I found some aspirin in the kitchen cabinet and swallowed two. I texted Jay and told him that I was home and available if he could get away. Twenty minutes later, he knocked on the door. "I was in the South Loop doing some talk and knocks about a break-in last night."
"It's okay that you're here?"
"It is. I'm covered."
"I'll leave just before Liam is done with Kindergarten. I'll give you a list of day care centers and baby-sitting options in your neighborhood. I'm going to tell him that I have to go back and be with my family and I will come back as soon as I can."
"You'll be lying to him."
"I will be back as soon as I can."
"Which may be never. He's five, he'll think soon as you can means soon. You can't leave us."
"I can't stay with you."
"I can go to Ireland. I can get a sense of them."
"Jay, no. This is why I didn't want to tell you. What are you going to do? Threaten them? Declare your affiliation with me and tell them to stay away? That's just an invitation for them to kill you. Or are you somehow going to kill all of them, even ones that you don't know exist? There is no solution here. None. I'm not going to be on the run all our lives. When it was just me, I could deal with it if I was found, but I am not going to sacrifice you and Liam. I can't. I won't. I should have just left, shouldn't have even told you any of it."
"You had to tell someone. And I would have been crushed if you just left with little explanation. Not that I'm much better off now. Why don't you just go into hiding somewhere else; wait it out and then come back to us."
"The risk will be the same. No matter how long I wait."
"But if you go back, he might kill you."
"He might. I have a plan."
"And what is that?"
"To kill them all. It's the only way I can have my life back. Our life."
"But you might not live that long. And how are you going to even accomplish that? They are your family."
"I know." I sigh. The only answer is the one neither of us want. I have to go and never come back. It's the only way to keep Jay and Liam safe.
He sits down and holds his head in his hands and sighs. "I can't let you go."
"You have to Jay."
"We can't even talk, write."
"No. It all be for nothing if we do. I don't know what you will need to tell Liam as he grows older. He can't be trusted with the truth—not for a very long time."
"I know. But what kind of lie is there to make up for the truth?"
"I don't think there is one," I say as I take his hand.
"I don't want you to go. This has kept us apart when we could have been together."
"If we were together I would never have been able to leave."
"Is that why you would push me away?"
"When I was strong, I pushed you away. When I was weak I was with you. So you tell me when my love was stronger?"
I turn and sit in his lap so that I am facing him. It is like back years ago, we just can't get close enough to each other. He puts his head on my chest and I can feel his body shake and shudder as he cries. Once he settles he looks at me with his red eyes and curses my family. I remind him that if not for them driving me away we would have never met and Liam never born.
"Nothing will be the same without you. We weren't often together, but I always had the promise of hope and now that is gone."
"Just love me now."
"I will love you always."
Jay
She left two weeks later. We told Liam that her family back in Ireland needed her and that she would do her very best to get back to us, but it would probably take a very long time. He didn't take it well and asked me regularly when she wasn't coming home and why couldn't he call her. My excuses wore thin quickly and I poured myself into being the best father I could. I took two weeks off and we went on vacation, but Liam, who was so certain his mother was back in Chicago waiting for us, didn't seem to enjoy our time together. It took months for us to find our own rhythm and for him to stop asking on a daily basis when she was coming home. It took at least that long for him to stop crying himself to sleep.
I thought about her every day and wondered if she was even alive. Her sacrifice was more than I could ever give. She was one of the few people I was completely comfortable around and could share my deepest fears. The only person I had ever cried with.
Five years later she sent word through her brother to tell Liam she was dead. That she had been dead for years. She couldn't bear for him to continue to wait for her or believe that she had abandoned him. Despite her absence, Liam still had hope for her return and following through with her wish would dash that hope. But hope can be a very dangerous thing and I didn't know which was worse, a lie or the truth. There was no one to get advice from, nobody to bounce ideas of off—just me and a fragile, motherless boy.
In the end I complied with her wishes. It told him she was killed in a car accident years ago which is why we never heard from her. He was too steeped in his grief to question why her family never reached out. It took a while, but eventually he moved forward in a way he never could have with her fate unknown. We went to the lake after buying what he believed to be her favorite flowers and laid them in the gentle waves. We watched them float and bob in the water and eventually disappear, much like she did. We both cried, mourning what we would never have. And we knew nothing would ever be the same.
