“Yeah, I know,” I say. I give him a small smile. “ But Lily is what’s most important here, right?”
“Right,” Ethan agrees. “I’m only doing this for Lily. If it wasn’t for her, I would have told Polly to get fucked, no matter how much she begged.”
I remember Polly’s last, desperate plea.
“I promise, Ethan. Please, give me one last chance to prove that I can do the right thing. Please.”
I don’t want to admit to it, but that tugged on my heart. Before that point, it had just been Polly making demands and excuses, reluctantly answering Ethan’s questions because she had to and trying to explain away her actions so they didn’t look as awful as they were. I was pleased when Ethan called her out on it.
But that last plea had been genuine. It had been a mother begging Ethan to give her a second chance, to allow her to see the daughter that she had once abandoned. There had been no talk of rights, like there had been in the letter. Polly had recognized that Ethan had all the power here, and she had fallen from her pedestal, resorting to pleading with him.
I glance at Ethan. Somehow, I think that actually affected me more than Ethan. Ethan is only thinking about Lily. If Lily had said she didn’t want to see her mother, no amount of pleading would have moved him; he has no room left in his heart to allow Polly to affect him emotionally ever again.
Which is a good thing. Part of me had worried that Polly’s presence would begin to thaw out the coldness Ethan had built around his memories of her, especially after finding him drinking so heavily after getting her letter the other night. But Ethan had stood strong and refused to bend over for her.
I’m really proud of him.
“So, what’s the plan now?” I ask.
“Well, I’ll organize with Polly about where she wants to take Lily,” Ethan says, pulling out his phone. “Even if Polly is Lily’s mother, she’s still a stranger, so I want to know where they’re going. Also, they won’t be able to leave the area. They need to stay close.”
“Polly might not like that,” I warn.
“Tough,” Ethan says simply. “Lily is my daughter; right now, Polly is her mother in name only. She can follow the rules or get out of our lives. In the worst-case scenario, I can and will take legal action, no matter what Lily wants; Polly abandoned her child for over ten years, and there’s no court that will rule for custody or even much in the way of rights in her favor.”
“Hopefully,” I point out, reminding him that there were always possibilities, and going down that road would be tricky.
“Right now, I just have to think through all the options,” Ethan says quietly. “Even for the worst-case scenarios.”
He sighs and looks at me. For the first time since Polly arrived, he looks unsure and vulnerable. It tugs on my heart, and I wish I could take all these burdens from him.
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asks. “This is what Lily wants, but I don’t have to give this to her. Part of me thinks this is all going to blow up in our faces.”
“You can’t think like that,” I say, shaking my head. “When you start thinking like that, you become paranoid. Right now, you just have to watch what happens and hope for the best. Hopefully, Polly will turn out to be a much better person, but it’s difficult for you to hope for that after what she did to you.”
“Yeah…” Ethan says. He looks down at his coffee. He barely touched it during the conversation with Polly, and now it’s stone cold. He gets up and carries the mug to the kitchen, flicking the switch. “Want another coffee?”
“Yeah, that would be great,” I say gratefully.
I watch him for a moment as he putters around the kitchen, likely needing something to do to calm the storm that’s raging in his head. I can’t imagine what this must be like for him, to see Polly again after all these years. It was surreal enough for me, and I had no emotional investment in her.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He looks up and gives me a wry smile.
“Not really,” he says. “But that’s not surprising. I kind of wish I had just thrown all those letters in the trash instead of putting them on the table like that.” He sighs. “But I needed to look at them; they were Friday’s letters, which I’d forgotten to check for, and there were several bills in that pile. I’d hoped the bills were a little further away so I could start saving, but they’re all due now.”
“Saving…?” I ask. Then my eyes widen. “For the computer?”
“Yeah,” Ethan says. His shoulders tense and he doesn’t look at me. “Trevor and I spoke about the idea that I could save for a few more months and buy the computer as a late birthday present. I could get her something small, instead, and promise that the computer is coming. I know Lily would accept that, and that just the promise that it is coming will be enough. But that doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“It’s better than going for a loan,” I point out, narrowing my eyes at him; I can’t believe he would even think about something like that, knowing how much additional money pressure it would put on him.
“I know that,” Ethan says, frustrated. He turns around. “But what do you expect me to do? I can’t get Lily anything. She doesn’t have any of those new games that have come out, I can’t get her brand new clothes or furniture, I can’t take her to carnivals or even the movies unless I save for it for weeks. She barely asks me for anything, but she asked me for this. No matter what, I want to get it for her.”
My heart breaks. Shit, I really misread this.
“I…started to look into it,” I confess, and Ethan looks sharply at me. “I knew you couldn’t afford it, so I started to look into getting you guys a nice one myself. I’m sorry… I should have spoken to you about it first.”