26. Rhodes
— ? —
Rhodes
I haven’t slept.
At two in the morning, I drafted a text to Maren, what did I miss?
First steps, first word? Does he have allergies, fears?
What makes him laugh? and deleted it character by character because she asked for one night.
One night to prepare a three-year-old for the fact that his father exists and is coming to meet him.
One night feels like a year.
At four, I gave up on the hotel bed and pulled out my laptop.
I answered emails I’d been ignoring for days.
Approved a project timeline I barely read.
Signed off on spending that could probably fund a small nation.
The work filled minutes but not the space behind my ribs, and by five-thirty I was standing at the window watching Boston wake up and wondering what Rowan eats for breakfast.
Does he like waffles? Cereal? Is he one of those kids who only eats plain toast cut into specific shapes?
I don’t know anything about my own son.
The thought keeps circling back, relentless as a current.
Three and a half years. Twelve hundred and seventy-seven days, give or take.
First smile, first tooth, first nightmare.
First time he said a word, I don’t even know what it was.
I missed all of it, and I can’t get any of it back, and that knowledge sits in my chest and lands hard, something I can’t swallow.
By seven, I’m showered and dressed and pacing the hotel room with nowhere to put any of it.
By eight, I’m in a toy store that just opened.
The saleswoman recognizes me, I can see it in the slight widening of her eyes, the professional smile that sharpens into something more calculated, but she’s smart enough not to mention it. She just asks what age range I’m shopping for.
“Three,” I say. “Three and a half. He likes space.”
“We have an excellent selection of space toys. This way.”
Forty-five minutes later, I’m standing in front of my rental car with four shopping bags stuffed full of things I don’t need, everything from a remote-controlled rocket that lights up and beeps to a build-your-own-solar-system kit built for children twice his age.
The bags go in the trunk.
I sit in the driver’s seat.
I stare at the steering wheel for a long time.
This is exactly what I’d do. What I always do. Something scares me, something I don’t understand, something I can’t fix with logic or money or sheer force of will, and I throw resources at it. I buy my way through the discomfort. I show up with so much that nobody can question whether I tried.
But trying isn’t the same as knowing.
And Rowan doesn’t need a father who buys him things. He needs a father who sits with him. Who learns him. Who earns the right to be there through something more substantial than a shopping spree.
I get out of the car, open the trunk, stare at the bags.
One thing. I’ll bring one thing.
The space book is at the bottom of the third bag, I almost forgot I bought it. It’s not flashy. Not expensive, relatively speaking. Just a hardcover picture book about the planets, with illustrations that look hand-painted and facts on each page a child could understand.
I close the trunk on everything else and drive to Maren’s apartment.
She lives on the third floor of a brick building in Jamaica Plain.
There’s a coffee shop on the corner and a park down the street and window boxes on every landing filled with flowers that are probably her doing.
It’s exactly the kind of neighborhood I’d have walked past a decade ago without noticing.
Now I notice everything.
The buzzer system by the front door, the faded welcome mat, the slight chip in the brick by the entry. I’m cataloging details like they matter, like memorizing them will help me understand the life she built without me.
“Come up,” Maren says through the intercom, and she sounds tired.
The stairs creak. The hallway smells faintly like someone’s cooking, garlic, maybe, or onion. Her door is at the end, painted a deep green that matches the Bellamy Blooms logo, and when she opens it, the first thing I see isn’t her.
It’s tiny shoes.
Blue sneakers with velcro straps, sitting beside the door like they belong there. Which they do. This is their home, his home. A home I’ve never seen, never been part of, never even imagined.
“Hey,” Maren says quietly. “Come in.”
I step inside and my throat closes.
There’s a toy truck wedged under the couch cushion.
A sippy cup on the coffee table. Crayons scattered across a coloring book, half the pages scribbled on in colors that don’t match anything real.
The refrigerator is visible from here, and it’s covered…
covered, in what must be preschool artwork.
Painted handprints. Glued cotton balls. Something that might be a rocket or might be a dog or might be abstract expressionism, I genuinely can’t tell.
And the photos.
They’re everywhere. Framed on the bookshelf, hung on the walls. A gallery of a life I wasn’t there for.
Rowan as a newborn, red-faced and squinting, wrapped in a hospital blanket.
A few months old in the next, grinning toothlessly at the camera.
Rowan on a beach, maybe a year old, maybe less, sitting in the sand with a plastic shovel.
First birthday, face covered in frosting.
Second birthday, blowing out candles. Third birthday, wearing a rocket crown.
I can track the years through his face. Watch him grow. Watch him become the boy I met at the party, the one who stared at me from behind his mother’s legs with my own suspicious frown.
I have to look away. I have to breathe.
“I made coffee,” Maren says, watching me. “If you want some.”
“I’m fine.” I clear my throat. “Where is he?”
“In his room. I told him you were coming. I kept it simple, just that Rhodes is your daddy, and he wants to meet you, and you can ask any questions you want.”
“What did he say?”
Maren’s mouth twitches. “He asked if you were the one who ate all the good Halloween candy.”
I blink. “What?”
“He’s three. He remembers that someone ate the Reese’s cups and I told him it wasn’t me. He’s been looking for the culprit ever since.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll go get him.”
She disappears down the short hallway, and I’m left standing in this living room full of evidence. Three years of his life. First words I didn’t hear, first steps I didn’t see, first everything - and I was across the country making money and missing it all.
I hear Maren’s voice, soft and encouraging. Then smaller footsteps.
Then he’s there.
Standing in the hallway, half-hidden behind Maren’s leg, staring at me with those dark eyes. My eyes. The ones that looked back at me from his face at the party and made me feel like the ground had shifted beneath my feet.
“Rowan,” Maren says gently, “this is Rhodes. Remember what we talked about?”
He nods without looking at her. His gaze stays fixed on me, assessing. Suspicious. He’s holding a stuffed alien, green, battered, clearly beloved, against his chest like a shield.
I don’t know what to do.
I’ve negotiated deals that shaped skylines. I’ve walked into rooms full of people ready to say no and walked out with a yes, stared down men twice my age who tried to tell me I didn’t belong, and I never blinked.
But this three-year-old is looking at me like I’m a stranger in his home, which I am, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do next.
Shake his hand? Ridiculous. He’s three.
Hug him? He doesn’t know me. That would terrify him.
Say something clever? I don’t know any three-year-old conversation starters.
So I do the only thing that makes sense.
I lower myself down.
Not onto the couch, where I’d still be towering over him. Not into a crouch, which feels temporary and unstable. I sit down on Maren’s living room floor, my back against the wall, my legs crossed in front of me, and I let myself be smaller than he is.
Rowan’s eyebrows, my eyebrows, that same crease between them, furrow deeper.
“Hi,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
“I like your alien.”
He looks down at the stuffed animal like he forgot he was holding it. Then back at me. “He’s an alien.”
“I can see that.”
“He eats people.”
“Does he?”
“Yeah.” Rowan considers this. “But not nice people. Only mean ones.”
“That seems fair.”
Maren is standing very still in the hallway, and I can feel her watching us, but I don’t look at her. I keep my attention on Rowan. On his dark hair that needs a trim and his left-side dimple and the way he’s gripping that alien like his life depends on it.
“I brought you something,” I say, and pull the book out from where I’d tucked it under my arm.
His eyes dart to it. Then away. Then back.
“It’s about space,” I continue. “Planets, rockets, all of it. I thought maybe you could tell me which ones are your favorites.”
I set the book on the floor between us. Not handing it to him, that would require him to come closer, and he’s not ready. Just placing it there, like an offering he can accept or reject.
A long moment passes.
Then Rowan takes three hesitant steps forward. He picks up the book with his free hand, the alien still clutched in the other, and examines the cover. There’s a rocket on it, fire and stars rendered in watercolors.
“Rocket,” he says.
“Is that one of your favorites?”
He nods. Then, without any warning or transition, he sits down on the floor about two feet away from me and opens the book.
“This one has a laser,” he announces, pointing at a rocket. “For blasting.”
“For blasting what?”
“Bad guys.”
“There are bad guys in space?”
He looks at me like I’m slow. “Black holes.”
“I thought you liked black holes.”
“I do.” He turns the page. “But they eat everything. So they’re bad guys sometimes.”
“Even though they’re your favorite?”
Rowan considers this philosophical complexity for a solid three seconds. “Yeah.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Maren move quietly into the kitchen. Giving us space, watching from a distance. I don’t acknowledge it. I just keep looking at the space book with my son.