The Diary Dilemma Page 7

  Did he cry? Eda had struggled these past few days to form hypotheses without having all the facts. This time, she refused to do it, worried that the obvious one would turn out to be true.

  Her hand must’ve had a mind of its own because she let all the ornaments fall on the floor and softly caressed his cheek. She loved the sting of the beginning of a beard and would’ve continued who knew how long. Johan took her hand into his. His gentle kiss turned her palm into a fiery ball.

  “Johan...”

  In response to her soft plea, he grabbed her by the waist pressing her body hard against his. For a brief moment, she felt she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t care. She wanted to soak in was his scent, his skin, his everything. His breath was warm against her lips, but he was still too far.

  He wrapped her even tighter and touched her lips with his, so gently that she could only feel an echo of his presence. She wanted more; she was determined to get more.

  Maybe she would have, but Johan released her abruptly and took a step back. As much as she wanted to decipher his expression, her thoughts were in chaos.

  “I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “I... I really can’t think about this right now.”

  “I understand,” she answered as calmly as she could.

  She didn’t. If there was an explanation for the quick shift from wanting her one moment and pushing her away the next, she failed to grasp it. A friend of hers had said that in love, you have to be willing to hurt, to be rejected, and to look ridiculous. Even though she refused to accept that, here she was, feeling more ridiculous than ever before.

  “No, I don’t think you do,” Johan said. “I have one thing on my mind right now, and that’s JP. I can’t start another chapter of my life until this is sorted.”

  “What is sorted?” She spoke louder than she intended and covered her mouth as soon as she finished.

  Glancing sideways to the room in which JP slept, Johan seized her hand and dragged her to the door opposite his. In her haste, she stepped on a globe, lost her balance, landing on his chest. A few moments ago, she would’ve lingered there, but now she knew it was the opposite of what he wanted.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. I need to pick these up,” she said.

  “Leave them.”

  He dragged her inside the room before she had the chance to decline his offer.

  Once inside, she turned to conceal her pain, noticing her and Polly’s luggage on the bed. When did that happen? It didn’t matter. That meant that it was her room, and she had every right to tell him to leave.

  But if she did, she’d never find out what was troubling him.

  Pretending to be preoccupied with the luggage, she asked. “What do you need to sort?”

  “It’s JP. He’s ill.”

  News like that demanded an introduction to ease the blow, but he laid the truth in front of her without mercy. Why would he have tried to make it sound less bad? She barely knew the child; she couldn’t be too affected by the news.

  Yet she was. The thought of the little angel having to go through pain tore her inside, and the fact that his father had to go through all that made it even worse.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with a disease called HLH.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  Johan sat on the bed next to her. “I hadn’t either until I heard the diagnosis.”

  She took his hand into hers. “What are the treatment options?”

  “There’s one treatment that can truly help; best-case scenario, he could make a full recovery A bone marrow transplant. For best chances, the donor has to be a close relative, either a parent or a sibling.”

  “I assume you tested yourself.”

  Johan bounced up, pacing in the small room. “I did.”

  “You’re not a match?”

  He stopped with a bitter smile on his face. “You can say that. It’s not just that I’m not a match. We have no points in common.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “This is what I asked the doctor who tested me, rather rudely, I might add. I had to press hard for the answer, but she finally told me the truth. JP is not my biological son.”

  If it weren’t for his rejection a few moments ago, she would’ve jumped to give him a much-needed hug.

  “I’m so sorry, Johan.”

  “Why? You’re not the one who cheated on me and lied about it.”

  “I know, but... I wish I could make all this go away, and I realize I have no way to do that.”

  Johan crouched in front of her and covered her hands with his. “You are helping. You being here helps.”

  “I meant help with something more practical.”

  “Unless you have some magic healing powers, you can’t,” he said.

  “What about other people? Isn’t it possible to find a donor outside of the family?” As she was asking the question, she realized she had the answer. The call he’d had a few days ago must have been about that, and the news wasn’t good.

  “The hospital has searched the banks but couldn’t find a close enough match.”

  “This leaves only one option. JP’s real father.”

  “I am his real father,” Johan snapped.

  Eda closed her eyes for a moment. “I know. I meant his biological father.”

  “I know what you meant.” Johan sighed. “I was thinking about that. Thinking about Clara’s infidelity isn’t something I’d rather do.”

  “You must be so angry about it.”

  “About her cheating? Not really. I would be, except I don’t have any anger left for that. I’m angry because my son is looking at a life span of fewer than ten years because she didn’t have the guts to tell me the truth. That’s what consumes all my anger.”

  Eda turned her palms and seized his. “Do you have any way of finding out who his biological father is?”

  “There’s one way I can think of. At the time, Clara was sharing an apartment with a friend from college, Jane. They were pretty close. If anyone has details about her love life, it’s Jane.”

  “Why would she live with a colleague? Unless you were--”

  “Not married,” Johan completed. He gazed out the window into the darkness. “JP is the reason we even got married, to be honest. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Ironic, yes, but maybe it was for the best for JP. Eda didn’t doubt a single moment that Johan was an excellent father.

  “Do you know how to get in touch with this Jane?”

  “I’ve been trying to for days. She didn’t answer any of my calls or emails. Early this morning I went to her apartment—it's the same one if you can believe it. Turns out she’s vacationing.”

  “Vacationing? Is this why we’re here?”

  “No, this is why I’m here.” Johan pulled back again and supported his weight against the door.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “If I do find JP’s father, he’ll take him away from me. Legally speaking, I have no rights. It’s enough for him or a member of his family to sue me, and they would surely win. I can’t let them take my son away from me.”

  A good scenario did not exist; Johan was about to lose his son, either to his biological father or his disease.

  “Johan...”

  “I know, I know. If JP’s father wants to take him from me, at least he’ll be healthy. Of course, I know that. I’m not going to let him suffer just to have him near me. I wish there was another way.”

  Eda stood up and neared him. “I wish that too. But now we have to do what we can to find him.”

  An ephemeral smile lit Johan’s face. “We?”

  “I mean...”

  “No, it’s fine. I like the ‘we.’ Actually, I was hoping you’d come with me to see Jane. It’s a 2-hour drive. We can go tomorrow morning and return soon after lunch.”

  “Do you plan to take JP?”

  “No. He’ll stay here with Bud. It would be too much f
or him.” He fixated her with his green gaze. “What do you say?”

  While Eda loved variation, Johan’s constant move-away then come-here was a bit too much even for her. How could he reject her then ask for her help a few minutes apart? The answer was simple but undesired. He wanted her friendship, nothing else. He needed her help but didn’t want her.

  Even though she found herself in the opposite position, Eda couldn’t shy away from the situation. Any distance would’ve been good for her, but what about JP and Johan? If her involvement could help ever so slightly, she had to stay. She had to stay until the crisis was over, then she’d be able to leave this episode behind without a second thought.

  Mere weeks before, she’d dreaded her loneliness. Now, the constant company was becoming too much. With each day, she understood more why she’d headed steadily towards solitude. Being around people hurt. Their pain hurt. Their troubles, many times unsolvable, pierced her heart. Their indifference brought her down.

  Despite all that, she chose to put her needs aside and do what was best for the child. For now.

  Road Trip

  The times when Eda and Polly had slept in the same room over the years were too many to count. The most memorable was that time when they’d camped for two nights, sharing a tent; the entire time Polly had made no sounds or moved an inch. It was as if she hadn’t been there at all.

  Countless sleepovers followed, sprinkled throughout their teens. Truthfully, their purpose had never been to sleep but to party, with occasional slumber at dawn. Or it was that time when they had ran out of gas, forced to sleep in their car in the middle of a field, found by a tractor driver heading for work.

  All these occasions had one thing in common, silence. In none did Polly snore, which rose one question. What had happened to her in the meantime? Eda tried to find an answer, but the constant snoring reaching from the other side of the bed didn’t let her think.

  She tried everything, putting a pillow over her head, moving on the floor at the other side of the room, and even sleeping in the tiny bathtub associated with the room. Nothing worked. Lastly, she tried listening to music on her headphones, realizing that nothing in her playlist was sleep-inducing.

  Early morning, her satisfaction came from the knowledge that her torture neared its end. In her haste to get dressed, she put on the pants backward. Took them back down and put them on—backward again.

  “For crying out loud!” she mouthed, secretly hoping Polly would wake up and gave the pants a third try. Her efforts to get dressed should’ve won her a medal for perseverance. When she finished, she shuffled out of the room with her head feeling caught in a thunderstorm.

  The kitchen bathed in yellow light. The previous evening, she'd resisted the urge to inspect the tiny room, kept at a distance by the unlike-rose smell.

  Johan was inside, putting water into an old espresso machine.

  “Coffee!” Eda exclaimed with an ability to form sentences similar to that of an ape. “Coffee, now!”

  “Don’t get so excited,” he said. “I still didn’t manage to find a single mug or any recipient we can use to drink it.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to know where they are?”

  “Correction. I know where they were. It seems Talia and Polly decided to clean up the mess the way I would’ve, by throwing away not only the rotten food but the plates and stuff also.”

  “You mean there’s nothing here?”

  Without waiting for approval, Eda proceeded to open each of the beechwood cupboards. All empty, but one which contained several large pots.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Johan warned when she lingered at the said cupboard.

  “This is unacceptable,” she protested.

  “We’ll get coffee the first chance we get,” he said assuredly.

  “It’s early morning and winter. What chance do you think we have of finding a coffee shop before we reach our destination?”

  Johan looked at the ceiling while he was thinking. “What’s lower than none?”

  “See?” She jumped in the air when an idea struck her. “I know!”

  There was no time for explanations. She galloped up to her room, pleased to see Polly turn in bed, grabbed a water bottle, and made her way back down, this time careful not to wake anyone.

  She emptied the bottle into the sink and proudly showed it to Johan.

  He was less impressed than was due. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Dude, coffee is serious business. I never kid about coffee.”

  “You can’t put hot coffee in a plastic bottle.”

  “They put hot coffee in plastic cups all the time.”

  “Yes, and it tastes like plastic.”

  She waved a finger near his nose. “You’re awfully picky.”

  The espresso machine was ready for use, but she still checked everything. Water and coffee were at their proper place. It took her two seconds to figure out the buttons, then proudly pressed 3. One coffee was far from enough.

  Turning the machine on was easy, unlike convincing the hot liquid to pour directly into the bottle, which was too big and let the liquid directly on her fingers despite her efforts to place it directly under the valve. She dropped the bottle, which would’ve fell on the floor if Johan hadn’t caught it.

  “It’s hot!” Eda exclaimed.

  “It’s supposed to be,” he commented.

  She restarted the process, painfully aware of his intense stare. The hotness of the coffee burning her fingers forced her to drop the bottle again.

  “Allow me,” he said, pushing her at a safe distance.

  He repeated her tries but managed to keep his hand straight.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she said in spite.

  “What?”

  “Being prince charming who comes to a girl’s rescue.”

  Johan laughed. “I’m worried the mean side of you won’t subside without coffee.”

  Eda took advantage of the silence that followed to inspect every dark shadow under his eyes, wondering if his night had been as bad as hers. She wished she could switch roommates for the remaining night they planned to stay at the cabin. Johan would’ve been a much better bed companion than Polly, for sure.

  She moved her head around to de-tense her neck and break that line of thinking.

  “You okay?”

  “I didn’t sleep well.”

  “I was wondering how that snoring was for you,” he said, his mouth corners raising.

  “You heard that!”

  “The closest cabin is two miles away, and I’m pretty sure they heard too.”

  Eda covered her face with both her palms as if she were responsible for the noise. “I’m so sorry... I don’t know what happened. She doesn’t normally snore.”

  “No worries.”

  The bottle filled with coffee, she grabbed it from his hand, giving it a great swallow. The effect couldn’t have been instant, but knowing that magic blackness was available dissipated some of the fog that enveloped her mind.

  “Don’t you want one?” she asked, seeing he was ready to leave.

  “I don’t drink coffee that tastes like plastic.”

  She would’ve never admitted it out loud, but he was half-right.

  He opened the front door, a gust of cold wind mixed with snow splashing them. Eda held tighter to the hot bottle and stepped outside.

  “Oh, wow!”

  Last night she’d arrived late when the landscape drowned in darkness. She could see it for the first time as it was, the trees covered by a thick layer of sparkling white snow, the hills standing proud behind, connecting the trees to the skyline above, as if they were the protectors of everyone who dared venture there.

  Her legs sunk into the snow almost to her knees, moving harder than she’d anticipated. Despite all that, she loved it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen snow like that, but she was sure that that particular memory involved her mother somehow.

  The snow around
Johan’s car disappeared, the car cleaned. “You were up early,” she commented.

  Johan inspected the pathway he’d created to make room for the car, admiring his work. “Yeah. It will be a longer drive than I anticipated. All the roads are probably filled with snow.” He looked at her with concern. “If you want to stay here, now’s the time to quit. I can go alone.”

  “No way!” Eda opened the passenger door and threw her bag on the back seat to prove her point.

  ∞∞∞

  They spent the first part of the trip in almost complete silence. Johan focused entirely on driving, which proved to be even more challenging than predicted. The snow covered the entire road so much that, in some places, they couldn’t even tell where the road began, and the ditch ended.

  Despite the difficult situation, Eda didn’t dare suggest turning back. He wouldn’t have. Eda admitted that nothing would’ve stopped her from trying to save her son’s life either. There were no real boundaries when it came to the life of a child, no obstacles too high to overcome, no ditches too wide to cross.

  Ever since she’d heard about JP’s illness, her heart came even closer to the boy. If she felt this way when she barely knew him, what could Johan feel? What would she feel if he were her son? Part of the reason she dreaded the idea of having children of her own was the fear her heart would shatter into a million pieces if something bad happened to them. No parent should have to go through that.

  “You have to talk to me, Eda, or I’ll fall asleep.”

  The white outside was mesmerizing. She’d forgot he didn’t have her luxury of letting herself lost in his thoughts. “Sorry. I dozed off.” She drank again from the bottle. “Want some?” When she didn’t receive an immediate answer, she pushed. “Come on! You need to stay awake.”

  “That’s what you’re for,” he answered but took her offer.

  His face contorted, countless wrinkles appearing all over. “It’s awful!” he exclaimed. “How can you drink it?”

  “It’s not that bad,” she protested.

  They reached an intersection, and Johan stopped the car for a moment, looking from left to right a couple of times.

  “You do know where you’re going, right?” she asked.