To You, Iyla, page 27
I cried, holding you in my arms as I looked down at your little face, wondering when I’d get another chance to see you again. But I knew this moment couldn’t just be about that, so I whispered my promise to you.
“One day, Iyla, I will tell you everything. But right now, you need to live the most amazing life possible.” The tears continued to flow. “That’s all we want for you. Your mom. Your dad. ” I kissed your cheek softly and placed you back in the hospital crib. “I promise,” I whispered one final time, taking a moment to just watch you. You were so small and peaceful, and I wished I could keep you by my side forever. It took everything in me to walk out of that room, past Amanda and Lance and towards my car. I felt like I was leaving a piece of myself behind with me.
In the following months, I continued to see Zeke as often as I could, updating him on life beyond his four walls. All he really wanted to know was about you, something that I no longer had the privilege of sharing with him. Instead, our conversations were filled with empty words or reflections of the past. It was the only way the two of us could cope.
Zeke will always be a part of my life. We’ve been through too much together for him not to be. When he gets out of prison, I’ll do everything in my power to ensure he’s taken care of, supported, and has a place to stay.
But his sentence has only just begun, which means that all that’s left to do is wait.
It’s now February of the following year. I’ve decided to break the one-year lease on the apartment that your mother and I shared, forfeiting any losses and moving in with Korey as we prepare for our baby to arrive in the late summer.
A baby boy.
Breaking the lease was the only logical choice, considering I hadn’t spent a single night in the apartment since your mother passed away.
When the time came to clean everything out, I avoided your mother’s room until the last possible second. When I eventually got around to it, I discovered something I hadn’t been expecting.
This journal.
I flipped through it, skimming the words that lay inside and seeing the story unfold page by page, only to see that it was unfinished.
For days after my discovery, I contemplated what to do. Should I make copies? Give one to Zeke, keeping one for myself? Track down Amanda and Lance and give it to them?
But those thoughts quickly passed. Deep down, I knew that only one person in this world deserved the journal—you.
So, here we are, Iyla. I’ve filled in the rest of the story for you. A story that I hope, one of these days, you can continue yourself. A story filled with pain, hope, heartache, and, most importantly, love.
A love that I desire for you. A love that you deserve.
So, I guess now, I’ll wait. Wait for the day the universe gives me a sign, and I can fulfill my promise.
We’ll always love you.
Claire.
Copyright Kate Lauren 2023 thewriterkate1@gmail.com
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I Y L A
I’d wondered for so long why I couldn’t write the next chapter, only to learn that it was because I hadn’t read the book.
But now I had, and I was heartbroken.
Everything about what had happened hurt me.
The tragedy that surrounded my mother’s death.
The real reason why Zeke wasn’t around.
The realities of my parent’s choices.
How could I read my mother’s words, and learn about her aspirations, dreams, and hopes, only for it to all come crashing down and move on?
I’d felt so compelled to know my birth mom my whole life, but deep down, a part of me always did. It was as if she’d guided me the entire time and led me down a path she didn’t get a chance to finish. She allowed me to right her wrongs and give everyone, Zeke included, an opportunity for closure as my life began.
For hours, I’d been lying in bed, clinging to the journal tighter than anything I’d ever held. It was a part of me now, a crucial limb that could never be detached.
I flipped back through the words, reading them repeatedly, almost hopeful that the outcome would change in the end. But it couldn’t, and it wouldn’t. That was the reality.
This was the life I was desperate to know about, and these were the consequences that followed.
The band-aid had been ripped off, and now all I was left with was the stinging sensation that I didn’t think would ever pass.
I brushed my hand along my tear-stained cheeks as I sat up from my bed, my foot making contact with the box I’d left on the floor and causing a series of items to fall out. Without wasting a second, I fell to the floor and began sorting through them. Before I’d read the journal, the box seemed as though it was filled with miscellaneous items that held no meaning. But now, as I looked down at those not-so-simple items in front of me, I knew they meant so much more than I could’ve imagined.
The first item I lifted was the same series of pictures placed on Claire’s fireplace mantle.
The one that was taken by the pier at Long Beach. The one by the motorcycle outside of Tim and Sally’s. And not one, but two photobooth strips. The first was a replica of what I’d seen at Claire’s, and the other was a version of my mom and Zeke, taped up after it had been visibly ripped apart.
She kept it. My heart skipped a beat. But if Claire had saved the picture, then that meant…
“The jacket,” I mumbled as I dug through the box and pulled out a smooth leather jacket with a skull and the initials “E.R.” embellished on it, just as my mother had described.
Seeing my dad’s jacket filled me with a mixture of emotions. I was happy that Claire had kept it, knowing that my mother never really wanted it gone. But at the same time, what the jacket represented made me angry. I was so mad that I wanted to throw it away, just like my mom had, but I knew I couldn’t do that.
I knew that at that moment, I needed to make things right. So, I stood up from the floor, reached for my phone and called Hallie.
“Hey.” She picked up after a few rings, likely anticipating my call. “Did everything go okay with your parents? What happened?”
“Mind if I borrow your car?” I ignored her questions, her keys already in my hand.
“Of course,” she responded. “But where are you going?”
I released a shaky sigh. “To see my dad.”
Korey’s auto shop had proved much more challenging than I’d anticipated finding, especially when you type in “auto repair” online, and 15 different locations appear. Yet, as I pulled into the third shop that evening and saw a motorcycle parked out front, I knew I was in the right place.
I took a deep breath inside the car before mustering up enough courage to get out and walk toward the entrance. I pushed open the front door as the chimes echoed throughout the empty storefront, the clock reading just after five o’clock.
There were a few workstations, most of them vacant except for one with a light still on. I carefully stepped in, noticing a bulletin board filled with family photos on the wall.
There was one of Korey and Claire.
A younger photo of Ambert holding his little sister.
A few miscellaneous images from what appeared to be other co-workers, and then a photobooth strip.
Zeke and my mom.
My mom had said in her entries that Zeke had put his own copy in his wallet. My heart softened seeing the picture, knowing that Zeke had kept it all this time.
But the image that struck me the most was one I recognized. One that I’d seen all my life. A picture of me, a few weeks shy of my hospital discharge, with my eyes wide open. It was a photo my parents had put into one of my childhood albums and one that I’d always assumed they had taken, but I was wrong. It was Claire. Claire must’ve taken this photo.
“We’re closed,” a voice shouted from inside, causing my heart to skip a beat as I pulled away from the board and continued to make my way in.
“I said we’re closed—” Zeke froze in place as he looked up and saw me. A moment of complete silence passed between us as he met me with an intent gaze. It was a look I’d grown familiar with…a look I finally understood.
In her entries, my mom said she wasn’t paralyzed with fear the first time she locked eyes with Zeke the way she’d expected to be. Instead, she was intrigued. Yet, there I was, standing in front of the person I’d just come to realize as my dad and my body was scared, still and uncertain.
What do you say to someone you feel so close to yet so distant from? I knew nothing about the man that stood in front of me. Hell, nothing that wasn’t a reflection of someone else’s perception of him. Who was he? And more importantly, who was he going to be for me?
“Ambert’s not here.” He looked away awkwardly, breaking eye contact.
I released a breath. “I’m not looking for Ambert,” I shakily spoke. “I was looking for you.”
He peered back up at me, his narrow eyes honed in on mine as he clearly attempted to process this interaction. The last time we’d seen each other, I’d told him I never wanted to see him again. Now, 48 hours later, I was standing in front of him.
“I guess I should properly introduce myself, considering I didn’t get a chance to the other day.” I tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a cough, causing me to awkwardly fidget in place. “I’m Iyla…your daughter.”
He looked at me, and with the way he stared, I knew that he knew. He’d always known.
These were the eyes that my mom had fallen in love with. I swallowed deeply to hold back the tears that formed in my eyes, the two of us standing in complete silence.
“I want to hear you talk,” I repeated the exact words that my mom had once said to him.
He took small steps towards me, inch by inch, making his way over before he stopped, assessing my frame, mentally taking in that I was real. We stood there for a few moments before he pulled me into his warm embrace, wrapping his arms around me tightly—almost as if he was afraid of letting go. “Iyla,” he whispered into my hair, repeating my name as if he was still trying to accept that I was there, talking to him and now hugging him back. “I want to talk, but fuck.” He ran his hand through my hair. “What do I even say?”
“Anything,” I whispered. “Just say anything.”
Tears flooded his eyes as he gently placed his hands on either side of my face. “You’re everything I thought you would be.” He brushed away the tears that now fell down my cheeks. “Don’t cry, Iyla.” He grabbed a tissue for me. “Please don’t cry.”
I took the tissue from his hands to dab my eyes, trying to calm my nerves before I reached for my bag. “I have something for you,” I said quietly, grabbing his leather jacket and placing it in his hands.
His eyes widened as he looked down at the worn leather material, running his fingertips over it. “How did you get this?”
I toyed with the hair tie on my wrist. “I suppose I have a story to tell you. Do you think we could go somewhere to talk?”
Without wasting a minute, he closed the hood of one of the cars he’d been working on, nodding as he anxiously encouraged me to follow him to the parking lot.
“Do you need my help?” I asked hesitantly as he tried to lock up the storefront, his hands shaking so badly that he could barely get the key in.
“I got it.” He finally managed to get it inside, twist it shut and double-check for security. “I…uh.” He seemed just as uneasy as I felt. “Where do you want to go to talk?”
“Long Beach,” I responded without a second thought. “I want you to take me there.”
“Long Beach?” he seemed taken back. “No, Iyla, that’s not a good idea—”
“Please.” I looked up at him, clenching my bag on my hip. “It’s the only place I want to go.”
He sighed, meeting his green eyes with mine. “Okay,” he caved, walking over to his motorcycle. “Hop on.”
“Wait…” my voice trailed off as I watched him step onto his bike. “Is this the same bike that you took my mom on?”
He seemed to question how I knew so much but carried on anyway. “No,” he responded. “I try not to ride that anymore. It brings back too many memories, so I only ride it one day a year.”
“What day is that?” I wondered.
He looked away solemnly. “The best and worst day of my life,” he answered. “August 31.”
“A family friend and my dad’s co-worker decided that it would be a smart idea to go out on his old motorcycle. The thing is over twenty years old. Needless to say, it didn’t end well, and my dad insisted that I go in to learn how to fix it.”
That’s why Ambert had to leave on my birthday.
He was helping Zeke fix the bike.
My birthday is the best yet worst day of his life.
The birth of me and the death of my mother.
“You know what? Never mind.” He stepped off the bike, shaking his head. “Listen, I’ll just borrow one of the other cars. We can talk on the way there.”
“I’ll go on your bike,” I responded confidently before I could sike myself out of it. “I will.”
“Really?” he asked.
I nodded. “But on one condition.”
“Anything.” A faint smile appeared on his lips as he looked at me, his eyes thoughtful.
“Only if you have a spare helmet.”
Copyright Kate Lauren 2023 thewriterkate1@gmail.com
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I Y L A
My mom was right. There’s nothing quite like sitting on the back of a motorcycle, feeling the air cascade over your body and sensing the thrill of the world around you.
Zeke and I pulled off the freeway after about 45 minutes of riding. We parked alongside the road.” Are you okay?” he helped me to remove my helmet, slightly alarmed by my pale expression.
“Just a bit of motion sickness,” I explained. “I’ll be okay, though, don’t worry. That was insane…absolutely insane.”
He smiled, reaching under his seat and pulling out a blanket. I held in a giggle, thinking of the irony that he still had a blanket in there after all this time.
“Where exactly are we?” I questioned as he urged me to follow him as we walked in stride alongside the beach.
“Somewhere I want to tell you about…or maybe you already know about it.” He stopped under a spot that seemed familiar to him, laid out a blanket and encouraged me to sit down.
I sat cross-legged next to him, looking out at the water that expanded ahead of us before turning my head to him. I wasn’t too surprised when I noticed he’d already had his eyes on me. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to meet you, Iyla.”
“That makes two of us.” I felt entirely overwhelmed by the fact that the man in front of me was my dad. My real dad.
“How did you find us? And a better question, how did you know it was me?”
I let out a breath. “I only came to Los Angeles, desperate to retrace Mom’s footsteps. I wanted to know everything about the past. Everything that I felt had been hidden from me all this time. I never really knew exactly what I was looking for at all. But then, all of a sudden, things started to fall into place. I was finding details that individually made no sense at all, but put together, they unraveled the truth.”
“The truth?” he repeated back to me.
I nodded, explaining to him everything that had happened since the day I arrived. From first meeting Ambert, then Dr. Sanders, seeing the pictures at Claire’s, my parents withholding the letter, and finally reading the journal—the most crucial component of all.
“This is how I know so much.” I pulled the journal out of my bag and placed it into his hands. “I want you to read it. I want you to read what she wrote about you.”
He hovered his hand over my mother’s name, his eyes glazing over as he seemingly froze at the sight of it. It took him a moment to finally open it up and flip to the first page. “Iyla, I…I can’t.” He handed it back over to me. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” I voiced. “Why not?”
He ran his hand behind his neck. “It’s not for me to read, Iyla. The journal was meant for you.”
“But don’t you want to know what she said? How she felt about you?” I questioned. I could hardly believe he was turning this opportunity down.
“I don’t need the journal to know how she felt about me. I already know.” He placed a hand over his heart sincerely. “I’ve always known because I feel it every day. I’ll always feel it.”
I nodded, peering back down at the journal before placing it off to the side. Zeke continued to look at me as if he never wanted to look away.
“Did you always know it was me?” I wondered, changing the subject as I referred to the day he saw Ambert and me kissing in the car.
He nodded his head. “Without a doubt.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” I questioned.
“Like?”
“Like hey, you look just like…” I trailed off. “I think you might be…”
He let out a faint laugh. “Not that easy, huh?”
I chuckled softly and shook my head. “But how did you know it was me?”
“Well…” He placed a hand back on the journal. “If these entries have anything to do with the time your mother and I spent together, then I imagine she would’ve written a thing or two about fate.” He reached to graze my cheek. “I always knew that you’d find your way back to us one day. And look, after all this time…you did.”
“It’s been nineteen years, though. Didn’t you want to try and find me first?”
“Of course I did,” he responded without hesitation. “The day I got released from prison, I was desperate to find you, but the task proved harder than it sounds. Claire and I searched for years, but all I could think about was what was best for you. Was some newly released guy from prison really the right fit for you in your life?”
