I’m standing at the perimeter of the stage, watching the end of the spectacular show, when I feel a tap on my shoulder and an unfamiliar voice asks, “Are you Xander?”

Without turning around, I give a cursory nod, not sure why she’s asking until she says, “There’s a woman in the bathroom who has asked me to tell you to get her husband and come right away.”

I whirl around and see the woman in uniform. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She didn’t say. I’m sorry. I have to get back to work.” The woman then turns and walks away, pushing her cleaning cart in front of her as she goes.

I look out onstage and River glances over, looking for Dahlia, I’m sure. I slice my finger across my neck, giving him the “cut it now” signal, and his smile instantly fades. His panicked voice trembles over the mic.

“Thanks, everyone!” He darts toward me. His eyes search mine on the way, but I don’t wait for him to cross the stage.

Heading toward the bathroom, I knock and open the door. “Dahlia?”

River pushes past me into the long rectangular room. “Dahlia, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” she cries as she swings one of the stall doors open. He rushes in and disappears behind it.

“Xander, call nine-one-one,” he yells.

“No, I don’t think I need an ambulance. It seems to have stopped. Let’s call my doctor first,” Dahlia nervously tells River.

His breath coming fast and hard, he does as she asks. I can’t quite make out what he’s saying because the toilet is flushing over and over. My pulse pounds louder than the sound of the running water as I wait to see what the hell is the matter. When I see his feet moving, I yell, “What’s going on?”

There’s fumbling behind the door, and then it opens and he carries her out. In a shaky voice he says, “We need to take her to the hospital. She’s bleeding. Take my keys and get the car.”

• • •

I’m sitting in the family care area waiting to hear how Dahlia and the baby are doing. My thoughts are drifting to seeing Ivy after so many years and how things could have been so different. When you believe a lie for so long . . . does it become the truth?

Behind my closed lids flashes a memory from twelve years ago. Looking back on it now, I think we were more like adults and less like sex-crazed teenagers. We had crossed the line from lust to love, from adolescent to adult. When we left my grandparents’ place that last day we spent there before graduation, the fractured afternoon light peeked through the clouds and I drove her home. I pulled over a good distance from where she lived. Dropping her off on the corner was something I really hated. But I understood. I had my own home issues, so who was I to talk? I’d had to bring my brother home and pick up my sister every day since my mother went back to work because my drunk of a dad couldn’t get a job. I couldn’t wait for the fall when Ivy and I would head to the University of Chicago together. Ivy got a free ride, my grandparents were paying for me, and we both got to get the hell out of LA.

As soon as I put the car in PARK, she bolted out. She didn’t even wait for me to open her door, which was a habit she knew I really hated, but I didn’t say anything. She leaned against the large black stripe of the hood as I approached her. Some kids were sitting on their stoops playing games, others were yelling and screaming, but I blocked all of that out as I caged her with my arms on either side of her and rested my forehead against hers. “I don’t think I’ll be able to meet you after school again at all the rest of the week. Tomorrow I have to pick up my cap and gown, Thursday is graduation rehearsal, and Friday is some kind of senior dinner.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck. “I know you’re busy. I can’t believe our ceremonies are both on Saturday. At least my mom said I could go to dinner with you and your family after graduation.”

Leaning into her, I circled my arms around her waist and kissed her lightly. “It’ll be our last day together before our summer trips, so I’ll pick you up as early as possible. Make sure your mom thinks you’re sleeping at Jody’s house.”

She kissed me and I leaned back to look at her. Her blond hair fell past her shoulders and she was smiling shyly at me. “It’s already arranged,” she said, flushing. A nervousness that I’d seen many times presented itself in her expression.

“What’s the matter, gorgeous?”

She broke away and in the quietest voice said, “I’m really going to miss you this summer.”

“I’m going to miss you, too. But, hey, we talked about this. It won’t be that long. The summer will be over before you know it and then we’ll be together.” I hugged her tightly, reassuring her.

“I know you’re right,” she whispered, and the sadness in her eyes broke my heart.

I had tried my best to get my mother to cancel or at least shorten my trip to my aunt’s. Since she called it my graduation present, I really thought I should have gotten to choose if I wanted to go or at least for how long. She hadn’t said I couldn’t, but she hadn’t said I could, either. I knew I would continue to work on her.

I kissed Ivy one last time and trapped her fingers in mine before she twisted away and broke the connection. She walked backward for a beat, then turned around and sashayed down the sidewalk toward her apartment building.

“I’ll call you tonight, sexy thing,” I yelled to her.

She turned, gave me one last heart-stopping smile, and blew me a kiss. She wouldn’t even let me walk her to her apartment building because she was afraid her mother would see her with me when she was supposed to be studying. So I waited on the corner until she reached her door. As soon as she did, she came rushing back. She threw her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear, “I hope you can call me because if you can I’ll practice what we’ve talked about.”

I stepped back and looked at her with what I knew was a sly, wicked grin. She was flushed on every exposed body part. “Really . . . ?” I asked.

“Yes,” she mouthed, her cheeks changing color from pink to red with that one unspoken word.

“Christ, just you saying it is so f**king hot.”

She kissed me, softly at first, then harder. “You better get out of here or you’re going to be late,” she said, and just as quickly as she had turned and come back to me, she was gone. Once she disappeared through the doorway, I got in my car and grinned for the longest time. Finally, I drove away and headed back to school to pick up River. I had to drop him off before picking up my sister, since my car didn’t have a backseat. I was late, and I already assumed I’d probably catch shit for it. As we walked into the house, I knew immediately something was wrong—Bell’s backpack and shoes were in the foyer. She was already home.

“Hello?” I yelled.

“Daddy, I can’t do it,” a small voice cried from the landing—it was Bell.

I began ascending the stairs. “Stay here,” I called over my shoulder to my brother.

I stayed silent as the wooden stairs beneath me squeaked.

“Don’t say you can’t. You can. You’re just not playing the right chords. Do it again,” my father said.

I bolted up the remaining stairs two at a time to the wide-open loft that acted as his music studio. Bell was sobbing and her fingers were bleeding. They were f**king bleeding. Seeing my little sister sitting there on a stool while my shaggy-haired, unshaven, drunken father barked orders at her triggered a rage I’d never felt before. I couldn’t take another minute of his drunken insanity—he wasn’t only ruining his own life, he was tearing ours apart.

He gave me a passing glance as he pointed to the chord he wanted my sister to strum. “You’re late,” he muttered.

“What the f**k are you doing?” I yelled.

“Teaching your sister how to play correctly.”

My jaw clenched tightly. “The hell you are. Bell, go downstairs with River.”

She looked at me, sobbing.

“No, Bell. Stay here,” he ordered, glaring at me.

“Go. Now!” I yelled to her as River came racing up the stairs. “Take her now and get her out of here,” I told him.

My hands were shaking as I took another step toward my father. It was strange, because he looked at me with vacant eyes, but I could have sworn I saw a flicker of fear in them. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t explain. It made its way through me as an urge to kill him. I lunged at him. He went flying backward and hit his head against the wall. A few of his framed Sound Music Magazine covers came crashing down. He scooted away from me, but my fists moved toward him in a hard, thrusting motion. He didn’t duck, he didn’t move. Hit after hit, my father just took it.

“I hate you! You’re a worthless excuse of a man!” I screamed.

“I know,” he cried. “I tried, I did. I tried to protect you all. But now with Damon Wolf, he . . .” The rest of his response was incoherent. I had no idea what the pathetic man in front of me was trying to say.

“Xander, stop it!” my mother screamed. She wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me back.

She leaned down to him but looked toward me. “What’s going on? What happened?”

I stiffened and took a deep breath, but he blurted out what had happened himself. Through his incoherent mumblings, he finally managed to make my mother see him for the worthless piece of shit he really was.

Without tears, she stood tall and told my father, her husband, the almost famous Nick Wilde, that it was time for him to leave.

He didn’t even plead for forgiveness. He didn’t say anything. He just stood and weaved down the stairs with his head down—a drunken mess. My mother pulled me to the kitchen and put ice on my hand. She finally broke down and cried. She asked me questions I couldn’t answer because my mind was jumbled with all kinds of thoughts—good, bad, love, but mostly hate.

Then out of nowhere an earsplitting bang rang through the air for a good thirty seconds. I knew immediately what it was. Running to the bedroom, I saw him lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood with his gun next to him. The sight filled me with as much rage as sorrow. He was dead—I knew he was. I could hear my mother’s shoes in the hallway and I ran over to the door, slamming it closed and locking it.

“Call nine-one-one now!” I screamed to her.

She beat on the door, tormented screams coming from her mouth. I heard River’s voice in the background and yelled to him to make the call and to call Grandpa too. I didn’t know what to do—I couldn’t let her see him like that. I scrambled to pull a sheet off the bed and that’s when I saw it—his suicide note.

It read, “I love you all. Boys, take care of Mom and Bell and don’t ever settle for not being at the top, because I know you can do what I couldn’t.”

As I covered him, both pain and contempt rushed through me. I slid down the wall and cradled my head in my hands. “What did I do?” I sat there with him for what felt like forever, blocking out my mother’s cries. When the fire department arrived, I was forced to unlock the door. The police and the coroner arrived at different times, asking the same questions, making us tell the story over and over again. The medics gave my mother something to calm her hysterics. My grandfather showed up and, even grief-stricken, he took charge. He always did; that was who he was—a man in control. He made my brother go back to the neighbors’ to stay with Bell until my grandmother got there to take them to their house. He talked to the police, the coroner, made a million other calls, and then finally he took my mother and me back to his house.

The next few days passed in a blur—the arrangements, the wake, the funeral. River, Bell, and I didn’t finish the last few days of the school year. I skipped graduation, much to my mother’s and grandparents’ dismay. But the funeral was the day before, and I couldn’t face anybody or even attempt to act normal. I was too broken. We were all broken—even my strong grandparents.

I remember the last night I talked to Ivy. The conversation was short. She wanted to see me, but I said no. I couldn’t do anything but think about what I’d done, what I’d caused. She begged to come see me, but I said no. She’d offered to take her mother’s car once her mother fell asleep, but again, I said no. She didn’t need to piss that witch off. I couldn’t deal with that shit. As it was, my “I” trip to Paris became a “We” trip to Paris—the family was going. So because I couldn’t pull myself out of my own sorrow, Ivy and I said goodbye over the phone, and her sadness ripped me apart.

I look up at the dim lights through the window in the grim waiting room, and a shiver sweeps through me as I remember how it happened. Our summer trips were both over and it was the night we had planned to meet again. I hadn’t yet told her I wasn’t going to the University of Chicago with her, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I couldn’t go that far—I couldn’t leave my family when they needed me most. But it never mattered anyway, because instead of being the night we reunited, it was the night we ended. We never formally broke up. We were just no longer together. I loved her, and that was it—I loved her enough to do what was best for her. So even though we were a part of each other, when I got the opportunity to set her free—I did.

My eyes fly open when the overhead lights come on and pull me out of my own darkness. The only person who knows the truth is standing in the doorway of the waiting room. To everyone else I was a cheater, but I didn’t care what people thought because leaving LA made her who she is today—I know it without a doubt. Standing up, I approach my brother. He looks exhausted. Clapping my hand on his shoulder, I ask, “Is she okay?” I want to ask if the baby is okay as well, but I’m afraid.