“Do you know where she moved to?”
She nodded. “Yeah. She and Carl ended up hitting it off and he bought her a house out in Plant City. Nice guy. I ran into her at the Sam’s Club a few weeks back and we talked for a bit.”
“How did you know I was a doctor?” I asked.
“Son, that woman talks about you all the time.” For the first time, a smile broke out on her face. “Did you just give some kind of presentation in California?”
A strong urge to grin tugged at my face. “Yes.”
“She told me all about you,” she went on. “Now, I don’t know her exact address, but I have her number. You want it?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes ma’am.”
She reached into a pocket on the front of her dress and handed me her phone. “I don’t know how to use this thing that good, but if you look under my phone numbers, she’s in there as Annie Stewart.”
I scrolled through the list and jotted down the number. “She still goes by Stewart?”
“Far as I know.”
I handed the phone back to her. “Thank you for all your help. I’m Ethan, by the way.”
“Sandra. Tell Annie I said hi and that her boy grew up to be hot stuff.”
I laughed, waved, and practically jogged back to the rental to call the number. I’d barely put the car into gear before the phone was ringing through the Bluetooth system. A gruff male voice picked up.
“Hi, is this Carl?” I greeted.
“That’s me,” he answered. “You got a car you need tunin’ up?”
“Oh, no sir. I’m looking for Annie. My name is Ethan Stewart.”
Silence crackled between the connection as I turned down the street and headed back towards the main road.
“You said Ethan?” he asked.
“Yes sir. Sandra gave me this number? Sandra with the black Labrador retriever? She said that you fixed her husband’s car up like new.”
“Yeah, I know Sandra.” He cleared his throat. “But, you said your name is Ethan? Like, Annie’s son, Ethan?”
“Yes sir. My grandfather recently gave me a letter she sent so I went to the address she gave me in the letter. I’m assuming that’s the old house you two shared?”
“Yes…yes it is.” He paused. “Son, where are you now? Come straight here, okay? If you’re looking for Annie, you come straight here.”
He gave me the address and I plugged it into the GPS. With a tight grip on the steering wheel, I pulled in a deep breath and followed the commands.
The house it led me to was situated on a beautiful, expansive piece of land that looked as though it spawned several acres. It had always been a dream of my mother’s to live on a farm, which was one of the only pieces of my grandfather that had rubbed off on her. She would always say that she could envision me running around the yard until I got tired, and then we would go inside where she “hoped” a good man would be waiting for her.
The wrought-iron gated entrance stood open and I drove down a dirt path up to the side of the house. The house itself wasn’t massive, but it was made of red brick and filled with charm. Potted flowers decorated the front porch and palm trees loomed over the roof.
I stopped the car and slowly got out. My knees wavered slightly. My arms suddenly felt too large for my shirt and the breakfast in my stomach became extremely noticeable. The front door opened and Carl, I assumed, stepped out. He motioned inside the house and then turned towards the person he was talking to. He lifted his hands over their eyes and helped them out of the house. Even from where I stood, I knew it was her.
When they were both fully on the front porch, he turned her to face me. Then, he dropped his hands. I held my breath and forgot every reason I’d ever been upset at her. Instead, I stood there, frozen with anticipation.
She tilted her head to the side and studied me. Then, her eyes grew large. “Ethan!”
She hurried down the front steps and took off towards me. She leapt into my arms and I pulled her close. She even smelled the same. It was a smell that I couldn’t place, but it could not be replicated.
She trembled as I let her down to her feet, her hands still latched to my biceps. Although she’d aged, to me, she still looked exactly the same. The biggest difference now, however, was that she looked healthy. And happy.
“I can’t stop shaking,” she said, removing her grip only to quickly wipe her eyes before she was holding onto me again.
“How’d you know it was me?” I asked.
“Ethan, I would never forget your face. You’re my son. My son is here.” She hugged me again. Then, she turned. “Carl, this is Ethan. My son. My little boy, Ethan. Ethan, this is Carl. He’s my fiancé.”
The man walked over and shook my hand. He had a head full of thick, black hair and light green eyes. He reminded me of a slightly taller version of Steve Mariucci, and from the way my mother looked at him, I could tell that he was nothing like the men I’d been used to seeing her with. This one had bought her a house and asked him to marry her. This was a man who truly treasured the woman he chose to love.
My mind began to wander to Alexandra until my mother grabbed my arm and started pulling me towards the house. I obliged and entered the warm space that smelled like a cinnamon spice scented candle. The cozy set up and wooden floors reminded me of a cottage.
She dragged me all the way over to the living room couch and pulled my hand between both her palms. Eyes glittering with tears gazed into mine and she reached up, pulled off my cap, and ruffled her hands through my hair, another gesture that I suddenly remembered her doing. Carl began to excuse himself to give us some privacy, but I shook my head and called him back into the room.
“You grew up to be so handsome,” she said, touching the side of my face. “I miss the chubby cheeks though.”
“I don’t,” I replied, laughing.
“And you have facial hair! I can’t believe my boy has facial hair. So handsome. Tell me, are you seeing anybody?” She picked up my left hand. “Married? Kids? Tell me everything. I want to know everything. Googling you and talking to Dad only skimmed the surface.”
I did want to tell her everything, even the situation with Alexandra, but I had some questions of my own that I needed answered first.
“I don’t mean to spring this on you like this,” I began, “but I have…questions.”
She nodded. “Of course you do. Ask me anything, sweetheart. I’ll do anything to make things right between us. That life is so far behind me that I’m not ashamed of the questions anymore. I’ve been blessed.”
She glanced over at Carl and he winked back at her.
“Well, there’s been something that’s been bothering for quite a while. Years, actually. It has to do with what happened with,” I glanced over at Carl, “John Ezra.”
“Oh, Carl knows everything so don’t be afraid to speak openly,” she assured.
“Well, I want to know what happened,” I said. “See, in my head, and you can tell me if this is twisted, the fact that you didn’t leave with me in the middle of the night and did what you did meant that, you didn’t choose me. That, you didn’t want me.”
Her lids gaped so wide that I could nearly see the entire whites of her eyes. Then, she began to frantically shake her head. “Oh no, baby. No. That’s not what happened at all. I told Dad to explain it to you once you were old enough, but I see now that didn’t happen. It could also be because he’d already began forgetting a lot of things by then. But I guess now is a better time than any to tell you the truth.” She tipped her chin towards the kitchen. “Carl, honey, could you start dinner? And, how long are you staying, Ethan?”
“Until the weekend is over,” I answered, my mind running to the Miller-Hamilton wedding.
Carl retreated to the kitchen and my mother began stroking the back of my hand in a circular motion. The freckles on her wrist caused another memory to surface; she was rubbing ointment on a cut on my knee that I’d gotten after falling from a park swing. I’d asked her how long she thinks it
would take until I got better, and she’d told me that a silly little park swing wasn’t my kryptonite. To a kid with a Superman fascination, it was all I needed to hear to stand several feet taller.
It was funny how I’d had no recollection of that memory until now.
“Okay. I’ll set up the guest room,” she went on. She was stalling, so I remained quiet to give her a moment to ease into her story.
“I did kill John Ezra,” she started. “This isn’t a story about how I was framed and really didn’t kill him. I did do it, but it wasn’t because I didn’t choose you, baby. It was because I did.”
I got the feeling that in the next few minutes, all of my preconceived notions would be incinerated.
“John was a despicable man, and I was a different woman back then. Foolish. I’d somehow convinced myself that, because he was a married man willing to step outside of his marriage to be with me, it gave me a false sense of self-worth. Whatever his wife wasn’t able to give him, I was, so it made me feel important. But everyone has their limits, Ethan. That man hit me, berated me, and did things that I cannot tell you. Yet, even after all of that, I would still go back to him. The cycle of abuse is what they call it.”
She clasped my hand with hers. “My limit was you, Ethan. I remember once a woman telling me that she used to say that she could never kill another human being, but then she had her first child and all of that changed. She said that if anyone ever tried to harm her child, she would have no qualms about ending their life to protect her baby.”
She released my hand and walked across the room to lean against a brick fireplace that looked as though it had recently been updated. Her hands shook, but I could tell that she was enraged instead of unnerved.
“You probably don’t remember, but the night that we were supposed to run away, it was the last day of our lease. I hadn’t renewed because I wanted the entire experience to be liberating. John was leaving for the airport and I wanted it to be that the next time he dropped by the apartment, the entire thing would be empty. Maybe there would already be another family living there. I wanted it be like an atomic bomb dropped on him. I was choosing my baby and in order to do so, I had to leave him.
“So naturally, I did all the things I usually did. I made his dinner, we watched some TV, I put you to bed, and then I jumped in the shower. After my shower, I was going to walk him downstairs to the curb and then come upstairs, wake you up, and get the hell out of there. But when I got out of the shower, something didn’t feel right. It’s a Mommy thing; you can sometimes feel when something is wrong with your child. So, because of that feeling, I wrapped a towel around my body and went straight to your room. When I got to your room, I saw John sitting next to you on your bed. You were still sleeping, but there was a look in his eyes that I didn’t trust. When he looked up at me, it was all over his face. If I had stayed in that shower for even five minutes longer…”
Her voice trailed off but she didn’t have to finish her sentence. I felt as though all my thoughts had just been involved in a head-on collision.
“Then, he opened his mouth,” she went on. “He’d believed that since I’d allowed him to take so much from me over the years, I would just give you to him. After that, something inside of me snapped. I told him to get the hell out of your room and he charged after me. I’d never fought harder in my life. Eventually, we ended up in the kitchen and…well. As you know.”
I walked over to her. “Didn’t you ever explain any of this to the district attorney?”
“That story is what got me my thirty-five year plea deal. They claimed that it was my word against the dead man’s and then began to call my past into question. They claimed that John threatened to end the affair and so I killed him in a jealous rage. His wife had even said on the stand that she’d known about the affair and he’d agreed to leave me. If we’d taken it to trial, I was facing life without parole.”
I began shaking my head and pacing the room. Everything that I’d believed and had held onto for the past couple of decades was untrue. My mother hadn’t made the choice to no longer be a part of my life. It was because she’d chosen me, as well as herself, that she’d landed in jail. She’d been trying to protect me, not get rid of me.
“Mom, I have to apologize to you,” I said, standing directly in front of her. “I can’t tell you how angry I was for so long because I’d assumed that you never thought the entire thing through. That instead of killing him, all you’d had to do was walk away from him. I was angry for so long.”
“And you had every right to be,” she explained. “You were six. You weren’t nearly old enough to make sense of any of it and I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want even the possibility that something like that could have happened to you in your head. Also, I knew that Dad would take good care of you. After your grandmother died, I went off the deep end and he tried so hard to pull me back but could never do so. I saw you going to live with him as a blessing in disguise because at that time, I was so all over the place that he was your only hope. And, Dr. Stewart, I can see that I wasn’t wrong. Honestly, it’s my greatest gesture as your mother — making a hard sacrifice just to give you a fighting chance.”
I initiated the hug this time, squeezing her and apologizing for all of the years I’d spent hating her, and for the fact that I’d never gone to visit her.
“So, you got out early for good behavior?” I asked, my lips pressed into her hair.
“I got some time shaved,” she replied. “The brunt of it was what was revealed during my parole hearing. John’s wife came forward in support of my parole. She talked about how he’d abused her and that she’d found horrifying pictures of their children in their attic during a move.”
I squeezed her even tighter and continued to apologize until she held me at arm’s length, tears in her eyes.
“Well, now that we’ve got that settled, I’ve got years to make up for,” she said. “First, we’ll have dinner and then you’ll tell me all about the special woman in your life.”
Another head-on collision crashed in my head. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong, Ethan?” she asked.
“I think I made another mistake.”
“What mistake is that?”
“The woman in my life,” I explained. “I didn’t fight for her. She wasn’t only thinking about how her family would treat her; she was also thinking about how they would treat me. And…I didn’t even try to fight for her. I was so focused on her independence that I didn’t realize that I could fight for her.”
She held my face between her hands. “Ethan, what are you talking about? What did you do?”
“Her name is Alexandra,” I answered. “She’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, and she’s amazing.”
“Ok. So, what’s the problem?”
“She’s getting married to someone else.”
I expected more questions to follow, but instead, she seemed to think for a minute.
“When’s the wedding?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Then, we’ve got packing to do.” She walked to the kitchen entrance. “Carl, how do you feel about taking an impromptu trip?”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Ethan, honey, you just realized that you could fight for the woman who loves you. You have to go and do just that, and I want to be there to help you do it.”
“Go where?” Carl asked, a metal spoon covered in red sauce in his hand.
“To New Orleans,” my mother nonchalantly answered.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked. “Just like that?”
She bumped me in the side. “I finally found me a good one.”
As I watched them haphazardly throw a suitcase together, I called Alexandra’s number. After two rings, it went to voicemail so I texted her to give me a call. It didn’t surprise me when a message came back saying never to text her phone ever again, and that my number would be blocked. The exact message read: “I shall forewarn yo
u that any further texts to this phone will be futile. You are being blocked from here forth.”
It had Roderick written all over it.
I called Gia.
“You came to your senses?” she answered.
“Yes,” I answered, the smile from my dinner with Tayler and Kellen making a reappearance. “I can’t get through to her, though. Roderick’s got the phone.”
“And he and my father have her on lockdown,” she added. “I’ll have access to her at the wedding though.”
“I’m in Florida, but I’ll be flying in tonight.”
“You may not get to her tonight.”
“Gia, this may be a huge favor to ask but…”
“Say no more,” she cut in. “If I have to, I will stall that wedding longer than it takes Patti Labelle to sing Amazing Grace. If you don’t make it in time to object, I will. No holy matrimony will be taking place tomorrow and I’ll make damn sure of it.”
I couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t love her sister.
“Thank you, Gia.”
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I can’t wait to see how happy you’ll make my sister.”
We hung up just as my mother and soon-to-be stepfather appeared.
“Ready?” they asked.
I nodded and we headed out the door.
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
Alexandra
I wanted to throw up all over this god forsaken dress. In reality, it wasn’t an ugly dress, but because of who I’d be standing across from while wearing it, it was putrid. I was disgusted by the cameras in my face and the people fussing over my hair and makeup. I wanted to punch the director in the face at his insinuations that I was possibly carrying Roderick’s child, but he could spin it to look like I’d gotten pregnant right after the wedding. To make matters worse, my father wouldn’t allow Gia or Grandma Evelyn into the backroom where I was getting prepped, and I desperately needed them to balance out all of the crazy.
Every time I thought about a lifetime with Roderick, it made me want to check in to the nearest infirmary. On the contrary, when I thought about facing a life without Ethan, it made me want to accept my fate with Roderick. It was also a fate that I was willing to accept to preserve Ethan’s medical license, practice, and image.
Fated: An Alpha Male Romance Page 20
