"I'M SORRY, AM I hearing you right?" Lindy asked, holding her hand up and blinking several times as she replayed Lee's words in her head.
"You are," Lee said stiffly, but he still had filmy tears in his eyes, hardening his appearance rather than making him look distraught.
"Mom was pregnant," Lindy whispered. For some reason, and maybe it was because Hannah had been physically long gone from her life, she could not picture this. Her whole life, she and Trae had been the two siblings of the family. The chances of having another brother or sister had never even crossed Lindy's mind, not even as a daydream.
"She was. She'd just found out from her doctor. The whole point of going to dinner that night was so that she could surprise me."
Overwhelmed by this news, Lindy turned her back to Lee, feeling like she was close to breaking down and weeping. Her loss felt bigger now somehow. More monumental than before. The giant crater of a hole punctured straight into her world when Hannah had died was now growing even bigger.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Lindy asked, though she still looked away from Lee, refusing to meet his eyes.
"How in the hell was I going to tell two children that they lost a sibling along with their mother?"
"I don't mean then. I mean after we had grown up. Once we were old enough to understand."
"It felt useless. There was no need to put you both through anymore than you'd already been through."
This felt sickly ironic coming from the man who had tormented Lindy and Trae for years. Lindy faced Lee, trying to catch the escaping tears from her eyes with the back of her fingers. The weight of the news was falling over her, but she still maintained control over herself.
"So are you insinuating that that's why you were so horrible to us?"
"I guess," Lee muttered, tearing his eyes away from Lindy's questioning gaze.
"That doesn't change the fact that Trae and I deserved better from you."
"You think I don't remind myself of that every damn day?"
"You fucked me up," Lindy told him, her voice steady but still cracking with heartbreak. "Regardless of what you lost, what we all lost, Mom nor any younger sibling of ours would have wanted that."
"Lindsey, I already know this. Your brother has been through it with me since he decided to come back into my life."
"But this is coming from me," Lindy said, her tone rising. "And you deserve to hear it from me too. Not just from someone else."
She could no longer stand still in one place. Dragging her fingers through her hair, Lindy paced the living room, her world still entirely rocked by what she had learned.
She guessed that it made sense in some sort of twisted way that Hannah had been pregnant at the time of her death. She'd already been such a wonderful mother. Of course she would have wanted another child. And yet again, the bad luck that seemingly coursed through her family's bloodline made its wicked presence known and had taken Hannah right when she'd gotten her wish.
"I'm sorry, Lindy. I really am," Lee apologized. He sounded somber, truly regretful of the pain he'd caused for his daughter. It was the first time that Lindy had ever seen remorse out of him.
"You . . . you called me Lindy," she said, unsure again if she was hearing Lee correctly.
"That's your name," Lee acknowledged with a curt nod of his head. "It always has been."
