I No Longer Search for Love's Traces in My Pain

Ten years ago, my best friend Loretta illegally piloted a yacht and crashed it into a reef.

After the boat capsized, to save her own daughter, she stripped off with her own hands the only intact life vest on my five-year-old daughter, Scarlett.

Scarlett sank right in front of her, and I lost my ability to have children from my severe injuries.

Ten years later, I came home early to celebrate my mother's birthday, only to find Loretta's daughter living in Scarlett's room, wearing Scarlett's keepsake locket, and calling my mother "Grandma."

My husband was cutting her fifteenth birthday cake.

The girl took the cake and, as naturally as anything, called out to him, "Dad."

The door lock clicked.

Loretta, the woman who killed my daughter, came in carrying groceries and smiled at my mother.

"Mom, I'm home."

...

After Tammy called out "Dad," the living room went silent.

Percy's hand froze in midair with the cake knife. My mother recovered first and pulled Tammy closer to her side. "The child just says it out of habit. Don't read into it."

I looked at Percy. He didn't correct her.

After Scarlett died, Percy and I moved to Harbor City. Partly to treat my injuries, and partly because I simply couldn't bear to live in that house anymore.

My mother refused to leave, saying Scarlett had grown up here from the start and she couldn't bring herself to go.

Over the years Percy often said he'd come back to check on her for me, and I always felt I owed him for it.

Only now did I understand that he wasn't coming back just to see my mother.

"When did she start calling you Dad?"

Percy set down the knife and frowned. "Vera, today is Mom's birthday. Whatever this is, we'll talk about it at home."

"I asked you how long."

Tammy stood off to the side, her eyes suddenly going red.

My mother glared at me impatiently. "Why are you making that face at a child? She's had no one to look after her since she was five. I brought her back to stay a few days, and she got used to it. Percy came back often, and she was little and didn't know any better, so she called him that a few times and never changed it."

"A few days?" I turned to look at Scarlett's room.

The door was open, and the walls had long since been repainted.

The desk was piled with senior-year exam papers, a guitar stood beside the wardrobe, and the back of the door was marked with height lines starting from age seven.

The little sun at the very bottom was in my mother's handwriting.

Eight years.

She had grown up in Scarlett's room for eight years.

I remembered how, in the two years after Scarlett died, the moment I so much as mentioned packing away her things, my mother would clutch the photo albums and cry, saying no one was allowed to touch them. So it turned out those things weren't untouchable at allit was just that later, someone needed the room.

Tammy reached up to take off the locket at her neck. "Aunt Vera, I'm sorry. I didn't know it belonged to big sister Scarlett"

My mother pressed her hand down. "Why are you taking it off? Today is your birthday. Grandma gave it to you."

I looked straight at her. "That belongs to Scarlett."

"I know!" My mother flared up too. "Her things have been locked in that cabinet for ten years. Is she going to come back and wear it?"

The moment the words were out, she froze herself.

I didn't cry. I only felt a tightness in my chest. Percy came over to steady me, but I dodged his hand. "Have you gone to a single parent-teacher conference for her?"

He didn't answer.

"When she got sick, were you the one who took her to the hospital? Did you pay her tuition? Who's listed as the emergency contact at the school?"

Percy's face grew worse and worse. Finally he said, "It was me."

"And the line for father?"

Tammy's head dropped sharply.

There was no need to ask.

Just then the door lock clicked.

Loretta stood in the entryway with two bags of groceries, and her smile froze the instant she saw me.

But my mother had already gone over to take the bags from her hands. "Didn't I tell you not to buy anything? There's plenty to eat at home."

Loretta changed her shoes and, for a long moment, didn't dare look at me. At last she called out, low, "Mom."

My mother answered.

"When did she become your daughter?"

Loretta's eyes reddened first. "Three years ago. When your mother was in the hospital, I stayed with her the whole time. It was only afterward that she let me start calling her that."

Standing there, I suddenly understood: the woman who killed Scarlett had become my mother's daughter, and her daughter had become my husband's daughter.

And I was the last one to know.

I told Loretta to take Tammy and go.

Loretta nodded right away and lowered her head to get Tammy's backpack. "Of course. Vera, I'm the one who owes you. I won't come here again."

The more she acted this way, the more it tore at my mother's heart.

Loretta had barely reached the door when my mother snatched the backpack back. "Where does she think she's going? Tammy takes her SATs next year. She's lived here for eight years. You want her to go rent some apartment with you now?"

"She has a mother."

"She's a child I raised, too." My mother pulled Tammy to her side. "What happened back then was Loretta's doing, not Tammy's. You can't hate a five-year-old all the way until she's fifteen."

"I don't hate her." I looked at Percy. "I just want her to stop living in Scarlett's room, and to stop calling my husband 'Dad.'"

Percy was quiet for a moment. "The room can be changed. The way she addresses me can change gradually. Don't push everything to the breaking point all at once."

I asked, "Why does it have to be gradual?"

He didn't answer.

I asked again, "Loretta's been out of prison for seven years. Tammy has a mother. Why do you still have to be her father?"

Percy stayed silent for a long while before he said, "Because I've watched her grow up over these eight years. Vera, people aren't objects. You can't just cut them off the moment you decide to."

My nose stung all at once.

"And Scarlett?"

His face changed. "Don't do this."

"Don't do what? My daughter is dead, and you go to parent-teacher conferences, pay tuition, and celebrate birthdays for the daughter of the woman who killed her. Now she calls you 'Dad,' and you're telling me to stop?"

Percy looked a little cornered by what I'd said, and raised a hand to rub the space between his brows. "I haven't forgotten Scarlett. But she's gone. We have to move forward eventually."

As if she'd finally been waiting for exactly this, my mother jumped in at once. "Percy has done right by you all these years. After Scarlett was gone, he stayed by your side so long. And then you were hurt so badly you can never have another child in this life. Can't he even be allowed to love Tammy?"

The living room went dead silent.

I looked at my mother.

"Why can't I have another child? Have you forgotten?"

Her lips moved, but no words came out.

Ten years ago, Loretta killed Scarlett, and had my uterus removed, too.

And now her daughter, because I can never have a child again, had become the "daughter" my husband spoke of.

I looked at Percy. "Starting today, you cut all ties with them. We go back to Harbor City and live the way we used to."

I really was still waiting for him to nod.

But he was quiet a long time, and only said, "Tammy has her SATs next year."

"So?"

"Losing her grandmother and me all of a sudden right now she couldn't take it."

Suddenly I didn't know what else there was to say.

Loretta had been crying the whole time, and when she heard this she suddenly dropped to her knees. "Vera, you can hate me all you want, but don't hurt Tammy. It was my choice back then. She knew nothing about any of it."

My head snapped toward her.

"What choice?"

Loretta froze.

My mother's head jerked up to look at her, too.

Something in me sank.

Loretta seemed to finally realize she'd let something slip, and her face went deathly pale. Percy stepped forward to try to smooth it over, but I kept my eyes locked hard on her. "Didn't you say Scarlett's life vest came loose on its own? The 'choice' you just mentioned what did you mean by it?"

No one answered.

After a long time, Loretta finally spoke through her tears. "Tammy's life vest was broken at the time. I couldn't hold on to both children by myself."

My fingers curled tighter and tighter.

"And so?"

She closed her eyes.

"I took the one Scarlett was wearing off of her and gave it to Tammy."

There was a buzzing in my ears.

What chilled me even more was that neither my mother nor Percy showed the slightest shock.

They had known all along.

"When did you two find out?"

No one in the living room spoke first. Percy set the cake knife on the table, and after a long while he said, "Five years ago."

I looked at him.

Five years ago, Tammy was ten. That year he went back to Lakeport and stayed for half a month. When he came home, he told me his mother's back was bad and something had come up at Tammy's school, so he'd been held up a few extra days.

Back then I even felt sorry for him, thinking how hard he was working, watching over this home I couldn't bring myself to return to.

"What happened?"

Percy frowned, as if he didn't want to bring it up again. "During a swimming lesson at school, she suddenly fell apart in the water, crying and crying, saying the life vest she had on wasn't hers."

My hands went cold.

"Then what?"

"I went and asked Loretta. At first she denied it, but later she admitted it."

He said Tammy was shaking the whole way out of school that day, and the moment she saw him she threw herself into his arms and called him Dad.

The teacher assumed he really was the child's father and even gave him the counselor's contact information as well.

Percy didn't correct her; he just took her to the hospital.

Mom cut in quickly, "But by then it had already been five years. Loretta had served her time, and the compensation that was owed had been paid. Vera, back then you were only just starting to sleep through the nighthow could Percy dare tell you any of this?"

I ignored her and only asked Percy, "So even after you found out, you kept going to Tammy's parent-teacher conferences, kept driving her to school, kept letting her call you Dad?"

Percy's face turned grim. "Those two things have nothing to do with each other. Loretta did something wrong. That doesn't make Tammy wrong."

"I'm asking about you."

He was silent for a long time before he said quietly, "She started thinking of me as her father when she was ten. I couldn't just find out about some old thing one day and tell her the next morning to stop calling me that."

"And Scarlett?"

Percy's throat worked.

I pointed at the rows of height marks on the wall. "She was five when she died too. Once you knew she didn't lose her life vest by accident, did you ever, even once, think about how terrified she was in that water?"

"Vera, don't do this."

"Don't do what?"

His voice grew heavy too. "I know you can't accept it, but I didn't hide it for Loretta's sakeI did it for you. For those years you'd jolt awake at the sound of water, and the first thing I did every day when I got home was check whether something had happened to you. Telling you the truthbesides making you sick all over again, what would it change?"

Mom nodded at once. "Percy really was just afraid you couldn't handle it."

And suddenly I understood: the phrase they'd leaned on most all these years was for my own good.

What I wasn't allowed to know, what couldn't be said, who could come into this house, who could call whom Dadthey'd decided all of it for me.

I looked at Percy. "Come back to Harbor City with me. From now on, whatever happens between that woman and her daughter has nothing to do with us."

He didn't agree right away.

It was a long time before he said, "Tammy takes the SATs next year."

I gave a small laugh.

I'd asked about our marriage, and he was still thinking about Tammy.

I didn't go back to Harbor City that day.

The next morning, I went to my mother's house again.

I wasn't going to start a fight; I just wanted to take away the files from Scarlett's accident all those years ago.

They had always been locked in the bottom cabinet of my mother's bedroom.

In the first few years after Scarlett died, I couldn't even bear to look at her photos too much. My mother and Percy handled all of it for methe funeral arrangements, the settlement, the court hearings.

I had always thought they were protecting me.

When my mother heard I was looking for the files, she blocked my way in front of the cabinet. "It's been ten years. Why are you suddenly digging into this?"

"To have a lawyer look at it."

She got frantic. "Loretta already served her time in prison. Even if you know about the life vest now, without any other evidence, what can you do? Do you really want to put everyone through all of it again?"

I stepped past her and opened the cabinet door.

The accident report, the hospital records, the judgmentstack after stack, all there.

But at the very bottom was a criminal settlement waiver I had never seen before.

The person who signed it was Percy.

The date was the fourth day after Scarlett died.

At that time, I was still lying in the ICU.

I pulled the paper out. "What is this?"

Percy had just come in from the living room. When he saw the document, he stopped in his tracks.

The waiver was written very clearly.

As Scarlett's father, he accepted compensation from Loretta's family, expressed his forgiveness for the consequences Loretta had caused, and asked that the case be handled leniently under the law.

"She only served three years. Does that have anything to do with this?"

Percy didn't answer.

My mother said through tears, "I told him to sign it. You were still in critical condition, and the doctor said there were several more surgeries ahead. The Cox family was willing to cover all the treatment costs first, and then pay a sum on top of that. What was I supposed to do?"

"So Scarlett had been dead only four days, and you'd already forgiven her on her behalf."

"That wasn't about forgiving her!" Percy finally spoke. "I did it to save you first."

His voice was heavy, as if that one sentence was enough to explain everything.

I kept turning the pages and saw an old bank statement.

The Cox family paid a total of 2.6 million dollars in settlement.

My treatment and rehabilitation used up part of it over time, and the remaining 1.4 million dollars was transferred into Percy's account the year after I was discharged from the hospital.

I stared at that money for a long time.

That apartment in Harbor City was bought that same year, with a down payment of more than 1.4 million.

I looked up. "The down payment on the house?"

Percy's face went white in an instant.

My mother grabbed my arm. "Vera, you two had to start a new life. That money was just sitting there anyway, and Percy only wanted to give you a new home."

I lifted her hand off me.

Seven years ago, when we moved into Harbor City, Percy held me in the living room and said that from then on it would only be the two of us there, that there would be no more shadow left behind by Scarlett, no one to force me to look back.

I cried for a long time back then, thinking it was the life he had rebuilt for me.

Only now do I understand.

The first brick of that so-called new home was Scarlett's settlement money.