Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DELANEY
I rushed through the house like something was chasing me, and from the look on Blake’s face as I ran into the kitchen, she knew something was wrong. Her eyes darted over me and then a smirk hit her lips as she took in my no doubt disheveled appearance. Damn, I didn’t think about that.
But then her face creased in concerned.
“What happened?” she asked, looking across the table to Cade, who was playing on his Switch.
His eyes darted in my direction at the concern in her voice, and then his game was abandoned as he started to get up from his seat. “Mom?”
“I don’t…I don’t know where to start.”
It had only been last night that I’d had one of the hardest conversations with my son that we’d ever had, and now I had to try to tell him this. There were certain things that kids just should never have to know, and this firmly fell into that category. But I had to tell him something. Trace would be coming to the house, and Cade needed to understand that all the years they’d been separated wasn’t Trace’s fault.
Cade looked between me and Blake as I was stunned into silence. I should have prepared what I was going to say on the way here in the car, but all I could think about was getting back to them.
“I’m going to go and tidy my room,” Cade mumbled, getting up and grabbing his Switch. As he went to walk past me, he suddenly darted in and wrapped his arms around me. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, monkey.” My voice cracked with emotion. “I’ll be up in a few minutes for a chat, okay?”
This kid. He knew I needed to talk to Blake first, and he wasn’t going to make a fuss about it. Sometimes I worried about how much pressure Cade had on him to grow up far too early, but I genuinely thought he was just a kid with a huge amount of empathy for his age.
I waited for him to leave the room, and then for the telltale squeak of the floorboard at the top of the stairs before I turned back to Blake, only to find her filling up the kettle and placing it on the stove.
“I swear to God if you make me a cup of tea right now.”
“It’s what you dooooo!” she stressed anxiously before turning back to me. “I can’t take the anticipation, Dels. Just blurt it out before I pee myself in anxiety.”
I blinked slowly, her words registering but taking a moment to filter through to my brain. “We’re coming back to that.”
She waved her hands in a hurry-up motion, and I sighed.
“He never knew about Cade.”
Hearing it aloud now was nearly as bad as the first time. The shock and the anger might have faded to a simmer in the background, but that just meant there was so much room for my sadness to seep in.
Blake’s mouth hung open before she seemed to reboot. She quickly swept her pink hair behind her ears and then sat back down at the kitchen table, staring at me intently. “Never?” she asked in shock.
I shook my head. “Not the pregnancy. Not me being forced out of town. None of it. It was all his mother.”
“What a bitch!” Blake yelled and then slapped her hand over her mouth as she cautiously looked out into the hallway. “What an absolute bitch,” she whispered this time.
I started to pace. I needed to move. There was a problem, I needed to fix it, and I needed to do it quickly. But this was nine years of Cade’s life that Trace had missed. This was a son he’d never gotten to know. I couldn’t even bring myself and our relationship into this equation yet.
There was no fixing that.
“I don’t know what to do,” I blurted out, spinning on the spot and looking at Blake like she’d be able to give me the answer. All I got was a wide-eyed stare in response before she slowly started shaking her head.
“No, wait, we can do this,” she said determinedly before she suddenly lurched out of her seat and joined me in pacing. “Let’s break it down into small steps.”
“Right! Okay, we can do this. First, I need to tell Cade—” And all the motivation seeped out of me. “Shit, how do I tell him this?”
“Well, start by explaining that Granny is the devil,” Blake scoffed. “What?” she objected at the look I shot her. “She is!”
She wasn’t exactly wrong.
“Okay, not getting bogged down in the details,” I decided, but when I went to start my pacing, Blake’s hand on my arm stopped me.
“It’s simple, Delaney. You tell Cade as gently as you can, and you let him meet his father. From there, you just take it one day at a time. You don’t have to decide how you’re going to exorcise the demon right away.”
I snorted a laugh. We were going to get a lot of miles out of this joke. I hoped Trace didn’t get too offended because once she got started, it would be impossible to hold Blake back.
My eyes moved to the kitchen door. “So, I just go upstairs and tell Cade, then,” I said.
Even I could hear the dread in my voice.
Blake’s eyes were filled with sympathy, but she didn’t say anything. I already knew what I needed to do.
“Okay, I can do this,” I muttered, trying to convince myself more than anything as I moved for the kitchen door.
“You got this, Dels,” Blake said quietly. “I’ll just…make some tea.”
I didn’t even have the energy to tell her not to. It would at least give her something to do.
I slowly trudged up the stairs, all the while aware that there was a ticking clock on this. I had no idea how long it would take Trace to confront his family. Or if he’d let me know when he was on his way. One more thing we really should have decided before I’d stormed in here like the house was on fire.
I paused in the hallway outside the bedroom that Cade had claimed as his own, and my eyes lifted to the ceiling as I asked my dad for help to get through this. He would have known what to do right now. He wouldn’t have hesitated. He always had the answer for any problem I had, even if it wasn’t the one I wanted to hear. The grief swept over me for a moment as I let myself accept how much I missed him. The anger I felt over how he’d shut me out was starting to fade. I reached for the door handle, knowing there was no point in putting this off.
I found Cade sitting in the middle of his bed, watching the door patiently. “Hey, monkey.”
He looked so scared as he silently watched me close the door and move to the bed. I kicked off my shoes and settled on the bed, leaning against the headboard as he shuffled to lean his head against my chest.
“Hey, I don’t want you to worry, okay? Nothing is wrong. No one is hurt. This is…a good thing in a lot of ways.”
“Okay,” he whispered, but I could hear the fear in his voice.
“It’s about your dad, monkey. I saw him today. We had a talk, and a lot of stuff came out that we didn’t know.” I sighed, not knowing how to word the next bit.
“He didn’t know about me,” Cade whispered. He peered up at me with his big brown eyes, and I knew instantly what had happened, even though he admitted it seconds later. “I listened.”
I gave him that motherly look of disapproval before I hugged him tighter. “Yeah, monkey. Your dad’s mom did something really horrible, and she made sure that he didn’t know about you. She lied to me. To him. To everyone.”
I had no reservations about throwing darling Regina under the bus. Just as I would never call her Cade’s grandmother, I also had no intention of her ever being allowed in his life.
“Why would she do that?” he asked.
“It’s kind of hard to explain, monkey. She never thought I was good enough for your dad. She wanted him to marry into a family with money, and she thought that was more important than what any of us wanted and what was happening.”
It didn’t sound quite as maniacal when I worded it that way.
“So…is that what he did? Does he have another family?”
“He did get married, but they recently got divorced. He doesn’t have any other children.”
Cade hesitated and then asked, “What happens now?”
“Well, he really wants to meet you, monkey. Do you think that would be okay?”
He nodded quietly, turning his head to stare out of the window, and I sank into the snuggle while I could get it.
This was going to be a difficult transition for Cade. And I had no idea what expectations Trace had coming into this.
“What if he doesn’t like me?” Cade asked quietly.
“Oh, honey,” I clasped him tightly to me. “There’s no way that’s ever going to happen. You’re an amazing kid, Cade. If you can win over child-hating Blake, then I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for anyone not to like you.”
He looked up at me with a wry expression on his face that no kid should be able to hit so perfectly. “There are people who don’t like me, you know.”
“I doubt it!” I scoffed. “Maybe strange people with no taste,” I relented when he poked me and laughed. “You know them. They eat broccoli for fun and think poodles look like normal dogs.”
He snorted, and I couldn’t resist his infectious giggles.
It didn’t take Blake long to appear in the doorway. “Hey, are you having fun without me?”
“We would never!” I denied, which made Cade giggle even more.
“Hmmm. Well, I guess I’ll just go downstairs and eat pre-dinner ice cream all by myself then,” she said, pouting as she winked at Cade and then turned to head down the stairs.
“That’s not a thing!” I shouted after her, but Cade was already moving. “We eat vegetables first in this house.”
He raised his hands in surrender and slowly started to back out of the room. “I would, but it would be rude to make a lady eat alone,” he quipped before spinning on the spot and darting out of the room.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked more to myself than anyone else since I was now totally alone and could hear the telltale clatter of bowls in the kitchen. “Great, and now I’m talking to myself.”
It was worth it when I made my way to the stairs to the sound of laughter in the kitchen. Blake had been a blessing since I’d met her, but the relationship she had with Cade was so precious. They were best friends, but he still looked to her as an adult to lead the way.
My mind turned back to her suggestion about moving here. I hadn’t realized that she was struggling so much in the city. Maybe we would all benefit from some time out here to reset and think about what we wanted to do. But was that what I wanted? I didn’t know where I stood with Trace, and that wasn’t something that could be decided in a few hours. We needed time to get to know each other again. We’d spent a long time apart. We were only teenagers when we’d last been together, and so many things would have changed over the years. But that time wasn’t going to happen if we left for the city.
I looked around the house as I slowly wandered down the stairs. It was in really good condition. There wasn’t much that I’d change. Maybe I’d put my own touch on a couple of the rooms, and definitely redecorate Cade’s room, so it felt more like his.
Was I really considering this?
I stopped in the kitchen doorway and watched as Blake tried to bargain down to one scoop because the pot roast that we were having for dinner was nearly ready, even if it was less appealing. Cade grinned and shrugged, ending up with one and a half scoops, which was essentially two scoops. It just made Blake feel better calling it a half.
We could take the summer. Test it out. See if we could tolerate living in the same town as Regina Farrington without me hitting her with my car, reversing back over her, and then hitting her again, just to make sure.
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t actually do that. Prison wasn’t really my scene.
But she’d hurt my son. She wasn’t walking away from this with her head held high like she usually did.
Blake waggled a bowl in my direction, and I headed to the kitchen table. If everyone else was having ice cream for dinner, I wasn’t being left out.