Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter
Seventy-Five
Stone
I slipped my phone in my pocket after speaking with my father. He still knew nothing and was in London dealing with the department store there. That specific store was newer and required more of his time. My first step was to make sure he was gone and put a date on his return.
Marianna had let me in and directed me toward where I could find Wills. Marianna was the newest housekeeper/nanny. She was in her sixties and slightly overweight. Obviously, my newest stepmother had chosen her. I had to admit she was smarter than the other stepmothers. If she had left it up to him, Marianna would have a stripper name and be barely legal with larger breasts and looser morals.
A bonus was that I liked Marianna, and Wills did too. She wasn’t motherly, but she was kind. He needed that in this place. Especially now that he was considered old enough to get hit by the man who thought he had the right.
I knocked on the door to the game room once and slowly opened it. Wills was sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a remote control in his hand. A video game played out on the large screen in front of him—it was motorcycle racing. The music was loud on the game, and he hadn’t heard me knock or come in.
“No!” he yelled at the game. “Not NOW!”
I watched as the motorcycle’s tire blew out, and it spiraled out of control.
“Son of a bitch!” He threw the remote down.
I cleared my throat, and he swung his head around. When he saw it was me, his first expression was surprise, which quickly morphed into a smile taking over his face. Everything about seeing him today was more. I didn’t think I could love him more than I already did. But standing there, looking at him and knowing he was mine, I realized I’d been holding a piece of myself back. Protecting it in case I found out he wasn’t my son. Now, my chest felt like it was going to explode as I walked toward him.
“Stone!” He jumped up and ran toward me. His arms were in the air, and the mouth that had spoken in a tone too old for his age was gone. He threw himself into my arms, confident I would catch him.
“Hey, buddy.” I picked him up and hugged him tightly. Emotion clogging my throat. I closed my eyes for a moment to get a grip mentally. I wanted to take him and run. Rescue him from this place. Hide him from the ugliness he’d already witnessed.
Knowing I couldn’t take him now made it so damn hard to stand here and not fucking weep. He was just a little boy. A kid. And that bastard had hurt him and scared him. Taken a piece of his innocence that he’d never get back. No amount of love I could give him would erase that moment. That terror. It was there, and it would always be in his nightmares. In his thoughts. It would mold the man he would become, and I hated that I couldn’t save him from it.
I would blame myself for not moving faster. For waiting and being patient like the attorneys had suggested I do. I knew the day my father would start hitting him would come, and I wanted to have him out of here before he did. But I hadn’t managed it.
“You came! You didn’t call this morning, and I thought you weren’t coming.” The joy and relief in his eyes almost made me fall to my knees.
“Didn’t you talk to your mom yesterday?” I asked him. Hilda had said she would tell him I was coming. I had already assured him I would, but I asked that she remind him. I knew his calls were monitored, and I didn’t want my father to be alerted that I’d spoken to Wills twice so soon. He’d get suspicious. I didn’t need that. Not now.
He nodded. “She called, but she didn’t tell me. She said she was visiting you. But that’s it.”
He didn’t ask if she’d come. He was eight years old and didn’t care if his mother was coming to see him. I had asked her to come with me, but she’d gotten a call from her married boyfriend and left in tears. I wasn’t sure if I would return to her at my place or if she had left for Chicago.
“She was supposed to. I’m sorry. I should have called,” I told him. He needed to be reassured. He didn’t get that anywhere else in his world. Hilda should have thought of that. But she would rarely think beyond her needs and wants.
“Can I come to Savannah with you?” He asked me this a lot. He wanted to stay with me. My father never allowed it. He said I was too busy to fool with “the kid.” And he’d said it in front of Wills.
“Soon. I promise,” I replied. “But today, we are going to the M&M store to get you a large bag of the blue ones you love with whatever word you want on them this time. Then I thought we’d visit the zoo and throw the football.”
“I don’t have a football,” he said seriously.
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot the part where we buy one at Nike Town,” I added.
He was grinning now. The last time I visited, he told me he didn’t have a football and wanted to learn to throw one.
“Can we leave now?” He wiggled to get down out of my arms.
“Absolutely. I need some of those yellow M&M’s.”
He smirked. At that moment, I saw myself—a picture from my youth. It was different now, I knew. I wasn’t imagining the similarities—they were there, and they were real. He was my son.
“Yellow is a girl color,” he told me as if I should know this.
“Like hell it is,” I argued.
“You should get blue or green,” he said with authority. “Even red is better than yellow.”
“Don’t bully me. I’ll get pink if you do,” I warned him.
His eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Hell, yeah, I will. Takes a real man to eat the pink ones,” I told him.
He frowned. “You can’t get the pink ones anywhere but at the M&M store. They don’t even put those in the bag.” He said this as if it was very important.
I shrugged. “Too bad.”
“Do you think we can go to the zoo to watch the Sea Lion’s get fed?” He changed the subject once again.
“I’ll check the time on my phone, and we’ll be there for it.”
“In the next couple of months, they’ll start eating more than normal. They do that to prepare for the winter. Makes them fatter, and the fat makes them warmer.”
I was impressed he knew that. “Did you learn about it in school?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Did you read a book about it?” I asked him.
“Saw a video about it on YouTube,” was his response.
“Would you want a book about animals?” I asked him not liking that he had so much screen time.
He nodded. “Yeah, that would be cool.”
I’d buy him every book they had at the store if he wanted them.