3. Zach
“I’ve moved,” Carolyn said after I started her car.
She’d taken her time settling her son, the child I was sure was our son, in his car seat.
“Where to?” I managed to ask, but my mind was reeling. Seeing her again, after all this time, would have been enough to knock me for a loop even if we’d just run into each other at the grocery store or the gas station. Seeing her threatened, knowing she might die…that would be enough to give me new nightmares in the nights to come. But then on top of all of those other shocks, there was Austin. Our son. Named after my middle name. It was a hell of a thing to digest and not something I could ever have anticipated when the call came in to assist the local police with a hostage situation.
She gave me an address, one I recognized as being in the older section of town where houses had front porches, gingerbread trim, and big backyards. I remembered those houses because I’d been jealous of the kids who lived in them. Kids, I’d assumed, with better lives than me and my brothers had after our mother left. Kids whose fathers didn’t alternate between being dead drunk and using their sons as punching bags. I should be happy that Austin was being raised somewhere nice—it was certainly the kind of life that I would have wanted for any child of mine—but somehow it felt like a slap in the face that I was totally excluded from it. Even though we’d broken up, I still couldn’t believe she hadn’t even told me about my son.
I checked the mirrors to ease into traffic and caught a glimpse of Austin in the back seat. His head was tipped to the side, eyes closed. Asleep already. I’d heard Carolyn tell the paramedic that Austin was fourteen months old. I calculated back fourteen months, plus nine for her pregnancy. The math worked. We’d conceived a baby on that last leave I shared with her before she broke things off between us, ending our engagement.
It also meant that I had missed more than a year of my son’s life. Anger welled in me, and only the controlled calm I’d learned from years of watching and waiting as a sniper kept it inside.
I could wait and confront Carolyn when our son didn’t have a front-row seat to witness it. Austin might be asleep now, but I had no way of knowing if he was a light sleeper. And I wasn’t going to take the chance of him waking up to hear me and his mom in an argument. No kid should have to witness such a thing. I knew that firsthand, after all the fights I saw and heard between my mom and dad. After all the times Dad yelled at Mom—bullied her, berated her, even beat her more than once—it wasn’t that surprising that she’d decided to leave. I still couldn’t figure how she’d left her own sons, though. I’d been seven when she went to the grocery store and never came back, my brothers, Colin and Alex, had been even younger. And she’d left us behind, at the mercy of a violent drunk, with no one to count on but each other.
Our home life had been shit until the Admiral rescued us, becoming our foster father.
Thinking about my dad always made me all the more determined to keep my cool, to not let my temper show. The last thing in the world that I wanted was to be like him. But at the same time, remembering the past made the present feel even worse. How could Carolyn, who knew about my past, cut me out of my son’s life? Didn’t she know how important it was to me to make sure that no child of mine ever felt abandoned by a parent the way I had been? After her own problems with her father, I’d have thought she’d be more understanding. Guess I’d never really known her at all.
“The white house with green trim,” she said softly when we’d turned onto her street. “You can pull into the garage.” She hit a button on the visor.
I waited while the garage door rose. It gave me time to study the house. It was exactly what I always pictured on this street. Long, narrow windows faced onto a wraparound front porch. The front door and trim were painted the green of spring grass. The small front yard was full of summer flowers in pink and white. An idyllic family home and one she had not wanted me to be part of.
I parked in the garage. Without a word, she got out and lifted Austin from his seat. When she went to shoulder a bag loaded down with kid stuff, I took it from her and followed her into the house. She might not want me there, but I wasn’t leaving until I got an explanation. We entered the kitchen, which was cheerful, with white cabinets and yellow trim. Carolyn always did love bright colors in her clothes and surroundings.
“I need to take care of Austin,” she said. The little boy was sleepily looking around the kitchen. “The paramedic suggested keeping his routine in place so he doesn’t dwell on what happened.”
“I’ll wait.” Was she hoping I’d leave? Not likely.
“He needs to eat and have a bath before bed,” she explained. “You can go in the living room. It’s through there.” She pointed. “I’m not rushing on your account.”
Maybe she didn’t realize how much of my time as a sharpshooter was spent waiting. I could be patient, especially since the environment in her home was much nicer than what I was used to when watching a target.
“I’ll check around outside first.” The robbery at the store was probably random, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. “Are the doors and windows locked?”
“Should be,” she answered and reached in a cabinet for a bowl, turning her back on me.
Being with her in her home was surreal. Before she ended our engagement, we’d shared an apartment—shared everything, I’d thought. Except what she’d been feeling. She’d kept that hidden until the end…and then she’d blindsided me with it, right before I was about to head out overseas.
With another look at Austin, now sitting in a highchair and gobbling Goldfish, I slipped outside to walk the perimeter of the fenced yard. I wished I knew what to say to my son, but I had no clue how to begin interacting with him, or even if Carolyn would let me. It seemed clear that she didn’t want me to be part of his life.
So I did what I was trained to do. I checked a rear gate before circling to the front, automatically evaluating the home’s weak points. Where could an assailant easily enter? The house was well built, but there were too many windows exposing it to potential attacks.
When I was done, I returned inside and went to the living room. Overhead, I could hear splashing and voices. How many bath times had I missed—been denied? I’d been out of the country for months, until after my son’s birth, but I could have been here before tonight. Could have seen a picture of Austin at least.
I prowled the room. Framed photographs stood on the mantel and bookshelves. Most were of Austin. None were of me and Carolyn. Was she planning to conceal from Austin who his father was? But just from looking at the pictures, Austin’s heritage was clear. With his blue eyes and dark hair, Austin looked just like me and my brothers had at that age—and there were plenty of people in Springwell who would have recognized the resemblance right away. Frankly, I was surprised that no old high school buddy or busybody neighbor had gotten in touch with me or my brothers to let us know. Gossip tended to run strong in towns like ours.
Upstairs, footsteps moved into a back room, probably Austin’s bedroom. I should know that, know where my son slept at night, but she hadn’t let me. By the time Carolyn came down the stairs, it was all I could do to hold on to my anger. I will not be like my father, I reminded myself. No matter what, I will not follow in his footsteps.
She’d changed into snug-fitting jeans and a flowy purple top that I remembered her wearing one time when we went for a picnic. I could almost taste the strawberries we’d shared. They’d been so sweet on her lips when we’d kissed…but not as sweet as the taste of her when I tugged her panties off and slid my tongue up between her thighs. We’d been newly engaged back then, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other for love or money. We’d been so happy.Or at least…I thought we were. Maybe I’d been wrong about us even then.
“Is he mine?” I asked before she could say anything.
Her eyes flashed. “I think you know the answer.”
“So he is.” I’d known it since I saw Austin at the jewelry store, but it still hit me hard, and the dam inside me broke. Words poured out, though I was careful not to shout. “God, Carolyn, did you hate me so much that you didn’t want to tell me? What were you going to do, pretend he didn’t have a father? Erase me from his life?”
“Don’t turn this around on me. I never hated you,” she hissed, then glanced up the stairs as if she was afraid Austin might have heard.
“You did,” I countered. “You kicked me out of your life, remember?”
“I hated what you did. I hated that you were gone so much.” She spoke quietly but vehemently. “I never hated you. Even when I should have.”
“If that’s true, you would have told me about him.” I scrubbed one hand over my face in frustration. “Come on, Carolyn, you’re one of the few people in the world who knows the full story of everything that happened with my parents. Do you think I wouldn’t want to be here for my own child after what I went through? After what you went through?” Carolyn and I had both been abandoned by a parent. We had that very sorry fact in common.
She flinched at my words, but her chin was up, and she pressed her lips together, making her dimples pop out. “Use your common sense, Zach. Would I let a child feel abandoned by either parent? I can’t believe you’d think that of me.”
“Then why didn’t I know about him?” I was struggling to understand the situation and getting nowhere.
“Are you really going to claim that none of my messages reached you? Really?” she shot at me as she dropped onto the couch’s center cushion.
“What messages?”
“The twenty I sent,” she stated, the pitch of her voice rising. “I called and texted, over and over again. I never heard a word in reply. Nothing even acknowledging that you knew I was pregnant.”
I froze. “You…you called and texted my phone?”
She threw me an exasperated look. “Of course I did. How else would I have reached you?”
All the righteous indignation bled out of me in an instant. “Carolyn…the number you have for me isn’t mine anymore. After we broke up, I—” I’d been a complete wreck, actually, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit that. “—I was in a pretty bad mood for a while, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the guys picked up on it. So then Jonesy?—”
Carolyn groaned. “Oh God, no story that started with ‘So then Jonesy…’ ever ended well.”
In spite of myself, I couldn’t help chuckling. My teammate Dennis Jones was the ultimate prankster. He was a hell of a lot of fun, but the fallout of his plans got really damn messy more often than not.
“He wanted to cheer me up. So he snuck into the ladies’ rooms at half a dozen bars around base and wrote ‘For a good time, call…’ with my name and number. Before long, I was getting twenty, thirty calls a night, all night long. Finally, I had to change my number.”
“…Oh,” she said, her voice quiet. Her shoulders slumped and she curled in on herself a little. “So you…you really didn’t know.”
“I really didn’t know,” I agreed, going over to sit beside her. “I swear, if I’d had any idea, I’d have moved heaven and earth to be here for the two of you.”
She nodded rather than answering and let out a little sniff that I knew meant she was trying not to cry. I felt lower than pond scum. I always hated it when I made her cry. More than anything in the world, I wanted to pull her into my arms, comfort her—but she wouldn’t want that from me. Not anymore. I searched for something to say to distract her.
“When’s his birthday?”
“June fourth. He was born at three in the morning.”
I’d still been out of the country on a black-ops mission at the time of the birth. The mission had stretched longer than anticipated, and I hadn’t returned to the States until nearly Christmas, months after Austin entered the world. Truth was, even if she’d had the right phone number for me, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t have been able to reach me. It was exactly that type of mission that had caused her to end our engagement. It didn’t matter how good things were when we were together. She couldn’t handle all the time that we had to spend apart.
But I wasn’t a SEAL anymore. I was a civilian now, which meant that I could be there for her and Austin around the clock, if she’d let me.
She looked down at her hands, one clasped in the other. She no longer wore the engagement ring I’d given her, but I was as connected to her as any man was to a woman. We shared a child. That had to count for something.
She huffed out a sigh. “I feel silly now, for not trying to reach you some other way. I could have sent a letter or called one of your brothers. But when I thought you were ignoring my messages, I just…I gave up.”
I tried to hide a wince. It sounded too much like what she’d said when she’d broken up with me. “I give up. I can’t do this anymore.” She’d been my everything, the person I loved with all my heart. Imagining coming home to her was the thought that got me through every mission, every miserable hour I spent in a sniper’s nest in the freezing cold or blazing heat for hours on end. And then all of the sudden, she was telling me that everything we had together was over. After that, I’d never even dreamed that there was any road back to her or to the future I’d always wanted us to share. But now…now there was Austin. At the very least, I wanted to know my son, be part of his life. And if that meant I could be part of Carolyn’s life again, too… Well, we’d have to take it one step at a time. But for the first time in a long while, I felt some hope.
“Okay, so…where do we go from here, since I’m out of the service and home now?” I asked.
She gave me a sharp glance, meeting my eyes for a moment before looking away.
“I think it’s best if we take it slow. You can come over and spend time with him. Get to know him. He’s a great kid, Zach.”
“He’d have to be, with us as his parents.” I got a smile in response, and I felt that old, familiar rush of satisfaction . It always felt like something special, being the cause of a smile that pretty.
“You can’t tell him you’re his daddy, though, not yet,” she warned. “I want to ease him into this. We can’t overwhelm him.”
I nodded eagerly. Whatever hoops she wanted me to jump through, I’d jump. Hell, she could set the hoops on fire and I’d still jump. Now that I knew about Austin, I’d make my son the center of my universe. I wanted to rush upstairs and see him again, but she probably wouldn’t let me. Instead, I looked at a picture on the coffee table from what must have been Austin’s first birthday. The boy sat in a highchair and smashed a little cake with his fist, smiling gleefully. I vowed to never miss another celebration or holiday with my son.
I looked back over to Carolyn when I heard her stifling a yawn. She looked exhausted. Of course she does, you moron. She got held hostage, was nearly killed, and then had you showing up to drop a new bombshell on her. As badly as I wanted to stay and ask her a million questions about Austin, it was clear that now really wasn’t the time. “I should go, let you get some rest,” I said, knowing I’d made the right decision when I saw relief wash over her face. “Will you be all right for the night?” I asked.
“We’ll be fine,” she assured me. “I have a security system. You can take my car back to the store. Charlotte or my mom will pick us up in the morning.”
“I don’t want to leave you without a vehicle.” My head filled with scenario after scenario in which she’d need a car in the night. What if she needed to escape the house quickly or Austin became ill and had to go to the emergency room? “Can I come back tomorrow?”
“That’s fine.” She pulled out her phone, unlocked it, and handed it to me. “Go ahead and put in your new number. I’ll text you and let you know when we’re home.” I accessed her contacts and went to my entry. Knowing I only had a minute, I took a few screencaps of the messages she had sent me—the ones I hadn’t received. I forwarded them to myself, entered my new number, and handed the phone back to her. She stood as she took it, signaling it was time for me to leave.
She walked me to the door, leaning on it a little as she held it open. She looked so exhausted. Everything in me wanted to scoop her up in my arms—to hold her close, pamper her, make her feel better. But I kept my hands to myself. “Good night.”