Chapter 28
28
Liam
Me: I need you, brother.
Wyatt: What’s up?
Me: I’ve made a mess, I think. Of everything.
Wyatt: I’m coming.
J anice arrived, harried, smelling like a forest fire, still in her scrubs. Dark circles under her eyes and her hair a wild mess around her head.
“Mom!” Tess cried, running from the living room where I’d left her with all the cinnamon graham crackers she could eat and a pile of books. She hurtled herself into her mom’s arms, right there in the front doorway. Janice fell to her knees clutching her daughter tightly.
Whatever had led her to lie to me for all the years, I could never say she was a bad mom to that girl. Janice scootched in and I shut the door behind them and walked quietly down the hallway, giving them room and privacy to catch up.
In the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of expensive bourbon someone gave me as a gift and waited for her. Trying to figure out how to play this and then telling myself there was no way to play this. It was honesty – all the way.
“Hey,” Janice said, walking into the kitchen. Her eyes were puffy from crying.
“You want a drink?” I asked, pushing the bottle towards her.
“Yes,” she laughed. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea.” She tugged down the shirt of her scrubs. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions…”
I told myself not to get angry, but it happened anyway. Anger like I’d never felt rose up in me and I stood up from my stool and walked to the far side of the room, away from her. Not that I was going to do anything, but I didn’t want her getting scared.
“Just one, really,” I said. “Why?”
“Why?” She swallowed. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened? Why didn’t you tell me when you came back? When you were bringing her over here? When I took her to the circus? When you asked me to babysit?”
My voice was climbing and I stopped to take a deep breath.
“Liam, I know how angry you must be,” she said calmly.
“You can’t. You can’t know how this feels.”
“Please let me explain. We met not too long after that thing happened with the other woman, Gayle. I knew exactly how upset you were. That someone would lie about something as serious as paternity. You said, had it been true, that would have been it for you, because family doesn’t leave family behind.”
“Exactly,” I snapped. “You knew how I felt about this! How could you?”
“If I had told you I was pregnant, what would you have done?”
“Married you,” I said. “Married you. Been a dad. Made a family. So fucking easy, Janice.”
She nodded. “I knew that. I knew that’s what you would have done. But I also knew you did not love me. Not in the way someone should who is thinking about marriage. And truthfully, I didn’t love you either. I was still trying to figure out who I was. We were never serious. But once I realized I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to keep her. I just decided, it would be easier to do this on my own. Make no demands-”
“Demands? Whose demands? My demand to know my daughter?”
“I’m being as honest as I can,” she said. “I didn’t want you to propose because you thought it was the right thing to do and I didn’t want to say yes because I was scared to raise her on my own. And I didn’t think I was strong enough to resist your tenacity. So I left.”
It’s exactly what would have happened. I would have pressured her and pressured her until she married me.
Did I love her? No. Would it have mattered?
“Then why did you come back?”
“Because I started to feel like I’d made a mistake. Becoming a mom does that. It makes you grow up really fast. I realized what I was doing by keeping her from you.”
“Janice!” I shouted, then immediately lowered my voice. “You’ve been back for almost a year. When were you going to tell me?”
“Every day,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Every day I was going to tell you. When I saw how great you were with her. When we joined you on those team events. I knew every day that keeping you from the truth was wrong. But that’s when the lie got bigger and bigger. When I knew that telling you would be so horrible. That you might threaten me with lawyers and custody battles-”
“I wouldn’t have done that.”
“Maybe not. But I couldn’t risk it. I’m so sorry, Liam. I know that’s not enough, but it’s all I have.”
I rubbed my forehead, still angry, but I got it too. I understood. Being my mom’s son had made me sympathetic to all sides of a story. It didn’t make her right, it just made her human.
I knew she was. I was sorry too. But my life was different now. I was different.
I finished my glass of bourbon and set it on the table. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said and she bristled. Yeah. This might be a tense conversation, but it needed to be had. I couldn’t make it easier. Not when it came to Tess.
“Is there any chance she’s someone else’s?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. Then we’re going to go in there and tell her the truth.”
“Now?” She asked.
“No time like the present. I think she knows. She overheard me talking to Kit and she’s smart. Smarter maybe than all of us.”
Janice nodded.
“Then we’re going to a lawyer and we’re going to work out a child support plan and a custody arrangement. I’m not taking her from you, but I want her in my life in a real way.”
She wiped tears that slipped down her cheeks. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”
“My schedule is difficult,” I said. “It won’t be fifty-fifty all the time, but when it can be, I’d really like it to be.”
If she’d fought me I would have dropped the hammer. The hammer being money. But Janice had made a mistake and she knew it. It was time to fix it.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping across the kitchen, past her to the doorway to the living room.
She caught my hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and I nodded. Tears, man. They really messed me up.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re fixing it.”
“You really are the best man I’ve ever known,” she said. I wrapped an arm around her and gave her a much-needed hug. She wasn’t for me. She was right, I didn’t love her. I never had. But she was a good person. An excellent mom, and we would figure out this parenting thing together.
In the living room, Tess put down her book when she saw us and gave me her toothless grin. For the first time since finding out she was mine, I had a spike of nerves. What if she didn’t want me to be her dad? What if this was upsetting to her? We were about to change her life and I knew it was for the best, but she was just a kid.
“Hey bug,” Janice said, getting down on her knees beside the couch. She tenderly touched her daughter’s face, pushing back her hair, careful of the stitches. “We have something to tell you.”
I sat down on the coffee table and smiled at Tess, who reached out and patted my knee. “What?” she asked.
“Well,” Janice said. “Remember how I said some kids get dads and some kids don’t?”
“Yep, and that’s that,” Tess finished.
“I wasn’t being truthful,” Janice said. “And I should have been.” She was getting herself into the weeds with this confession and she needed an assist.
“Whelp, turns out you’re a kid who gets a dad after all,” I said. “Me.”
Tess looked skeptical and she reminded me so much of Kit in that moment it hurt.
“I know. It’s crazy. But it’s true. I’m your dad.”
She looked at me and then at Janice. Back at me. “Really?” she said.
I nodded, words clogged in my throat. She stood up from the couch and put her hands on my cheeks. Her blue eyes looking deep into mine. I didn’t know what she saw. If she saw someone she could love. Someone she could be proud of. Someone she trusted and felt safe with. I wanted her to. I wanted her to see a man who would move mountains for her. Tears filled my eyes because I loved her so much.
She was mine. My daughter. My girl.
She patted my cheek and said, “Cool. Can we get pie for breakfast?”