16. Ellis
Chapter sixteen
Ellis
Harper had to stay in the hospital for at least another week, and I could do nothing meaningful to help her while she was there. After stuffing her bedside stand with enough sweets and snacks for a month, I returned to Brightwater right away. Harper and her issues with alcohol were still on my mind, but Cara was in Brightwater, and since she’d agreed to go on a date with me, I was eager to get back to her as quickly as possible.
After a frantic Google search for suitable date locations in Brightwater and its surroundings, I asked her to go to the annual winter festival together. I couldn’t believe my luck, that she had actually agreed to go on a date. I’d been afraid the magical atmosphere of the cozy cabin was all that had made her say yes, but when I called her to confirm the time and the place, she hadn’t laughed at me, so this really appeared to be happening.
Time crawled for the rest of the week. I tried to get some work done, but my mind kept returning to Cara, and by the time Saturday arrived, I was a nervous wreck. I felt like a senior preparing for prom. I’d already changed my outfit twice but still was ready to go way too early, so I sat in the armchair in my hotel room and checked my watch every five minutes.
A date with Cara alone would’ve been enough to make my pulse race, but I wasn’t meeting just her. Earlier that day, she’d called to tell me her son would have to come with us. Her son. My son.
I’d only gotten a glimpse of him the last time, but I was about to meet him properly, and that scared me. As far as I knew, the boy was as oblivious to his father’s identity as I had been. To him, I was a stranger, just some friend of his mom. What if he didn’t like me?
With a hint of nausea in my throat, I finally left the hotel to head toward the town center.
The sun was just starting to set when I arrived at the Sullivan Moore Memorial Park, where the festival took place, but it was already busy and buzzing.
I spotted Cara right away, close to the entrance, standing next to a stall selling minced cakes.
Riley was with her, and once again, I was stunned by how much he resembled me. Had he noticed it, too? Probably not. Riley didn’t know our backstory and had no reason to suspect anything.
Trying to appear confident and relaxed, I approached them and was greeted by a nervous smile from Cara and a suspicious look from Riley. Not surprising. Of course he was protective of his mom.
“Hi, I’m Ellis, your mom’s… friend.”
To my relief, he shook my hand. “Sure, friend ,” he said with a cheeky grin.
Cara gave him a warning look before she turned toward me. “I’m sorry I had to bring him, but my babysitter had a gallbladder colic and I don’t feel comfortable leaving him home alone that late.”
Riley crossed his arms. “She’s super overprotective. I’m not a baby I can totally put myself to bed.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Riley,” she said, “But you never know who might be lurking in the night.”
“We live in Brightwater. The only thing lurking in the night are racoons and maybe a deer.”
Cara sighed heavily before turning to me. “Do you want something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.” I was much too nervous to eat. “Why don’t you just show me around?”
“Oh, Mom, let’s show him the Christmas tree,” Riley said. “It’s huge. The biggest in the entire county, right, Mom?”
“Brightwater is famous for its humongous Christmas tree,” she confirmed.
“Let’s go, then.”
We walked between the stalls, all decked out in twinkling lights, ribbons, and evergreen garlands. Some of them sold food, roasted chestnuts, gingerbread, and sugar cookies, while others offered arts and crafts like knitted scarfs and sweaters, handmade snow globes, and colorful Christmas ornaments.
Intermittently, a speaker was attached to one of the stalls, playing Christmas music.
We passed by a nativity scene complete with a real pig and sheep and, for some reason, a llama. They’d even cast a real child as baby Jesus although the little boy looked closer to a toddler than a newborn.
Riley was chatting with his mother, seemingly unbothered by my presence. He was telling her a story about a friend from school, something about one of his teachers, and a school project gone wrong.
I had no idea who the people in his story were. A painful reminder that I’d completely missed out on my son’s life until then. Beyond the few tidbits I’d gotten from Cara, I had no idea who he was, what he liked, who he was friends with, or what was going on in his life.
I hated it.
I knew that wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t help being reminded of my own relationship with my father. The man had never been a very involved parent, and when he shipped me off to a boarding school in Switzerland, our relationship broke down entirely. When I returned home after graduation, he had become a stranger to me. Over the years, I tried my hardest to connect to him in some way, but no matter what I did, our relationship remained cool.
I did not want that for Riley and me. As soon as I had the situation with Cara figured out, I wanted to play an active role in his life and do all the things with him I only knew from movies and TV shows because my own father never bothered. I would take him to baseball games and go camping together and attend his school plays, and if he wanted one, I would even build him a tree house. I had never nailed two planks together, but I would learn to build the best tree house in Oregon if it meant making my son happy.
We walked past a gazebo where a group of singers, all dressed in red, were singing carols. Cara stopped to listen for a moment and waved to one of the singers. One woman, elderly, glanced up from her songbook and happily waved back.
“That’s Arlene, our landlady,” Cara explained.
“She’s awesome,” Riley added.
The choir finished “Carol of the Bells” and moved on to the more modern “Driving Home for Christmas.”
“They are quite good,” I said.
Riley pushed his hands into his pockets. “I wish I could sing like that. My best friend Parker wants to start a band, but I have no musical talent whatsoever.”
“Me neither,” I said. “My father made me study the piano for years, and I hated it. I practiced as hard as I could, but I never made it past beginner-level pieces.”
“Why did he make you continue if you didn’t like it?” Riley asked.
“I… I’m not sure. I guess he just really wanted me to be good at piano.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Cara was following our conversation with a nervous look on her face, but she remained quiet.
“I’m hungry. Can we get something to eat?” Riley asked.
I looked around. “There’s a cheese fondue stall over there? Do you like that?”
Riley shook his head. “Oh, no. I can’t have that. I can’t have anything with milk in it.”
“He’s lactose intolerant,” Cara chimed in.
He buried his hands in his pockets with a frown. “It kinda sucks.”
“I know. I have that too,” I said a little too enthusiastically.
He must’ve inherited that from me, and it was a weird thing to get excited about, but I was desperate for any kind of connection with my son, even if it was an intolerance to cheese and milkshakes.
“Really?” Riley asked with wide eyes. “How cool. I mean… not cool for us, but it’s cool that we both have it.”
Cara visibly tensed. “Yes, what a coincidence.”
“We could buy pretzels. There’s a stand over there,” Riley suggested.
“That’s a good idea. My treat.”
I bought oversized pretzels for the three of us. They were warm and fluffy and had just the right amount of salt.
Food in hand, we continued our stroll. The ice was broken between Riley and me, and he was being surprisingly chatty. He told me about his favorite video games and about the art contest he won. When I explained that I’d been one of the judges, he got very excited.
“You saw my painting?”
“I did. It was amazing. I gave it ten points.”
Riley cocked his head to the side. “So is this how you met my mom?”
Before I could answer, Cara stepped in. “Yes, that’s right. That’s when we first met. And then we saw each other again when he drove me home after my car broke down.”
Her body language was telling. She was uncomfortable with how things were going between Riley and me. It was the first date we’d had in over a decade and she clearly wasn’t enjoying it. I wanted to make Cara feel more at ease, but I couldn’t help that Riley and I were getting along well.
As I was about to say something to her, Riley nudged my arm.
“Look Ellis, there’s the tree. It’s pretty awesome, huh?”
It really was an impressive sight: at least thirty feet tall, decorated with shiny ball ornaments and decorative candy canes. The colorful string lights wrapped around its branches. It drenched the entire surrounding huts and stands in a soft, colored light.
“What do you think?” Cara asked.
I put my arm around her waist. “It’s lovely.”
She tensed for a moment before relaxing into the contact.
“Is it the biggest tree you ever saw?” Riley asked.
“Not quite, but close.”
He looked a bit disappointed for a second, then his expression changed to excitement.
“Mom, look. Over there! It’s Parker.”
Riley pointed at a boy his age, with dark hair, holding a paper cone of roasted nuts.
“Can I go over and say hi?” Riley asked.
Cara smiled. “Sure, but ask if his stomach bug is cured before you share those nuts with him, okay?”
Riley ran off happily, and the other boy’s face lit up as soon as he saw him approaching.
I was alone with Cara.
She looked stunning. Her blonde hair was flowing over her shoulders. The dark green scarf she was wearing complimented her eyes, and her face looked beautiful in the soft light of the Christmas tree.
We were supposed to be on a date—romantic, fun. But I could tell Cara was on edge. That I got along well with Riley clearly made her uneasy, and I had to know why.
Why had Cara banned me from my son’s life?
I knew I might ruin the small chance I had to fight my way back into her heart if I spoke those words out loud, but I just had to clear the air between us. I couldn’t keep silent any longer.
With my pulse thundering in my ears, I faced her and gently turned her head toward me so that we were looking at each other. I needed to see her eyes.
“Cara…” I said.
She smiled up at me, seemingly oblivious to what was to come. “Hmm?”
“Cara, you can relax. I already know.”
She furrowed her brow. “Know what?”
“That Riley is my son.”
She looked like I’d slapped her straight across the face. Her eyes went wide, her face paled, and she flinched away from me. Her expression was a mixture of fear and anger.
I raised my hands like I was trying to calm a skittish horse. “I’m not angry,” I said. “I just want to know why.”
Her mouth was a thin line, her jaw tense. “How did you find out? For how long have you known?”
“To be honest, I knew it the second I laid eyes on him that night when I picked you up on the side of the road.”
“And you just said nothing? Played dumb and tried to woo me, to catch me in a lie, or what?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but I realized that was exactly what I’d done. Except the wooing—we both played equal parts in that.
The look of anger on her face was hard to bear. I could basically see the little bit of trust we’d rebuilt shatter in front of my eyes. But if that was the price I had to pay for the truth, so be it.
“Please, just tell me what happened. You owe me an explanation, at least.”
Cara turned around with a huff. “I don’t owe you anything.” When I caught her arm and tried to pull her back, she shrugged me off. “Let go of me. I’m leaving. We’re leaving.”
I stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “Please, I just want to talk.”
She didn’t try to move past me, but her gaze was fixed on the snowy ground below our feet. “About what?”
“About him. I… I want to get to know him.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We’re doing fine. We don’t need you in our lives.”
She turned away again, but I took hold of her shoulders and stepped closer. Her body tensed under my hands. “But I need you,” I said quietly.
Her eyes flicked up for a second before she closed them, like my words caused her physical pain.
“Ellis, please. Just leave us alone.”
I took a deep breath. “But you don’t deny that I’m Riley’s father?”
Cara went quiet for a long while. She still couldn’t look me in the face.
“You are Riley’s father,” she finally said.
I never knew words could cause both pain and joy, but those did. “Why did you hide him from me? If you would just tell me what happened back then, maybe we could—”
“It has to be this way,” she said quickly and finally, her eyes raised to meet mine. “Ellis, I need you to trust me on this. I didn’t do it to hurt you, but it was the only way to—it was the only way. And it has to stay this way. You need to forget this conversation. You need to forget you ever met Riley or me. I beg you, please.”
I frowned. “Cara, what is going on? Why are you so scared? Is it something I did? Or said? What have I done wrong? You can talk to me. I promise I will—”
“I need to go now. Ellis, please believe me. If you care about me or Riley, you have to stay away from us. Riley! Riley, come here! We’re leaving!”