by Naomi Niles
I sat there in stunned silence. If Marie knew this, how many other people could figure it out? How many other people would bother to figure out? More to the point, how long before Kirk figured it out? “What do you think I should do?” I asked Marie.
“I think that Kirk should meet his father. One way or another you will have to confront this at some point, and it is better to do so while Kirk is still a young child and able to forget the years of being without his father.”
She made tremendously good sense, I couldn’t deny her that. Perhaps I was looking at this all wrong. Perhaps I was making a judgment call on Blake’s behalf and perhaps it wasn’t anything close to what he really thought. Perhaps it had come time that I needed to find out.
I patted the back of Marie’s hand and nodded. “You’re getting the raise whether you want it or not,” I told her. “I’m leaving now and heading back to Baton Rouge. I’m anxious to hear about the preschools they found. As I said, you’re doing a wonderful job, and I’m so very proud of you.”
With that, I gave her a hug and left for home. I thought long and hard about her words as I drove back to Baton Rouge. There was considerable common sense in what she said, and common sense has always been my driving force.
I pulled onto my street and up to the house. Although there were bushes in the way, I could see that there was someone sitting on my front porch. I frowned, as I was a very private person. I pulled into my drive, shut the car off, and emerged. As I walked toward the house, the figure stirred, stood up, and was no longer obscured by the mulberry bushes that lined the porch.
It was Blake.
My breath caught in my throat. I stood there, looking at him for a very long time. Eventually, his arms opened outward and without a word I ran toward him and he wrapped me tightly against his chest. That was when I knew what it felt like to be home.
“How did you find me?” I asked him, pointing to a chair as I brewed us a cup of coffee.
“How could I not? Your name is everywhere. There are magazine articles about you, I’ve seen advertising online about you, and from what I hear, you’re doing pretty well for yourself.”
“I didn’t start it, Blake. It was an inheritance.”
“Really?”
“When I left you, I found a waitress job at a small café in a little town north of here. The owner’s name was Maudie and she took me in and treated me like her own daughter. When Maudie died, she left me everything you see here,” I held out my arms to indicate the house, “as well as the café where I had worked. She also left me a considerable sum of money, enough that I couldn’t allow it to simply lie in the bank. So I built a second location, here in town. It’s doing rather well, and I was planning to open the third very soon.”
“I always knew you had it in you, Silver. There’s very little you can’t accomplish when you set your mind to it. You taught me that lesson, and it saved my ass.”
“I see you had a comeback. I’m really proud of you,” I told him.
“You are my inspiration, you know,” he shared.
Me?” I asked.
“Yes, you. You know how I feel about you. You know I want you to come home with me.”
“It’s rather odd timing, as a matter of fact,” I told him. “I just returned from visiting the original café and my friend there, Marie, urged me to reconnect with you.”
“My thanks go out to Marie, whomever she is. What about the other guy?”
I swallowed hard. This was a pivotal point in our relationship. If I lied now, he could never trust me. If I told him the truth, I wasn’t ready for what might happen. I felt like I wanted more time to think about it. However, fate had a different plan in mind. At that moment, the front door opened and Kirk and Sarah came up to the house. Kirk ran toward me and leapt into my arms. “Mommy, you won’t believe all the cool things I saw,” he said excitedly.
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart.” I held Kirk against me tightly, afraid to put him down on the floor again.
Blake cleared his throat audibly. The moment had finally come. “Sarah, would you take Kirk upstairs, wash his face and hands, and have him lie down and take a nap please?”
Sarah nodded, took Kirk by the hand, and the pair left the room.
I turned to look at Blake. His face was ashen white. “He’s mine, isn’t he?”
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked in a raw voice.
“I was scared you would take him away from me,” I told him honestly.
“Silver, I would never take our child away from you. But I should’ve been there; I should’ve been with you through that. You should’ve let me know, I have the right!” I could see a bit of anger on his face and I really couldn’t blame him.
“I know, I know. I know I should’ve told you. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, Blake. He is all that I have in the world.”
“No, Silver, you are so wrong. You’ve always had me.” With that he crossed the room and pulled me to my feet. Lifting my chin, he bent slowly, looking directly into my eyes as he did so. He kissed me then, but it was more than a kiss. It felt more as though I was being claimed. I had forgotten the warmth of his lips, but I had not forgotten him. I breathed in his air, savoring it as one would a plate of fresh cinnamon rolls on a cold winter morning. He felt like home to me. Tears began to cascade down my cheeks, and I owed him an apology. “I’m so, so sorry, Blake.”
“Hush, Silver. It’s okay. I’m here now. I want you. I want our son.”
Chapter 16
Blake
I knew as soon as I saw the child that he was mine. It nearly knocked the breath from out of me. He looked very much like I did at his age; there was no denying he was my son. That cold descended over me as I realized how close I had come to not only losing Silver, but losing perhaps the only part of me that could live on. My son.
I understood her fear. It was the same fear any mother would have when her child was threatened. My mother had been the exception. She was only too grateful to have me leave. This told me so much about Silver’s character.
“I’m not ever leaving without you, Silver,” I said. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Do I have a choice?” she asked in a slightly sarcastic voice.
I knew where the voice came from. She was still filled with low self-esteem and indecision. “Silver, come here. We need to have a talk.” I took her by the hand into the living room, sitting down next to her on the sofa. At that point, the young nanny who had taken my son up for his nap entered the doorway.
“Meli, I’ll be leaving now for the evening. Be back by midnight,” she said in a respectful voice.
Silver nodded at her, waving. I heard the door close behind her. I couldn’t keep myself from it. I pulled Silver against me and wrapped one of my hands around the back of her neck so she couldn’t pull away. It was a gentle wrap; the kind that meant that she belonged to me.
“I want you to sit here close by me and listen to everything that I have to say. I know it will be hard for you, so try not to interrupt,” I smiled as I said the words.
“You are not your mother. No more than I was my mother, or my father. We are unique individuals and have made choices for our lives that suited us. There is no one in the world I would have picked to be the mother of my child, but you. I love you, I want you in my life, and I want to become the father our son needs me to be. In order to do that, you have to trust me. I know you believe in me; you’ve proven that in the past. What you have to learn now is how to trust me took after you and after him. Can you do that?” I asked her.
“This is all happening much faster than I expected.”
“How can you say that? He’s going on four years old. That’s a long time to have been thinking about it.” I felt a bit of frustration with her. Why was she being so blind on purpose?
“I have allowed myself to think about this possibility,” she explained. “I’ve been driven by the images of the mother I didn’t have,
and I have sworn to myself that I would never be her. I couldn’t be near anything or anyone that reminded me of who she was. That included anyone who might even know about her.”
“But how does that include me? I didn’t know about her, not until Jill told me. But you had already left me before that.” I wanted to know the root of her behavior and if it hurt her a little for me to find out, it was worth it in the long run. I couldn’t have her running away every time she got spooked.
“I knew about me. I didn’t believe I was good enough for you. You are successful, popular, and you had a huge public image. Being linked to me, essentially white trash from the inner city, wouldn’t have done your reputation any good. Don’t you understand why I had to leave?”
“Yes, I understand why you think you had to leave. But you were wrong. You were innocently, but terribly wrong. Now let’s put this behind us and move forward.”
She looked at me and tears welled up in her eyes. I could tell there was some still some doubt there.
“Silver. Can you trust me?” My heart was pleading that she would say yes.
“I will begin to learn how,” she said in a stilted voice. “It’s the best I can do for now.”
“That’s all I can ask for you,” I told her and kissed her hard.
Every fiber of my body wanted to be with her from that moment on. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her behind, not even for an hour. My son lay upstairs in his little bed and I wanted to get to know him. And yet, despite all of that, I knew that she had to come to me. I couldn’t force her, or she would run into hiding once again. I couldn’t risk that. So for now I would give her space. I would give her the time she needed. And I would pray.
Chapter 17
Meli
I could feel how badly Blake wanted to hold me. I could feel and see in his face how badly he wanted to hear the words that I wouldn’t leave him. I was fighting all my old instincts, all the old messages. They were all there, layered in my brain, forming the brick wall that kept me from living a normal life. I realized then that perhaps it was our flaws, imagined or otherwise, that made us worthy of love. If we were perfect, there would be nothing to fix, nothing to help, nothing to cherish. Humans were not designed to be perfect. I gave myself tremendous emotional freedom with those thoughts.
When Blake stood to go, one part of me wanted to hold his hand and take him upstairs to my bedroom. I knew it wasn’t the time for that yet. It had to be the right time. He understood that. I asked how long he was staying in town.
“I can stay as long as you want me to stay,” he said. “I’m thinking that you need some space, though. I would like to spend a little bit of time with our son and I will go as soon as you ask me to leave. In the meantime, I will stay at the hotel down the street so I can be close by. When you ask me to come, I will come; and when you ask me to leave, I will leave. I hope at some point you will ask me to stay.”
With those words, he kissed my forehead, gave me a hard, but brief hug, and turned to go out the front door. I let him go. He was right. I needed some space to think.
I realized I was shallow breathing, and I had been since the moment he stood up on the porch. I had forgotten how truly handsome he was. He was well over six feet tall, well muscled, and he emitted a masculinity that surpassed the mystical gray eyes and the cleft of his chin. I was feeling extremely erotic at the moment, and realized that I had been within a breath of asking him to stay the night. I knew that would not be a good plan, that it could actually result in disaster.
I needed time to talk to Kirk I needed to explain to him that it wasn’t just he and I alone in the world; that there was someone else. I had to explain to him that he had a daddy and where his daddy had been until recently. I didn’t want him to feel as though he had been rejected in any way. This would be complicated and that’s why it would take some time.
I decided to prepare the atmosphere for our little talk. I went into the kitchen and made him his favorite: hot dogs and potato chips with ice cream for dessert. It wasn’t long before he came stumbling down the steps, rubbing his eyes and in a crabby mood from having just awakened. He crawled up into the chair at the table, peeking over the edge of the plate that I carried toward him. The sight of the hot dogs managed to push away the frown left over from his nap.
“Mommy, who was that man?”
Could I have asked for a better opening line? It was though he knew I had something to tell him and he was opening the door for me to do so. I had to accept this is almost a sign that it was the right time to do it. “Eat your dinner, son, and I will tell you about that man.”
I went on to explain to him in the gentlest way that I could that the man was his daddy. I explained that his daddy owned a ranch and worked with horses and bulls. He wanted to know what a bull was, and I explained it was a cow that had horns.
“The kind that honk?” he asked and I had to laugh aloud.
“No, they don’t honk. They’re very mean bulls and you have to be a very brave daddy in order to ride on them.”
“Is my daddy brave? Is he one of the men who can ride the bulls?”
“Yes, indeed, Kirk. Your daddy is a very brave man.”
“Where has my daddy been?”
“He has been working very hard riding on those bulls. He has been getting ready to come and see you. Now that he is here, he wants to spend time with you. Will that be okay with you?”
“Is it okay with you, Mommy?”
“Yes, Kirk, it is more than okay with me.”
“Then why don’t you invite him to come here and stay with us?”
“Perhaps one day very soon I will do exactly that. In the meantime, I don’t want you to bring that up. It’s mommy who has to invite people to stay with us. Do you understand?”
He nodded. I was amazed at how open-minded he was. In fact, in many ways I was in awe of my son. He did not have the walls that I had built inside of myself. His heart was pure in his mind was open to believe in all the best things in life. I wished for a moment that I could be like him.
As the saying goes, from the mouths of babes. I spent some one-on-one time with Kirk that night. I wanted to be available in case he had questions about Blake. I wanted to be absolutely certain that he would in no way feel damaged from not having had his father with him since birth. I did realize that a certain amount of that was my own personal feelings of rejection, and that it wasn’t fair to expect that Kirk would have a like reaction. After all, I wasn’t my mother and hadn’t done what she did. There was however, a certain amount of trauma associated with her death that made it stand apart.
The next morning my phone rang early. I had given Blake my new phone number before he left, knowing that if I didn’t, he would just come directly to the house each time he wanted to talk to me.
“Good morning, Silver,” his voice was cheerful and hopeful. It stopped just short of saying can I come over?
“Good morning, Blake,” I responded in a like voice. “How did you sleep last night?”
“I won’t say I slept the best, but it was better than I’ve slept in a long time. Probably because yesterday was a very special day and I am so much closer to you. Can I ask you what you thought about last night?”
“I’ve realized that a lot of my reluctance has to do with my own childhood and has nothing to do with you or Kirk,” I said.
“That’s a pretty big leap in understanding, Silver. I admire you for being so open. I’m not sure that I would’ve been so brave to say that,” he complimented me.
“Would you like to join Kirk and me for dinner tonight?” I invited him.
“You know I would. Did you talk with Kirk about me at all?” he asked me, his voice hesitant.
“Yes, I did. I told him his daddy was a bull rider and that he had to work before he could come and be with us.”
“You told him that? You told him I was his daddy?” I could hear the joy in his voice. I could’ve kicked myself at that moment for not having done that sooner.
I had no right, no right whatsoever, to have kept Blake out of our life for so long. Kirk was created by mutual consent: the least I could have done was let Blake know.
“Yes, we talked all about it. He’s very sharp, Blake. He seemed to have no problem with it whatsoever. I think it’s about time you get to know your son,” I finished and waited for his answer.
“What time can I be there?” he asked and I had to laugh at his haste.
“How about four o’clock this afternoon? That will give you some time to play with him before dinner and then I’ll put him to bed early so you and I can talk. How would that be?”
“That sounds just about perfect,” he said. “Silver, I would like to bring him a gift, but I won’t do it if you think I’m trying to buy his affection.”
“I understand your motivation, Blake. I don’t blame you a bit. I should’ve never kept you from him. Of course you may bring him a gift, he deserves the same from you as he gets for me.”
“Silver, I can’t tell you how much this means to me. You’ve changed. You’ve grown up a hell of a lot. I’m very proud of you,” he said.
“Well, there’s still a lot to be discussed. We’ll see you at four.”
“I won’t let you down, Silver. I’m in your life to stay.” With that, the phone line went dead and I imagined from my end that he was running for the truck and searching for a toy store. I could only imagine how much fun it would be for him to look for toys for his own son; the sort of things he would’ve liked to play with when he was a child and never got. I had felt a bit of that when I entered the toy stores, although my childhood was void of toys for girls. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how important it was that Kirk have a male influence in his life. I had been very selfish. There was one more person I had to talk to yet.
“Jill? It’s me.”
“Well, you sure as hell took your time calling me. Where the hell have you been?”
“It’s a really long story. I’ll tell it to you when I see you next. In the meantime; I need to tell you a couple of things.”
