Lily Katsa waited until Alex's breathing settled into an even drone before slipping out of bed. Apparently last night's caffeine jitters hadn't been bothersome enough to prevent her from indulging in another after-dinner coffee tonight. It was one of the few comfort foods she had this week, when five days into her new diet she was quickly losing motivation. Black coffee was warm, reassuring, and zero calories.
Having been svelte most of her life, Lily was becoming ever more agitated by the plump midsection that had been left behind when her daughter was born nearly three years ago. At first she had embraced it as a badge of honor; the mark of motherhood. Her tummy may no longer be flat, but that had been Jackie's home for nine months, and she had hoped it would be home to Baby Number Two someday. Now that it was obvious Baby Number Two wouldn't be coming any time soon (if ever), she cursed herself for not trying to get back into shape sooner. Ten pounds was all she wanted to lose. Okay, fifteen. But most of all, she wanted her waist back.
Lily glanced back at the bed where Jackie lie curled up next to Alex. Her face looked just like his when he was a child. Dramatic eyebrows. Cupid lips. Shimmering, sepia hair. Her childhood sweetheart and her little angel: these were Lily's two favorite people in the world.
As Lily crept out of the bedroom and felt her way down the dark stairs, she knew that the caffeine wasn't what was keeping her up. Next month was August, the big birthday month. Jackie was turning three and Alex and Lily were turning thirty-one. Three birthdays in one month, each a week apart. And that meant Tom was coming to visit.
It's not that Lily didn't want her father to visit. It's just that Tom wasn't always... Tom. He had fought in the Gulf War back in 1991, and while he had technically made it home alive, Lily wondered if part of his soul hadn't died over there. He was different when he came back. Depressed. Angry. Sometimes even crazy. Lily's mom hadn't been able to cope with the new Tom, and so she took Lily and her sister and fled north to live with Lily's aunt for a time. But Lily was stubborn and had insisted on taking her father's side. Sometimes she wished she hadn't.
Now Tom was coming to visit for the month and Lily resented him for it. At the same time, she knew she and Jackie were all he had left. She loved him, but so many things happened after the war that she wasn't sure she could ever forgive him for.
Earlier today she and Alex had talked about how Lily might benefit from seeing a therapist to work out these issues. Ha! Lily didn't have time for therapy. She was raising a toddler, doing financials for Alex's business, running her own craft business on the side, and because all that didn't seem stressful enough, they had recently decided that Lily would be homeschooled like her daddy. Where was she going to find time for therapy between potty training, administrating, taking care of the house, and planning curricula? Time was an extremely valuable commodity at Katsa House--one that could not be wasted on therapy.
Still, Lily knew she needed some way of working out these love-hate feelings for her father. When she was fifteen and began to see how her mother had seen post-war Tom, there was a period when her emotions were in such turmoil that she didn't sleep for a week. It was then she began to keep a journal. It was the simplest of journals--nothing more than fat purple spiral-bound notebook--but it came to be like a friend to her. She was very diligent about keeping it, having written in it almost every day for over a year. The journal had regrettably been trashed long ago thanks to a sleazy high school boyfriend, but in recent months Lily had realized how essential it had been in helping her to sort out her emotions.
Now on another sleepless night a lifetime later, Lily sat down in front of her laptop. And she began to write...