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“Mom?”
The minute she hears Lily’s voice and her key in the lock, Veronica considers throwing all of this out. Stuffing everything back in the box and stashing that at the back of her closet, underneath three coats she’ll never wear and more importantly, Lily will never touch. That way everything stays away from her and they can both go on as normal.
The urge is there, and it’s strong, but she resists it, leaning forwards on her elbows and looking through the photos laid out on her bed. She chose the best ones, the ones from the beginning. After Heather Chandler but before Kurt and Ram. Ones where she’s smiling and he looks normal, even with that damn trench coat. He looks normal, calm, relaxed, and it’s hard not to be hurt by it.
“Mom?”
“I’m up here,” she replies, her throat dry and her voice cracking. She’s doing this for Lily, she tells herself. There’s a list of things she won’t do for Lily, and it could fit on a post-it note. But that doesn’t make this any less terrifying. She feels like she’s standing on the middle of a railroad track, waiting for a train out of the blackness and ram into her.
“Hey.” her daughter swings around the doorframe, her bag hanging loosely off her shoulder and her jacket over her school uniform. And with her presence, Veronica only finds herself more afraid. But at least now that she’s here, she’s in too late to back out. Especially since she’s not-so-subtlety glancing at the photos spread out across the bed, craning her neck to see if she can make out a familiar face.
“Come here, kid,” she says, holding her arm out to her, a little laugh in her voice. Lily drops her bag and discards her jacket before jumping onto the bed, her chin resting on Veronica’s shoulder, giggling as the bedframe shakes under her weight. And oh, what that giggle does to Veronica, taking her breath away and breathing new life into her at the same time. Reminding her what it means to be here, why she still wants to be here. Her daughter is a marvel in more ways than one. She’s the most beautiful person Veronica has ever seen, which shouldn’t be surprising given how much she takes after her father. Her hair is the same shade as his, curling a little at the bottom and hanging below a chin that’s identical to his. There’s a similar scattering of freckles across her cheeks that Veronica loves and Lily hates, insisting they make her look younger than she is.
‘What’s wrong with looking younger?’ is what Veronica always asks when she complains about it.
She still takes after Veronica in some respects; she got her height and her face shape and her laugh (definitely a good thing). She has the exact same pickiness with her food that Veronica did at her age and the same lack of enthusiasm for math class. While her mom is insistent that Lily is the absolute double of her when she was thirteen, in both body and spirit, Veronica’s not so sure. There’s a spark in her daughter that she could never imagine her having when she was thirteen. Strong-willed, and open mind and an open heart, funny and a little weird, she’s everything Veronica could have wished her to be.
Ever since Veronica first held her, she’s been equal parts in awe of and confused by her. Every time she smiles, or laughs, or dances, or makes a joke, she has to wonder how this happened. Every proud swell in her chest when she gets a good grade and every rush of love she feels when she holds her close makes her wonder how something this good came out of something that bad. How someone so beautiful and kind and brave and wonderful as her Lily came out of something so brutal and violent and ugly as her relationship with JD. It’s an eternal mystery to her. How she can love Lily with every ounce of her soul and yet have nightmares about what brought her into the world. How can she love her daughter’s eyes when they’re so like her father’s? If someone asked her ‘if you could erase JD from your past entirely, would you?’ she would never be able to give an honest answer to it and she’s the reason why.
“Oh my gosh, is that Aunt Heather?” Lily asks, picking up one of the photos. She and MacNamara grin back at the camera after a game of croquet in Chandler’s backyard. Veronica winces at the bittersweet-ness of it and tries to put her guilt in the corner. It’ll come back for her later, tonight most likely, and she’ll take it like she always does. Chest up, hands clenched. But now isn’t about her.
“Yeah,” she answers. “That’s us when we were 17.”
“Wow,” she breathes, hurriedly lifting another one and holding it up to the light. Veronica can’t blame her daughter’s excitement; trips down memory lane are few and far between for her. She’s looking to the future as much as she can and wants to push Lily to do the same. So when Lily gets these little glimpses into her past, she grabs them with both hands and a white knuckled grip.
She picks up another photo, one from after high school, of Veronica in the hospital, exhausted and elated, holding a sleeping baby Lily wrapped in a white blanket. Three days old. On the back, the day she got her name is written in marker.
“The day I got my name?” she echoes, looking over at Veronica with a raised eyebrow.
“It took a while,” she replies, her hand clenching into a fist. Like a lot of things she tells Lily, it’s a half truth. “But then your grandpa got me those flowers.” She points to the white flowers sitting on the windowsill. “And then I knew your name. Lily.”
“You had nine months to name me.”
“I kept putting it off,” she sighs. “Thought it would come to me naturally.”
Like she said, half true. The full truth is a little more dramatic. Maybe one day she’ll tell her that for months, she was planning on giving her up for adoption, that she crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s agreeing that she’d never have contact with her unless expressly permitted by the adoptive parents, and only on their terms. Maybe she’ll tell her about the sheer panic she felt coursing through her body as the doctors took her away, how she practically screamed for them to wait. And how once they put Lily in her arms, she became a different person.
Maybe one day she’ll tell that story. But for now she strokes her daughter’s hair as she looks through the pictures, her heart hammering against her ribs as she gets closer and closer to one in particular.
“And who’s this?”
There it is. The one that makes her hands tremble and an invisible noose tighten around her neck. No matter how many times she rehearsed this, she knew she’d never be ready. She could say the words over and over until they stopped sounding real, but that doesn’t change anything, not in her heart. It doesn’t stop the pain from crashing down on her, tearing at every scar until she’s bleeding.
“That’s your father.”
Of all the pictures of them, that one’s her favourite. They’re lying on their backs on his bed, her pressing a lazy kiss to his cheek, him laughing and in the middle of telling her something. Probably something about how much he loved her. Worshipped her. It’s funny; when it comes to remembering him, they’re either so sharp and clear that it’s like she’s still seventeen and it’s all happening for the first time, or they’re blurred and rough, the picture blurred and his words faded or entirely silent. But she loves the look on her face in this photo. High on bliss and falling further every day. Back then it didn’t feel like falling. It felt like flying; when he held her hand or whispered words of adoration to her, her feet left the ground and she danced on the air. The two of them danced together, and she was so dizzy she couldn’t see him for who he really was.
“My father,” Lily echoes in disbelief. She turns the photo over in her hands and after a moment’s hesitation, touches her finger to JD’s cheek. Out of every picture, this is the one he looks the most human in and that’s why she showed it to her. “Woah.”
“You have questions,” Veronica says, tucking Lily’s hair behind her ear. Her eyes have doubled in size since those words left her mouth, her lips parted in a never ending sigh.
“Yeah,” she says after a while, the word little more than a whisper. She clears her throat, breaking through the daze she’d fallen into, and lowers the photo. It doesn’t leave her hand though. She looks up at Veronica, excitement sparking in her brown eyes and tugging at her lips. “What was his name?”
“Jason.” His name feels wrong in her mouth, likely because it’s not his name. Not the name she knew anyway. “Jason Dean. I called him JD. We all did.”
“Jason Dean,” she repeats, testing it. She can see why he chose JD instead. Jason wasn’t the name for the rebel outcast, the one who sat above silly girls like her and dumb jocks like Ram and looked down on them with a contempt and self-pride. Jason isn’t the name for the one who saw through the world’s cracks and would built the new society. He chose JD for the same reason he chose his trench coat; to keep control over himself until he could find someone else to control.
Lily swallows heavily, the next question weighing heavily on her mind. Veronica’s hand instinctively runs down her back with a touch she only learned when Lily was born, telling her it’s okay. That she’s okay.
“And… he’s dead.”
“Yeah.” That’s the one thing Veronica has willingly told her about her father, and it’s at least true. She nods stiffly, her chest expanding as she takes a long, deep breath, her eyes shining. She looks at the picture of a long while, her gaze so intense it might burn a hole through the photo.
“Can I ask how he died?” she asks, her voice cracking.
“Yeah,” she repeats, her own voice weak. A heavy weight sits in her chest, crushing her lungs and her heart and making it almost impossible to speak. She closes her eyes tightly, wraps her hand tightly around her daughter’s, and battles through it. Just like she’s done for thirteen years. “He… he killed himself.”
“Oh, Mom.” Lily turns and wraps her arms around Veronica tightly, burying her face in the crook of her neck. Her body shakes against hers and she feels her tears warm on her shoulder. Veronica hugs her back, squeezing her shoulders and kissing her head, and for the first time in a while, doesn’t stop herself from crying. There’s a beautiful relief in crying in front of someone, even if that someone is Lily. She doesn’t feel so isolated anymore, even if she and her daughter are crying for two different reasons. “Mom I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, baby,” she tells her, cupping the back of her head and tangling her fingers in her hair. Lily pulls back, her eyes still red. “Oh, sweetie.” Since becoming a mother, she’s discovered that there’s a sort of ache in her chest unlike anything she’s felt before that only comes around when she sees Lily hurt. One that feels like someone is hollowing out her insides with a dull knife. She wipes her tears with her hand, rubbing her cheeks gently. Lily looks down at the photo in her hands, her eyes conflicted and holding dozens of questions, ones that Veronica might not have the answer to. At least not the answer she needs to hear.
“Did he know?” she asks in a small voice. “Did he know that I was coming?”
“No.” She’s surprised at the amount of truths she’s telling. And unsurprised at how it’s way harder than lying. She prefers the latter for a reason. “No, he didn’t. Here, look-” She hands Lily another photo, one dated November 2nd, 1989. Her and JD on the couch, her half-asleep on his shoulder, unaware the photo is being taken. Her hair is a mess and her tall frame is folded and curled into a ball. She knows now why she was so tired that day. “This was two weeks before he… before he died. And you were there.” She taps her stomach in the photo. “I just didn’t know yet.”
Lily nods, her hand clenched into a tight fist, her nails no doubt leaving marls on her palms. It’s a lot to take in, Veronica knows, so she sits with her hand on her daughter’s knee, gently stroking, waiting for her next question with anxiety ticking in her heart.
“What was he like?” she asks finally. “My dad?”
You don’t want to know she thinks.
But she’s prepared for this more than anything else. She’s picked the very best bits of the truth and all her favourite lies.
“Your dad,” she begins, pulling her closer and letting her drape her legs over her lap. “He was so smart. All the teachers hated him because he just gave such amazing answers in class. He could talk or write his way out of anything. And he did.” Lily’s eyes grow wide and gleam with excitement, her mouth falling open in awe and anticipation. Veronica strokes her hair, hiding the sharp pain in her chest. Behind Veronica’s own smile is memories of a draino-stained rug and two boys with bullets in their chests. There’s a bomb in a boiler room and a gun at her chest. Manic eyes and a deranged smile. “He could come up with an excuse for anything.” She clenches her jaw, the words turning from prickling and difficult to outright bitter. “He had all these ideas about how to make the world a better place.”
Just not the right methods. She thinks about it a lot now; how much of it was about making the world a better place and how much was about wanting to watch it burn?
“Tell me more,” Lily urges, biting her lip now. The bed creaks as she shifts onto her knees and bounces, looking up at Veronica expectantly with a tiny hint of an apology on her face. “I mean… if you want.”
“Well… he loved books,” she tells her. “He read all these books in class when he was meant to be working.”
“That’s just like me!” she gasps. Frankly, that’s news to Veronica, since she hasn’t seen her daughter read anything more than the Harry Potter book on her shelf and even that’s generous. There’s nothing she would change about her but she’d also do anything to come home on evening and see her reading instead of watching TV. But she can’t deny her this, not when her eyes are lighting up and she’s grinning so breathlessly and beautifully. Who can it hurt, really?
“The first time he got my attention,” she begins. “He quoted this poet at me. Baudelaire. He saw I had messed up and he told me ‘we’re all born marked for evil’. And then I was like ‘wow’.”
It was more than a wow. In over a decade, she still hasn’t felt anything like it, the rush of heat on her cheeks, the way her gut pulled her towards JD like a magnet. No, she wasn’t the magnet. He was, and she was caught in his field, helpless to beautiful eyes and crooked smiles. Before she even knew his name she was crafting him in her head, desperate to know more about the boy in the long coat who hid behind his books and who seemed to have no fear as he brawled with bullies and jocks. She’d soon learn that there was a lot he didn’t have.
“Baudelaire,” Lily repeats, no doubt saving the word to look up later. “Why did he say that to you? What did you do?”
“That’s a need to know basis,” she replies, tapping her nose lightly. Sure, trading her integrity for popularity is far from the worst thing she’s ever done, but she’ll still keep that as far away as possible. It somehow manages to make her just as ashamed as everything else does. “But once he said that to me I knew. I knew I wanted him.”
“Is that when he asked you out?” she presses. “Or did you ask him?”
“Not exactly,” she says. “I um… I was at this party. And I fell out with my friend. And I left and I was so, so pissed. So I went to his house. He let me stay over.” Her skin prickles with warmth, her mind going back before she can stop herself. His face, his hands on her body and in her hair, his lips on her neck.
“And then…”
“Again, need to know basis,” she tells her, chuckling as she pouts. She’s no doubt sharp enough to work it out for herself. “And that’s when… When it happened. We stayed together after that.” When she started falling and he started loving her.
That’s when everything went to hell.
As Lily leans against her, her head resting on her shoulder, Veronica feels the weight of her mistakes piling up inside her. Heather Chandler. Kurt. Ram. Martha. The whole school, nearly. He was ready to burn it all down, all in her name, out of his twisted kind of love. Sometimes she’ll be nice to herself and tell her it’s not her fault, she couldn’t have known what he was. Other times she’ll remind herself exactly how many people got hurt because of her and her teenage fantasies. Does it matter if she didn’t know?
“Do you still miss him?” Lily asks out of the blue. The question hits her like a bullet and buries itself right in the middle of her heart. Little does her daughter know she has asked herself that question every day since 1989 and she still doesn’t know the answer.
She misses the way he made her feel. She misses the way she’d shiver when he kissed her neck and how safe she felt when he held her, even with the irony. She misses the way he kissed her, desire in every touch and so much passion it made her head spin. She misses him smiling across from her in class and sitting outside at lunch, him rubbing her back while she complained about whatever had annoyed her that day. She misses leaning against him, her cheek on his shoulder as he played with her fingers, the two of them in a soft and comfortable silence where she could forget her problems. Even though he was the one who caused most of them. She misses feeling understood by him and no one else has managed to get close to it.
But she doesn’t miss being afraid. She’s doesn’t miss sitting at Kurt and Ram’s funeral with guilt slithering through her veins, nor does she miss him insisting they did something good. She doesn’t miss him trapping her in his arms in that cemetery, whispering ‘our love is god’. She doesn’t miss how empty and powerless she felt around him, how blindly she would follow him. She doesn’t miss how her mind stopped feeling like her own. She doesn’t miss walking on eggshells around him, every word tinged with anxiety and how scared she was the moment he was out of sight. And she certainly doesn’t miss when she looked in his eyes and saw that there was nothing there.
Most of all, she misses the girl she was before him. She misses the clean conscience and simple life. She misses being reckless and silly, happy without remorse, telling little white lies and daydreaming about a better world. All that died when he did and she’s left with the scars and lessons. She might be wiser but what good has that done her? Some might say it’s better and she might agree, but that doesn’t mean she has to be okay with it.
“Sometimes,” she replies, pressing a kiss to Lily’s head and rubbing her arm. “He’d be really proud of you, you know.”
“He would?” she asks, her face lighting up. She’s confused about almost everything in regard to JD, but she knows there’s one good thing about him being dead. As far as Lily is concerned, her father is whatever Veronica says he is. And if she says he’s the loving dad type whose heart would swell if he could see her now, then that’s exactly what he is.
“Of course he would,” she tells her firmly. “How could he not be?” She tucks her hair behind her ear, tilting her head up to make her look at her, stroking her cheekbones. “Because you, Lily Sawyer are an amazing, smart kid. How could he not be proud of you?” When Lily grins up at her, an excited joy radiating from her face, she can’t help smiling back, even if it doesn’t match what she’s feeling inside. It puts a lid on it for now.
“Thank you for telling me,” she says, her face falling as she misses the father she never had. “I wish I could have met him.”
“Of course, baby,” she replies, narrowly avoiding the latter statement and the way it twists her gut. If she had a dollar for every time she wished something about JD, they wouldn’t be living in this little two bedroom apartment.
Lily looks down at the photo again, touching JD’s face, her eyes wide and searching for any likeness between herself and her father. The scene feels so intimate that Veronica feels bad for even being here. Ever since she started planning this, she had debated whether or not she was doing the right thing. And while she’s still not entirely certain she was, she’s as close as she’s ever going to get.
“Mom can I… can I hold onto this?” she asks delicately. “Or just… just one photo of him if I can’t have this one? I’m sorry, I just want something of him.”
“Of course you can, baby.” Lily slides the photo into her jacket pocket, taking more care than Veronica had ever seen before. She slides her arm around her shoulders and hugs her tightly, resting her cheek on the top of her head as she nuzzles into her neck. “I’m glad I told you. You deserve to know about him.”
“Can we talk about him?” she asks. “Like… later. Whenever.”
Her mind jumps to ‘no’. With a pit stop at ‘do you know how much I had to put in to be able to talk about him once’. And a detour to ‘trust me, the less you know about him the better’.
“Of course we can,” is what she says instead, squeezing her hand tightly. “Just… it might be a little hard sometimes.” Lily nods against her, her hair tickling the bottom of her face. Her hand wraps around Veronica’s and grips tightly, the beginnings of anxiety evident in her touch. Veronica kisses her head, her hand trailing up and down her back with a feather light touch.
In a weird, roundabout, stupid way, she’s jealous of Lily. She gets to live with the good version of JD in her mind, the charming and loving boyfriend who would have grown into a devoted dad. Everything she wished he’d been and maybe he could have been if only they had met before.