But he wasn’t.
I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the sun as my heart started to race. “Merrick? What are you doing here?”
“I came to find some lucky sea glass.”
“Did you know I was here?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been coming every night around this time for the last few days.”
“But…why?”
He smiled sadly. “Is there room on that rock for two?”
I was afraid, but I couldn’t stop the hope from blooming in my chest. I scooted over to make room for him. “Sure.”
Merrick sat down beside me and looked over at the sunset. Since I had to face his direction to watch, I used it as an opportunity to take a closer look at him. It looked like he’d aged a few years in just a few weeks. I was angry as shit at the man, but I was human, and it looked like he needed a friend. So I pulled out my lucky orange sea glass and held it out to him.
“Give it a rub. It looks like you could use it.”
His eyes washed over my face before he shook his head. “I’ve treated you like shit the last two weeks, and you offer me something you treasure.”
I shrugged. “It hasn’t been doing its job anyway, lately. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Merrick reached over and closed my open palm, leaving the glass tucked inside my hand. He stared down at my fist for the longest time before lifting his eyes to meet mine. “The day of Amelia’s accident, I found out she was having an affair and was also more than four months pregnant. I knew it was possible it could be someone else’s child, but I somehow convinced myself it wasn’t.” He shook his head. “I was certain the baby was mine. I was so damn angry at Amelia for what she’d done. But I eventually found a way to let some of that go by falling in love with my daughter.” Merrick swallowed. “It was like I had all this hatred and animosity in my heart, and the more I fell in love with a child I’d never met, the more those feelings pushed out the bad ones. I read to her for hours every night, played her all of my favorite songs, and even told her stories about her mother and me when we met in college. The nurses gave me my own stethoscope because I would borrow theirs to listen to her heartbeat all the time.”
It didn’t matter that Merrick had broken my heart, I opened my hand and entwined my fingers with his, keeping my sea glass inside our meshed palms.
“Over the next few months, I had to make a lot of difficult medical decisions. The more time that passed, the more Amelia’s life was at risk. But Eloise needed her mother because she wouldn’t have survived if she was born too early.”
“You had to make all those decisions for them by yourself?”
He nodded. “Her parents weren’t in the picture, and she wasn’t close to many people. But at the time, I wasn’t even sure I knew what she’d want, considering I’d had no idea she was having a long-term affair with another man. After a few months, Amelia’s health took a turn for the worse. It turned out she had some blood clots that were breaking off. It was still pretty early for the baby to be born—only twenty-nine weeks. But I agreed to try a new drug because they were both at risk. It caused Amelia to go into early labor. Eloise was born and went right to the NICU, but Amelia just kept declining. None of the medications were working.”
Merrick paused for a breath, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse. “In the meantime, the hospital had been served with a court-ordered paternity test by the guy she’d been sleeping with. A few days after they swabbed Eloise, Amelia flatlined, and they were able to bring her back. The next morning the social worker came in and told me…”
Tears streamed down Merrick’s face, and mine followed.
He shook his head. “It’s been three years, and I still can’t bring myself to say I’m not Eloise’s…”