Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TRACE
I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared at the farmhouse nervously.
This was it. This was the first time I was going to meet my son.
I glanced at the grocery bag on the passenger seat, wondering if it was a bad idea. What if he hated it? I had no idea what he liked. He was nine years old, and I didn’t even know anything about him apart from his first name.
I felt the anger and the sadness starting to bubble up inside me again and fought to push them down.
I wasn’t going to walk in there pissed off and scaring him. I wanted Cade to know the real me.
Cade.
Trust Delaney to find the perfect name for our son.
Why was I sitting out here when I finally had the chance to be in there? I’d lost so much time already. Why was I wasting even more of it?
I tore open the car door, at the last second grabbing the grocery bag, and took the porch steps in two bounds. I only hesitated for a second before I knocked on the front door. It wasn’t the fear this time; it was the wonder at hearing the laughter inside.
It struck me that this was an experience I’d never had before, and I wanted it.
I wanted it so much.
So, I knocked again. And even as I stared at my fist knocking against the wood like it was attached to someone else, all I knew was that I wanted to get inside. I wanted to be part of the family that had been stolen from me.
The nerves kicked in again as I waited, and then suddenly she was there. As radiant as ever, but the smile that must have been on her face seconds before was gone, and now she just looked scared.
I hated that I’d done that. That I’d intruded on their perfect moment of joy and broken it.
I grabbed Delaney’s hands and gently pulled her out the door, closing it behind her before I wrapped her in my arms.
“You don’t have to be nervous. I’m not going to hurt him. All I want is the opportunity to know him. But if you’re not ready, if he’s not ready…” I stumbled on my words because I knew this was going to hurt. “I can wait. You and Cade are the most important people to me in this situation, and I want to make sure that we do this right.”
She clung to me for a moment, then, as she leaned away, I almost wanted to stop her. The world just felt a little brighter when I held Delaney in my arms. All the bullshit, the everyday stress, it fell away. Because how could I ever feel anything less than perfect when she was by my side?
When she shook her head, I was already preparing for the worst.
“Cade wants to meet you,” she told me with a nervous smile.
“He does?”
Damn, was I supposed to be this nervous? I looked down at the grocery bag in my hand. It seemed so stupid now.
“I, erm, brought this,” I said, passing it across to her as she turned to enter the front door again.
Delaney just smiled, without even looking in the bag, “It’s going to be okay, Trace. You’re here now.”
She always could see right through to the core of me.
I nodded, trying to get the nerves off my face. Delaney was going through just as much as I was. She didn’t need to be managing my stress as well.
It was as I was giving myself this pep talk that she opened the door, and there he was. Standing in the hallway. Chocolate sauce smeared on his chin. He looked so much like me, like my brothers.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He shuffled nervously on the spot, and I stepped inside, only then noticing the woman with pink hair watching from the kitchen doorway.
My feet moved as if I was in a dream and before I knew it, I was kneeling in front of my son, my arms limp at my sides because I had no idea if I was allowed to hug him. “I’m so sorry,” I stammered out. “I missed…I should have…”
And then he dived at me, wrapping his arms around my neck, and clung to me in a way that only a kid could.
I’d never hugged a kid before. I’d never even really been around them, either.
But as my arms wrapped around him, something settled in my soul. Something clicked into place. And beside all the regret, the anger, and the sadness, there was a sense of completeness.
“Your mom really sucks,” he whispered.
And I barked out a laugh of surprise. “You have no idea.”
He pulled back and gave me a shy smile, and I heard a sniffle come from the pink-haired woman I had yet to meet.
“Why don’t we go back into the kitchen,” Delaney suggested. I heard the sound of the grocery bag and her soft laughter before she added, “Trace brought ice cream.”
I was past being nervous now. Cade giggled, and I soaked up the sound. I had no idea what was going on, but the rest of them seemed to enjoy it.
“Don’t you like ice cream?” I asked, “Please don’t tell me you’re allergic, and I just brought you death in a bag?”
Cade laughed again, then grabbed my hand and surprised me as he pulled me to my feet and into the kitchen.
I glanced back at Delaney in surprise, and she just smiled as she followed behind us.
Even though the house smelled of pot roast, the kitchen told a very different story as it was piled with two tubs of ice cream and what looked like everything that could possibly be a topping. There were even some salted potato chips in the mix, which I wasn’t entirely convinced about.
“We’re having ice cream for dinner,” Cade declared as he went over to the table and looked at the contents.
“That seems like an excellent idea to me.”
He looked so happy. This massive life-changing event was happening and yet still he smiled. Delaney had raised my son to be an amazing kid…and I’d missed every single second of it.
I tried not to let myself slip into that place, but almost as if she could sense it, Delaney put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“I’ll grab you a bowl. Why don’t you sit down, and we can talk?”
Cade nodded and pulled out a seat for me as he glanced at me shyly before he darted back to his bowl and grabbed his spoon. His full attention fell onto that bowl as I sat down, and I tried my hardest to hold back the thousand questions I had for him while he took a moment to figure out what he wanted to happen next.
“I’m going to head into town,” the pink-haired woman said. “Give you guys some space.”
“You don’t have to do that, Blake,” Delaney told her.
“No. It’s fine. You guys have a lot to talk about, and I saw a little coffee-slash-bookshop place that I want to check out. We cut our visit short this morning after that guy grabbed the girls.”
“You mean when you fell over,” Cade added.
She gasped in outrage. “We’re not supposed to talk about that,” she said like she was thoroughly scandalized, even though she was smiling at the same time.
“And you twisted your ankle, but you didn’t want to tell anyone,” Cade added slyly.
She narrowed her eyes at Cade. “Betrayer,” she hissed.
Delaney started giggling then, and it had to be one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard. Cade glanced at her, and Blake started to go a strange shade of red.
“Don’t you dare,” Blake warned as Cade opened his mouth.
He snapped it shut and then gave his mom a glance out the side of his eye. I had no idea what was going on, but it was the best thing I’d been around in years.
“It was your dad!” Delaney suddenly blurted out.
Cade burst out laughing so hard that I was pretty sure he was about to roll off his chair. At first, I was confused, but then my mind went back over the conversation, and my mouth fell open in shock.
“My dad grabbed your…” I couldn’t even get the words out.
Blake looked mortified and was powerless to resist the infectious laughter that was now filling the room.
“Well, I’m glad my misfortune has helped you all find a way to get closer.” She sniffed, holding her head high before she walked out of the room. I caught her faint laughter before hearing the front door open and close.
“I don’t think I want to know the full details, and yet I kinda do,” I admitted, my head tipping to the side as I thought through the dilemma.
On one hand, ew. But on the other hand, this was something I absolutely needed to share with my brothers when I got them all back, and to do that, I needed to know all the terrible details.
“Don’t worry. Blake’s not really mad,” Cade reassured me. “She’ll tell you tomorrow. She’s the best at telling stories.”
I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. Cade wasn’t thinking this was a one-time meeting and then I’d be a shadow in his life. He saw me around in the future.
When I looked across the table at Delaney, she gave me a soft smile, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“That’s good. You seem really close to Blake.”
“Yeah, she’s one of my best friends.”
Some people would probably think that was pretty sad for a nine-year-old body to admit about a grown woman. But I could see what Blake brought to his life even from the few moments I’d spent with her, and I was happy he had someone like her in his life. Happy that Delaney had her by her side all this time. That she wasn’t alone.
“All my friends think she’s really cool. But when she comes to watch our baseball games, they get all weird and try to show off for her.” Cade’s face wrinkled in disgust, and I laughed.
Oh, to be young and hormonal.
“You play baseball?” I asked, changing the subject. “I used to play with my brothers, but I wasn’t really all that good.”
And that was all it took.
Any apprehension he’d had in his eyes when he first saw me was long gone, and Cade launched into telling me all about baseball, school, and his friends in the city. He had this infectious happiness that you couldn’t help but get swept up into.
Once the ice cream was gone, we moved into the living room and settled onto the couches. I could tell that despite the amount of sugar he’d consumed, Cade was quickly running out of energy. His eyelids were starting to droop, but he was fighting it hard, not wanting to stop.
I didn’t want to stop, either. I didn’t want to leave my son, this incredible kid who was the most warm and happy person I’d ever met. I was in awe of him and of Delaney for raising him all alone.
There was a faint glimmer of sadness in the back of my mind for everything that I’d missed, but it was impossible to feel when Cade was sitting here in front of me.
At a certain point, he’d snuggled into Delaney’s side, fighting the sleep that was threatening to take him. He was telling me all about the different types of Pokemon and the new game that was due to come out, and he was desperate to play.
I tried to listen. I really did. But it was like a completely different language, and I found myself just nodding and agreeing at the appropriate moments.
I looked at the pair of them, snuggled up on the sofa, and pulled the blanket off the back to tuck it in around them. Delaney smiled sleepily, kissing the top of Cade’s head, who was getting quieter and quieter as he started to fall asleep.
This was what I’d wanted my life to be. All these years of merely existing and trying to fight my way through every day that came, and this had been out there waiting for me. The life I belonged in, the one I was never going to let slip away from me now.