A Necessary Struggle: Fall Semester

Part 14

       Forty-five minutes after leaving the hospital Harmony sat across from him. She didn't think this through. She just wanted to get away from Wes and she didn't have many options. If she went back to the apartment he would follow her. It was Saturday and she didn't have class and she couldn't go to Sam's apartment; Wes lived there too. So, she sat in his office, Laurent O'Connor's office.

      Harmony bit down on her thumbnail bringing a dent to her nail polish. Her eyes floated over the contemporarily decorated office. He graduated from Georgetown, as told by the degree hanging on the wall to her right side. That's a coincidence, her cousin was attending Georgetown; Iris Given's was there right now. Where did he go to law school she wondered rushing her eyes to the next framed certificate? Berkeley! Her eyes widen, that was her dream school. He went to her dream school. She glided her round eyes to his, to his eyes that didn't leave her since his secretary escorted her in. Harmony couldn't remember her name but she was sure it started with a B. 

      Harmony and Laurent had something in common. Harmony drew in his appearance. They had more than one thing in common. She bit down on her nail harder. She wanted to wake up from the dream. She felt her face, sliding her hand over her sepia skin, there it was; that's where she got it from. She had his face, different complexion but same everything else; same button nose, same high cheekbones, and same copper eyes. She watched the corner of his mouth turn up and there was the deal sealer; this wasn't a dream. There was no waking up from this. This was real. There were craters in his cheeks. She felt her own cheeks. He had dimples too.

      "Thank your grandfather for those." Laurent's husky voice broke the silence.

    Harmony dropped her hands, "Why?"

     "I don't know. Genetics?" He folded his arms bringing wrinkles to the elbows of his navy dress shirt. "Funny thing, though. Only firstborns have dimples."

       "No. No." She shook her head. "Why did you give me up?"

    "I didn't give you up."

      "You let another man raise me! What do you call it?"

       "Doing the best thing for you."

    "The three of you are all on the same wavelength, aren't you?" Harmony's eyes started watering causing him to fidget with his tie.

     "I was twenty-four. They were twenty-nine, married, settled, stable. I was called to duty, being shipped off. What was I supposed to do?"

     "I'm not well versed in the Navy or Army, Marines or Air Force but I'm pretty sure tours don't last forever. You were going to come back."

     "I didn't know that. I didn't think about coming back. I couldn't be the best soldier I could be thinking about what I could lose, but only what I was protecting."

      "So, when you came back. You didn't care about me?" Harmony looked at him sideways. "You just let another man raise your child. Moved on with your life." She looked at the silver wedding band on his finger.

      Laurent followed her eyes to his ring finger. He tucked his hand under his desk, "You think it was that easy. The first thing I wanted to do was see you...hold you."

    "Why didn't you?"

     "We had a deal!"

     "Deals can be broken!"

        "I fucked up!" He dropped his head. "I didn't think. We were stupid. It sounded good...like the right thing to do." He raised his head back up. "You had a good childhood." 

     She narrowed her eyes, "How do you know?"

     "Because I saw." His copper eyes glistened with mist.

      Harmony's mouth opened but no words escaped.

      "In the dark, in the back." He held his heart, gripping his chest trying to hold back the tears that were at the brim. The tears he'd been holding back for years. "My weakest time. I saw you. In that yellow tutu dancing at your ballet recital, doing the best a five-year-old you could do." He smiled a little, and then it disappeared. "I convinced myself. I was going to introduce myself. I had the tulips in hand waiting in the lobby when I saw them, your mom pushing a stroller with a baby in it and him holding you." He couldn't hold them back anymore, the tears poured down his red cheeks. "You were his. No longer mines. I had no claim, not until you were twenty-one, until now. So," He bit his lip. "I waited."

     "You waited." Harmony stared blankly past him out the window where the State Capital building was the background. "So, what now?"

     "I want to know you. I want to know everything about you." Laurent pulled his chair closer to his desk reaching his arms across it wishing he could take her hand, pull her into his arms and give her all the hugs he wasn't able too. "I want you to know everything about me. I want you to—"

    Harmony pulled back, sitting up straight, he was getting too close to her. "To what?"

     Laurent glanced down at his beeping cell; he was needed in the conference room. It had to wait. "To call me Dad." It was what he wanted since her mother told him she was pregnant.

    Harmony huffed angrily, "It's too soon for that." She wasn't even sure if she could call her own dad that right now.

    "You need time. I know that."

      "You want me to know everything about you?" Harmony questioned. He nodded. "Then who's that?" She nodded to the gold-framed portrait on the corner of his desk.

      He smiled then rubbed the smile off his face, "That's Ariel. My other daughter."

     "I have a sister." A smile of annoyance claimed Harmony's face.

     "Yes." He glanced at the picture, "She's a freshman."

     "Where? Berkeley."

     "No. At Texas University." He pointed down, his finger pressing onto his desk. "Here."

      "What?" Harmony's stopped breathing momentarily.

      "It's my wife's alma mater. I didn't plan it but you should go see her." He suggested. His heart jumped at the thought of having both his children with him in the same room. "She already knows about you. I told her." He took a self-soothing breath. "I told them everything." A smile painted his face.

      "You told her." Harmony shook her head. "You told them...but not me." 

     Laurent's smile disappeared, "I'm telling you now. Doesn't that count."

     "No." Harmony grabbed her purse standing up. "Not at all." She choked back her tears. 

Will Harmony ever think of Laurent as her "Dad", what will it take?