Chapter 22
Thirteen Years Ago
At the age of twenty-five, Ben Brooks met Rina at a little music bar in the neighborhood of Back Bay in Boston.
Ben was in veterinary school, and Rina had just dropped out of eye doctor school.
The two of them shared a pitcher of beer and laughed about lab reports, difficult scientific theories, and how desperate you had to be to make a career in the sciences work.
Rina was beautiful, with shiny black hair that she wore all the way to the curve of her back. She had on a leather dress and a pair of boots, and every time a heavy metal song came on the speaker, she bobbed her head in time to the music, as though she knew them all.
Something important about Ben was that, up until he’d met Rina, he’d had a very difficult time with women.
He’d only had one girlfriend in high school, and they’d only kissed twice, making him feel like a high school pariah who couldn’t wait to get out of Bluebell Cove.
In undergrad, he’d had another girlfriend who’d eventually cheated on him with his roommate, which had caused him to go through a painful rigamarole of finding somewhere new to live.
His older brother, Landon, had tried to give him all the tricks of the dating trade. But the truth was, Ben was slightly awkward and overly emotional. He wore his heart on his sleeve.
But that first night at the bar with Rina, Ben watched himself come to life.
He heard himself make jokes he never assumed he’d come up with.
He watched Rina throw her head back and laugh, as though he were the funniest guy in the room.
Maybe this was how his life was going to be from now on.
Perhaps if it didn’t work out with Rina, he could go on a string of dates with funny, beautiful women and build his confidence.
He pictured himself calling Landon in a few months and telling him, “My bad luck streak is over! I figured it out.”
As it happened, he got Rina’s number that night and called her a few days later. Rina sounded reticent over the phone, and he thought she was going to turn him down.
“Listen, you should know something about me,” Rina said.
Ben was glad they weren’t speaking in person. He was glad she couldn’t see his shock and fear.
“The thing is,” Rina said, “I have a one-year-old baby.”
Ben’s head rang with surprise. Rina was twenty-three and beautiful and very thin. She didn’t look like she’d just had a baby. Then again, life happened to people all around you. He knew you couldn’t always see that life written on their faces.
“Is that a problem for you?” Rina asked.
Ben asked himself if it was. He’d never had much experience with babies, but he rather liked Rina and didn’t want to seem like a bad guy. So he said, “A baby! Wow. No, that’s great. I love babies.”
Rina still sounded fearful. “I’m not ready for you to meet him.”
“Of course not,” Ben said.
“But we could get another round of beers, I guess,” Rina said. “Pick me up at eight?”
For their second date, Ben had to bite his tongue not to ask all the questions that came to his mind, like, who was the father?
And where was the father? And how was she making ends meet?
He told himself to be the charming version of himself he’d been the other night.
For whatever reason, it worked, and by the end of the evening, he and Rina were making out in his car.
That night, right before Rina got out of the car to relieve the babysitter, she looked at him, her lips glistening from kissing, and said, “I have to think about my baby above everything.”
“I know,” he said.
“But I like you, Ben,” she said. “I really like you.”
“I really like you, too,” Ben said, although he wasn’t sure if that was true, not yet.
But things took off quickly after that. Within a month, Ben and Rina went out two times a week, which was all she could manage with a baby at home.
At two months, Rina invited Ben to her place to share a meal and meet her baby, whose name was Nate.
Rina hadn’t shown Ben a photograph of Nate to prepare him, which meant that Ben’s reaction to meeting baby Nate was genuine.
To put it simply, Ben was floored. Nate had big, dark eyes and a thick head of dark hair.
He babbled and laughed and engaged with Ben in a way that most adults didn’t.
As soon as Nate was in Ben’s arms, Ben wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to let Nate go.
He fell in love with him instantly.
Rina was surprised and pleased at how tender Ben was with Nate. “I knew it,” she said later, after Nate was asleep in his crib and Rina and Ben stayed up late to watch a film. “I knew you were the one.”
Ben’s heart swelled three times its normal size. He kissed her, his brain pulsating with the question he so desperately wanted to ask.
He wanted Rina to marry him. He wanted them to have a family.
But they’d only known each other for two months! He decided to be chill and let things grow organically.
That was his plan, anyway.
But six months later, after they’d been dating for eight months, Ben and Rina went to the Boston courthouse and sealed the deal.
They celebrated that evening over store-bought cheesecake, watching Nate crawl all over the carpet.
Ben had bought a tuxedo for the occasion, one that Rina had helped him pick out.
Rina had worn a secondhand wedding dress that made her look absolutely ravishing.
That night, Ben brought up a topic they’d spoken of a few times. “I want to adopt Nate,” he said. “He needs a father, and I’m that father.”
By then, Ben had learned what had happened to Nate’s real dad. When Rina had told her boyfriend at the time about the pregnancy, he’d taken off, moving to the West Coast. He’d been impossible to reach, so Rina had stopped trying.
“Yes,” Rina breathed now. “You’ll adopt Nate. We’ll figure that out right away.”
But over the next few months, the newlyweds were busy with other things.
They painted the living room, bathroom, and bedroom, then decided to move to a bigger place, which required time to search, apply, and pack.
Nate turned two, and then suddenly he was three, walking everywhere and talking back.
Being a toddler seemed like no joke. Ben really wanted his own children, his own genetic children, but Rina seemed so exhausted from handling Nate and going back to school that Ben was too frightened to broach the subject.
He figured that first, he’d adopt Nate, and then they’d figure the rest out.
It was when Nate was three and a half that Rina and Ben had their first blow-out argument.
Ben was exhausted from a long day at vet school, strung out and terrified after having to watch an animal be put to sleep.
When he came home, he discovered that Nate had an ear infection, and Rina couldn’t stop sobbing.
Ben tried to help. He called the doctor and secured the right medication. But Rina seemed inconsolable.
“He’s going to be all right,” Ben assured Rina, hugging her tighter. “Kids get ear infections all the time.” He kissed her cheeks and her forehead, then asked, “Was it okay to get out of your classes this week?” He thought it was an innocuous question.
At this, Rina’s eyes widened with anger. “Of course! I have to be here for my child.” The one word—the singular my—rang between them.
“Of course,” Ben said. The world around him was blurry.
“You’re always on my case, Ben,” Rina shot back. “When really, you know what? I dropped out of school like four months ago! Yeah! And I didn’t know how to tell you, because you’re always, like, nagging me!”
Ben jerked his head back in surprise. She’d dropped out of school?
Again? But they’d made up a perfect schedule, a plan so that they could both graduate and give Nate the best possible future.
He knew that he should tell Rina that it was all right, that she could do whatever she needed to do.
But he also knew that his face said something different.
Rina howled, “I knew you would look at me like that!” She stormed out of the room and slammed the door to their bedroom behind her.
That first fight blew over pretty quickly. Ben and Rina nursed Nate back to health, and then they returned to their regular programming, sans Rina’s schooling. Ben decided not to probe too hard into the fact that she’d lied. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter.
Ben still brought up adopting Nate. But he sensed that it irritated Rina. It was just another thing for them to do, just another difficult path to take.
“You’re his father,” Rina said. “Why do we have to put it on paper?”
“Because,” Ben said. “Because it matters to me.”
When it was clear that Rina was cheating on him, Ben grew especially panicked about Nate.
For months, he willed himself not to ask Rina about her boyfriend, for fear that he would lose his son.
By then, Nate was six years old and the brightest star in Ben’s universe.
He spent much more time with Nate than Rina did, watching him while Rina ran off to wherever she went with that other guy.
Every time Nate called Ben “dad,” Ben’s heart melted.
He needed to hold on. He needed to be strong.
But of course, Rina and Ben’s relationship couldn’t live under the strain of her affair. Ben was brokenhearted, a shadow of his former self. When Rina finally asked for a divorce and told him she was going to live with her new boyfriend, Ben begged her to stay for Nate’s sake.
“Nate will be fine,” Rina said. “I don’t know if you will be, though.”
Ben begged her to figure out a parenting schedule with him so that he could remain in Nate’s life. But Rina reminded him that he wasn’t legally the father of her son. He had no rights.
It was over.
For the next eight years, Ben lived alone in Boston. He had a few girlfriends here and there, but he could never get over the heartbreak of losing his son, a boy who was not legally or genetically his son, but his son nonetheless.
Eventually, he returned to Bluebell Cove. But his heart was still broken from the shock.
“So you see,” Ben explained to Wren so many years later.
Wren’s eyes were wet with tears of understanding.
“Nate would be fourteen years old now. And I don’t know anything about him.
I don’t know what foods he likes, or how he’s doing in school, or what he wants to be when he grows up.
If he saw me on the street, he probably wouldn’t recognize me.
Maybe I wouldn’t recognize him, either.”
By the end of his story, both of Wren’s hands were in his, warm and soft. Pierre the dog stood at their feet, peering up at them curiously, as though he could feel the energy that passed between them.
“I wouldn’t let that happen,” Wren whispered. “Not again. I promise you that.”