Chapter 26 Micah #2
Micah blinks. Then again, and again, her eyelids fluttering. “Wh-what?”
He rolls his eyes. “Come on, Mike. Give me a little credit. I’ve known since about two weeks after you told me you were pregnant.”
“How?”
“Math,” he says patiently. “We hardly slept together that spring. And then the way you couldn’t look at me when we talked about the baby or went to doctor’s appointments, how you couldn’t relax the whole time you were pregnant.
When you held him the first time, you looked a little .
. . shocked, maybe, that you loved him so much. ” His eyes grow shiny.
“I should’ve told you,” she whispers, hot tears streaking down her face.
“I’m so glad you didn’t,” he says. “I was afraid you would, and then you’d have a reason to break up with me, or more of a reason.
I loved you, Mike. I love you still. I’m the luckiest man in the world to be with you.
And I never saw Logan as anything but my son.
I don’t care who got you pregnant. He’s my boy. ”
She is sobbing now, unable to speak or look at him.
James pulls her into his arms. “Must’ve been a shitty surprise for him.
But he’ll get over it, babe. You’re a great mom, and you have been since day one.
So you weren’t perfect in high school, and some douchebag teacher used you.
” First Jasmine, now James, telling her it wasn’t her fault.
Could it be true? “That part of the past doesn’t matter.
What matters is how we are now, how we’ve been since the day you said yes. ”
“I don’t deserve you, James,” she says, her voice breaking.
“Oh, please. You make me happy and proud every day, honey. Every damn day.”
She hugs him so tight she might be strangling him, but he hugs her back just as hard.
The knock at the door startles them both. “It’s probably your mother, here to tell us how fabulous Eve is,” James says. “Here, wipe your face.” He hands her a napkin, then says, “Come in, Ma.”
It isn’t her mom. It’s Logan.
“Are you okay?” she asks, disentangling herself from James and going toward him.
“Yeah. I . . . I couldn’t leave it, Mom. I’m sorry. We have to talk, all three of us. Right now.”
James stands up, too. “I already know, buddy. I’ve known your whole life.”
Logan jerks back a little. “Are . . . are we talking about the same thing?” he asks.
James glances at Micah. “I’m not your biological father. That guy gave you great hair and brown eyes. I know it’s a shock, buddy, and a lot to process. But I’m your dad, and you’re my son. Period.”
Logan’s gaze bounces between them. “You know.”
“Yep.”
“But Mom didn’t . . .” His voice trails off in confusion.
“No. She never told me until about ten minutes ago. But she didn’t have to, Logan. I always knew.”
The three of them sit down, Micah and James on the couch, Logan in the chair across from them, his hands knit together. Micah’s knees are gelatinous with fear, because even though Logan has just lost the surprise factor, it doesn’t mean he’ll forgive her.
“So you’ve both lied to me my entire life. Wow. Mind-blowing.”
“What do you want to know, Logan?” Micah asks. “I’ll answer everything.”
He rubs his hand through his hair. “Okay, well, for starters, who is he? I mean, once I found out, I went on Ancestry and one of his kids is on there, too. I saw he lives in Nebraska, but—”
“He was my English teacher.”
He looks shocked, then—breaking her heart—disgusted. He glances at his father, then back at her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“What good would it have done you to know, Logan?” Micah asks quietly. “How would that have made your life better?”
“It would’ve been the truth.”
She nods. She’s read about adopted kids who feel some kind of primal need to know where they came from. Is this different? Does he want to meet Mr. Bates? God. What a shit show that would be.
Logan looks at James. “It doesn’t make me love you any less, Dad. More, if anything.”
“Thanks, buddy,” says James. “It should make you love your mother more, too.”
“Really? Why?” Logan asks, bitterness coloring his voice.
“Because she kept it from you. The guy was our teacher. He seduced a teenager. He was a predator, Logan.”
“Great. What fabulous DNA I have.”
“Don’t,” Micah says. “Look. I was eighteen. He should never have slept with a student, but he did. I shouldn’t have slept with a teacher, and I did. I didn’t plan to get pregnant, obviously. But I don’t regret you one bit. I never have. Ever.”
It’s a lie, the kind all mothers have to tell their kids at one point or another.
For at least a second or two, every mother can and will resent and dislike her child.
She’ll be so exhausted that she’ll wonder what life would’ve been like without them.
When she hasn’t had more than two hours of consecutive sleep in months and still has to get out of bed; when her child dismisses all the work motherhood requires, ignores her in public; when, in a fit of anger, he tells her he hates her, there’s that flash of pain so deep her bones bleed.
No one can make you feel as insignificant and worthless as your own child.
But mothers suck it up and will still take a bullet for their kids, any day, any hour, any minute, without forethought or hesitation.
Even babies who were unplanned. Even when Micah’s future blew up so spectacularly, even when Eve took over her dreams and made them her own, even though Micah never left Stafford, she has loved Logan with every cell in her body from the moment she first felt him flutter inside her.
“Does Gran know? Auntie Eve? Poppy and Nana?” Logan asks, breaking the silence.
Micah glances at James. “I don’t think so. If they suspected anything, they haven’t said.”
Logan sits there, hands clasped, leaning slightly forward, just the way James does. “I can’t say this doesn’t matter, Mom. It does.”
“Of course it matters,” James says gently. “How much it matters is up to you. It doesn’t matter to me or to your mom. You’re our son. We love you. It’s pretty straightforward.”
“But my biological father seduced a teenager.”
“And you were raised by the most decent and honorable man in the world, Logan,” Micah says. “That matters more.” She squeezes her husband’s hand.
“Yeah, of course, but . . . it’s such a shock.”
“Of course it is,” Micah says. “You need time to let it sink in. And maybe . . .” Her voice catches. “Maybe things will be different. But the most important things won’t change, honey. They never will.”
He nods, looking at his hands. “It feels like a bomb went off and I still don’t know which buildings blew up.” There’s a long pause. “But I guess . . . no one got killed in the blast, either. Just shaken up.”
It’s a chance, offered like a perfect plum, the entire world handed back to her. He will have to work this out, has the right to be angry, still has to figure out what to do with this news.
But no one got killed in the blast.
“Thank you, honey,” she whispers, and she gets up, stands in front of his chair and hugs him, his head against her shoulder, comforting him as she has ten thousand times over his lifetime. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” he says. Then he looks up at her with his beautiful brown eyes—his eyes, not anyone else’s—and gives a small smile. “You’re good parents. The best.”
Sometimes the most breathtaking, dazzling moments aren’t seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, or drinking champagne in a penthouse, or surfing a huge wave in Hawaii.
Sometimes those moments happen in a humble little living room in the town where you’ve lived all your life.