ée Carlino - Nowhere but Here

“When I got home, I told my wife, Elaine, that I had a feeling. I told her the story. She’s very excited to meet you.” There was a long pause. He cleared his throat and went on. “I am so sorry that I wasn’t in your life sooner, Kate, but I promise you, I will do everything I can to make up for lost time.”

It’s fair to say that by that point I was hysterical. All I could blubber was, “I’m a writer, too.”

“I know. I looked you up . . .” His voice was shaky, and he was crying with me. “I’m . . . I’m very proud of you. None of my other kids . . . I’m just so happy. Please come and have Christmas dinner with us tomorrow? You can meet your brothers and sisters.”

“Tell me about them.”

He took a deep breath. “Well, you have a sister, Olivia, who is twenty-five. She has twin boys that are a year old. You’re an aunt.”

I laughed giddily through tears. “Go on.”

“Your brother Aiden is twenty-three. He’s engaged to Lauralie, who’s pregnant. A little young, we know, but they’re in love. And then Gavin is twenty-one. He goes to college in Los Angeles at USC, but he’s here for the holidays. Blake is twenty, and he’s still finding himself,” he said, in an amused tone. “And finally, there’s Skylar, the youngest. She’s seventeen and still in high school. She’s the free spirit—a very gifted pianist.”

“Wow. I’m speechless. I’ve lived all my life thinking I had no family.”

“Well, you have a big family, and I know they will welcome the addition. What do you say? Come and meet everyone?”

“Yes, I definitely will.”

“See you tomorrow, sweetheart. I can’t wait to get to know you.”

“Likewise,” I said in a low voice and then hung up. I turned around and straddled Jamie in the chair and then buried my face in his neck and sobbed. “Happy tears?” he asked.

“The happiest. Will you go with me?”

“Of course.”

We slid into bed, naked and freezing, but within moments we were warm, wrapped up in each other, and dozing off to sleep. I woke up Christmas morning to the smell of breakfast. Jamie was making pancakes and singing to the Black Keys pumping through the iPod dock.

When I came into his view, he shouted, “Merry Christmas, lover” over the loud music. He was shirtless, wearing nothing but his plaid flannel pajamas. I was wearing the slinky black Victoria’s Secret purchase I’d made with Beth. I walked around the counter so he could see me from head to toe. His mouth dropped open.

“Oh my god. Screw breakfast.” When he lifted me from my waist, I wrapped my legs around him. He slammed me against the dining room wall and attacked my mouth just as the lead singer of the Black Keys shouted, “I got mine!” Best sex song EVER! I thought.

After Jamie took me against the wall, we ate our partially burnt breakfast and then showered and got dressed.

“Jamie?”

“Yeah.”

“I feel terrible. I didn’t get you anything.”

“You mean that thing you were wearing earlier wasn’t for me?”

I laughed. “Well, yes, I guess so.”

“I have a photographic memory, remember? That little number will be the gift that keeps on giving. Trust me.”

He was standing at my dresser injecting his insulin pen. When he turned around, he had a small box in his hands. “This is for you, but you can’t open it until later.” I made a grumpy face. “Oh, is Katy curious?”

“No, I can handle a little suspense.”

We decided we would go through the city looking for the holiday train before we headed to my father’s house, which was located in a little suburb just outside Chicago.

As we headed out the lobby of my building, I noticed a sign above the exit door was misspelled. It said: MARRY CHRISTMAS. I laughed to myself. Two blocks away, another sign sitting in the coffee shop window said: MARRY CHRISTMAS.

“Do you see that?” I pointed the sign out to Jamie.

“What?”

“It’s spelled wrong.”

“Oh, hmm. Idiots.” He chuckled and pulled me along by the hand. As we approached the L station nearest to my apartment, I spotted Darlene. She was wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a piece of cardboard. When I got close to her, she said, “Hey, you, girl. Say yes!” I looked up at Jamie. He shrugged and then looked up to the sky curiously.

“Merry Christmas, Darlene.” I handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Stay warm.”

“Thank you,” she said.

We continued walking. I stopped abruptly about a half a block down and turned to Jamie. “What are you up to? Huh?”

“Who, me?” he said in mock surprise. “Let’s go, we gotta hurry.” He yanked me along.

“Why do we have to hurry?”

“We just do.”

“When we got to the platform of the station, it began to snow. “I planned this,” Jamie said.

And then lo and behold, the goddamned holiday train pulled up. “You arranged this?”

He pulled me toward Santa’s car. “No, silly girl, there’s a schedule.”

“You’re kidding? All these years?!”

Just as we reached Santa, Jamie stopped and looked me in the eye and said, “Merry Christmas, angel.”

Then Santa chimed in, “Ho ho ho, marry him!”

Jamie pointed a thumb back toward Santa as he stood in front of me. “That, I planned,” he said. Then he dropped to his knee, pulled the box out, and opened it, revealing a modest pink stone on a platinum band. “Sorry, honey, no blood diamonds for you.” I shook my head and laughed. “Marry me?”

“Jamie Lawson . . . is that how you ask nicely?”

“Katherine Corbin, will you please marry me and be my wife and wear that black silky thing at least twice a week for the rest of our lives?”

I dropped to my knees, gripped his face, and kissed him. “Absolutely, one hundred percent yes. And that was a way better proposal than a note.”

People all around us on the platform began clapping and cheering. Even Santa was jollier than usual. Jamie put the ring on my finger and then we stood together and rushed onto the train car. Powdered in snow, we kissed the moment the doors closed and made a silent promise that we would do that every time we got on the L. It was our new beautiful memory.

• • •

We rented a car and headed north. Paul Sullivan, my father, lived in a gorgeous, two-story colonial house in the village of Wilmette, a tranquil little suburb north of Chicago. The treelined street and large snow-covered homes were picturesque, an ideal place to grow up. I felt a pang of sadness as we pulled down the long driveway. I wondered if it was resentment toward my mother or just pure envy that all of my father’s other kids got to grow up here while I was living in a one-bedroom, stuffy apartment with a depressed Rose. I thought about the many nights I’d slept on the pullout sofa, wishing I had my own room. Still, I couldn’t forget that Rose had loved me like a mother.

Before we got out of the car, Jamie looked over at me with concern. “Are you okay? You seem somewhere else.”

“I’m here, I assure you. I’m here. This hurts a little. I can’t figure out why my mother didn’t want me to know.”

He took my hand and kissed the back of it. “You may never know the reason, and I can tell you from experience that you have to let it go. When my biological parents tried to extort money from me, they told lie after lie. They tried to take me down—their own flesh and blood— when all I wanted was to do good for people. For months, I just kept wondering why. Finally, my adoptive mother told me I needed to stop searching for that answer and move forward. When the trial was over, I promised myself I would never ask why again. Look at this, Kate. See all of these cars?” The driveway and street were spilling over with cars jammed into every spot around the big white house. “This is what you get now. This is amazing. Don’t think about the past ever again.”

Although he tried very hard to hide it, Jamie was emotional. I couldn’t take what I had for granted knowing Jamie had lost most of his family. “Does it still hurt?” I asked.

“There used to be this hole, this void that I thought could never be filled, but it’s healing and filling up . . . ever since I met you.”

“And now you have all this, too.” I gestured toward the cars and smiled.

Meeting my new family was a blur of faces and names. My new siblings and stepmother were more than welcoming. I got to hold my baby nephew and hear my youngest sister, Skylar, play the piano beautifully. Jamie fit right in to the warmth. I stole glances at him often while we were at my father’s, and he always returned them with a smile.

On our way back into the city, we talked about our plan. “I feel like I don’t want to leave now, but I know you need to be in Napa.”

“We don’t have to choose, Kate. We can live in both places. That’s the beauty of being a writer.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve always been all over the place. I like it that way.”

“Really?”

“Yes, of course. Do you want to keep your apartment?”

“I don’t care about my apartment. I just want to be able to come here once in a while.”

“I think we can arrange that.”

In the week following Christmas, I spent most of my time packing and writing while Jamie made travel plans for us to go back to Napa after New Year’s. We decided that we’d have our wedding at the winery in the spring, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Jamie said there would be no unforeseen anything, and that I needed to stop believing things were too good to be true. He spent a lot of time reassuring me that everything would be okay.

Late in the week one morning, I heard him tinkering in the kitchen.