You Were Always Mine

by Nicole Baart

  “How could it have anything to do with her?” he asked coolly. “She’s dead.”

  And then he pulled out of her grip and disappeared down the hallway, shoulders hunched and chin angled defiantly at the ground.

  * * *

  March 26, 2018

  LaShonna turned herself in this morning and will serve a 16-month sentence. The baby is due in July. I don’t really know how childbirth is handled in prison, but I guess we’ll find out.

  It’s a day for the record books because I moved out this afternoon. It’s been a long time coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. I know I’ve made mistakes. I’ve kept secrets from Jessica and been self-involved and I’m never as present as I should be. We’re both stubborn. But this is on me and I own it. I’ll make it up to her, work this out somehow. I love my wife. I love my family. I’m just not sure how to get from here to a place where we can talk openly about Charlie and Gabe and the unexpected way our family has come together. I’m both scared to death and excited about what the future holds.

  I’ve emailed a new adoption agency. I’m not comfortable contacting Promise, even though that’s what LaShonna wants. Right now I just want to ask questions. Figure out how this might all play out. I understand her desire to keep Gabe and his sister together, but there’s a part of me that wonders if that’s just what LaShonna believes she should want. Are there resources for her if she decides to parent? And is there something I can do to support her if she makes that choice? I think she misses Gabe. Well, she doesn’t know him, so that’s not quite right. I think she longs for him.

  BeeBee G.

  40, Caucasian, 3 years of HS

  Tiny, fierce, opinionated. Short, pink hair. Petite build. Neck tattoo.

  Family uninvolved.

  FRD, 32m, 8m pp

  CHAPTER 12

  BY THE END of the day, Jessica understood that the world could keep spinning while it seemed to fall into ruin around her. It was a personal Armageddon, nothing more. Jess was crumbling to dust, but still the bells kept ringing, the kids filed in and out of her class, the clock ticked. Most surprising and unsettling of all? Jess ticked. On and on, smiling at all the right spots, answering each question that was asked of her, and pretending that she lived and breathed. It was an elaborate act. She was a ghost, convincing, but empty inside. How could they not know?

  Gabe’s birth mother was dead.

  Jessica believed Max because she knew his tell. Someone had once told him that a liar was easy to spot—the truth was in their eyes. So when Max lied, he stared straight at her, unblinking until Jess was the first to look away. It was unnerving. And in the hallway that morning? He was already looking past her. Moving on as if she didn’t matter at all. Max’s words were truth, cold and harsh and so very cruel, but they were honest. At least, he believed that they were.

  But Jess couldn’t waste heartache over a woman she didn’t know. No, her hands trembled as she packed her bag at the end of the day because Max knew. He knew things that he should never have to know, secret things that had been hidden away and carefully guarded until now. When had Evan opened the vault? Max could only know because his father told him. But why would he do that?

  A pit opened in her stomach every time she considered how Max could have found out about Gabe’s birth mom. The pit was deep and dark and filled with things she couldn’t bear to consider. What now?

  There was one thing she could do. Hesitantly, Jess added “Gabe’s Birth Mom” to her list. Of course, she didn’t believe that a dead woman could have killed her husband and broken into her house, but clearly there was much more to the story than she had first imagined. Who was this woman? What had she known? Why had she died? How? The questions piled, compounded, collected like snow until Jess felt crushed beneath the weight of them.

  After school, Jess gathered her boys and hurried home, unconcerned for once about Max’s moody silence and Gabe’s endless chatter. Usually she encouraged a healthy snack after school, a banana with peanut butter or some cheese and crackers, but when Gabe reached for the candy jar, she told him three pieces, and then sweetened the deal by telling him to take them into the living room.

  “By the TV?”

  “You may watch a show,” she said.

  “Now?”

  “Sure.”

  The rule was no media until after supper, and then only half an hour. A single show or a handful of funny cat videos on YouTube. Jess knew she was strict, but she didn’t care. She wanted her boys to be well-rounded. Polite and able to carry on a conversation and aware of current events. Evan had agreed with her approach and taught Max how to play chess when he was seven. Often the television never went on at all in the course of a day, and Jess used to love listening to the sound of her boys talking and laughing, the soft clink of pawns being moved, forming a cozy soundtrack beneath the hum of their words.

  This was new. TV after school. Candy in the living room. Gabe looked at her sideways, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “One show,” Jess said, holding up a single finger, a serious slant to her mouth. “Then it goes off.”

  Gabe looked downright relieved. A grin broke across his face. “One show,” he agreed.

  Max was in the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboard and coming up empty-handed although the shelves were filled with boxes of every processed food he liked. They were still grieving.

  “Come,” Jess said, striding into the kitchen and taking him by the elbow.

  He tried to shake out of her grip, but she held fast and pulled him past the breakfast nook and through the French doors that led to the porch. They didn’t use the porch in the winter—it wasn’t insulated—and the cold of the painted cement floor seeped through Jess’s socks and nipped at her toes. Their grill, lawn furniture, and hoses were piled up around them, summertime remnants that still held the faint scent of charcoal and cut grass.

  “It’s freezing out here!” Max complained. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re talking,” Jess said. Her voice trembled with emotion. “Right here, right now. I don’t want Gabe to hear us, but I need you to know that we will stand out here and freeze to death if you don’t start talking.”

  “Geez.” Max rubbed his neck and looked at her as if she were crazy. Jess didn’t care. “Chill, Mom.”

  “No, I am definitely not going to chill, Max.” Jess didn’t want to be that mom—she didn’t want to stand there and shake her finger in Max’s face—but she felt herself getting dangerously close to doing exactly that. She wanted to take his chin in her hand and force him to look at her the way that she used to when he was younger and he was being defiant, disrespectful. Jess wanted to grab his shoulders and shake. Instead she took a long breath. When she exhaled, it misted in the air between them.

  “I’m serious,” Jess said, slightly more calm. “I know you’re mad at me, and I have some pretty good guesses why, but this is not the right time to play games. You can be as pissed off as you want to be, but you’re going to start talking to me. Right now.”

  Max gave her a wary look, but it was obvious that she had unnerved him. Good. If that was what it took. “What?” he asked.

  “How did you know that book was from Gabe’s birth mom?”

  “Dad told me.”

  “When?”

  Max crossed his arms against his chest in an effort to look tough, nonchalant. “I don’t know. A while ago.”

  “That’s not good enough. Does ‘a while ago’ mean a month ago or a couple of years ago?”

  “One of the last times I saw him.” Max’s voice cracked and went suddenly rough. He swallowed hard.

  “Oh, honey.” Jess exhaled hard, her resolve fizzling like a spent flame. What was she doing? But she couldn’t give up now. Later. She could deal with this wound later. For now, she had no choice but to push past the pain in her son’s eyes. “I’m so sorry. But this is important. Dad never told me about Gabe’s birth mom.”

  “You could have asked.” It was bar
ely a whisper.

  Jess chose to ignore it. “Were they in contact with each other?”

  Max paused a beat. Looked away. He lifted one shoulder and then let it drop again. “No. I don’t know. Yeah, maybe.”

  “I mean, he had the book, right? So she must have given it to him?”

  “I guess.”

  “When?” Jess pressed.

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook out her frozen hands and tucked them under her arms. “Come on. Meet me halfway, okay? Did Dad give the book to you? To Gabe?”

  Max shook his head. “No. He just showed it to me. That’s why I was surprised to see it in your room.”

  “It was in Gabe’s backpack.”

  “Yeah, you said that.”

  Jess rubbed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut, working to make sense of what she was hearing. Everything felt fragmented. Wrong. “Okay. So how do you know that Gabe’s birth mom is . . .” She couldn’t quite say the word.

  “Dead?” Max’s eyes were glass-bottle blue, but they were flat and gray as he stared at her.

  “Yeah,” Jess said quietly.

  “Dad told me. He showed me the book and said he was going to give it to Gabe someday. That it was really important because Gabe’s birth mom had died.”

  “When?” Jess whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay.” All the fight went out of her, and Jess was left feeling deflated. She reached out to touch Max and he allowed her hand to rest on his arm. A small grace. “Is there anything else you can tell me? I need to know, Max. I need to know everything I can.”

  “That’s it,” he said.

  “Do you know her name?”

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you,” Jess said. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Max bit the corner of his lip, a gesture that made her think of his elementary school years. He used to stick just the tip of his tongue out the side of his mouth when he was concentrating. Forming his letters or adding two plus two or struggling to stay between the lines with his green crayon. Such difficult equations, big-boy problems. If only.

  “Can I go?” he asked, and she watched as a shiver trembled through him. Suddenly Jess was shivering too.

  “Yes,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “Of course. But you have to promise me that you’ll tell me if you remember something. Anything.”

  Max nodded, but he was already turning around. She hadn’t cracked him, not really, but a tiny fissure would have to do. Jess watched as he turned the handle and stepped through the door, but just over the threshold he stopped. “Mom?”

  Jess felt her knees go weak. He hadn’t called her “Mom” in a long time. Usually he avoided addressing her at all. “Yes?”

  “Do you think this has anything to do with . . .” He paused, then managed: “Dad?”

  “No,” Jess said instantly. She cut her chin to the right, a definitive, decisive no. “Dad died in a terrible accident, Max. And my heart is broken in two. But this is something different, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “I just need to know,” she said. “I need to know what you know.”

  Max studied the floor, blond hair flopping on his forehead so that Jess had to resist the urge to reach out and smooth it back. “Okay,” he said to his feet. But he didn’t sound convinced.

  Jess understood. She wasn’t convinced either.

  * * *

  Are we on for tonight?

  The text was waiting on her phone, a subtle reprimand from Meredith. Jess thumbed to her calendar and found it written there: GNO Mer.

  Girls’ Night Out. Her stomach curdled at the thought, but she remembered now. Meredith had convinced her to take just a couple of hours to do some Christmas shopping for the boys. “It’ll be good for you,” Meredith cajoled. “We’ll go on a weeknight, before Thanksgiving. Nobody will be around, the stores won’t be busy, it’ll be great. Okay, not great, but it’ll be good for you to get out. And it’s not like you can forgo Christmas. The boys need it.” A pregnant pause. “You need it.”

  Christmas shopping was the last thing that Jessica wanted to do (what was wrong with buying everything online?), but it was too late to back out without tipping Meredith off to the fact that she was not doing well.

  They had made plans for Todd to come over with a couple of pizzas so that Jess could snag a few hours alone without abandoning her kids. Todd only had daughters and he missed out on all the mess and mayhem of having boys of his own. Back when the Chamberlains and the Baileys used to hang out, grilling together in the backyard or sharing a bottle of wine while the kids watched a movie, Jess would catch Todd looking at her boys almost wistfully. “I don’t even have one of these at home,” he once said, lobbing a football to Max as the burgers sizzled. Jess wasn’t sure if Todd was talking about the football or the boy, but Max was wholly focused on the pass. Of course, he caught it easily and rolled his eyes a little at the older man. He was ten, big enough for a tight pass with a perfect spiral. He threw a laser back at Todd and laughed when it hit him square in the chest and Todd pretended to be bowled over.

  Now that same sweet but bumbling man was going to spend an evening with her grieving boys. What in the world made her agree to such madness in the first place? It was Meredith. Always Meredith. She had assured Jessica that it would be amazing. A good break for all of them. Jayden had play practice and Todd would love a few hours to watch something sportsy with the boys. “All the sportsing and the balls and the boys . . . And we’ll be alone. It’ll be good for everyone. A win-win.” Jessica said yes simply because it was easier than saying no.

  Sure, she texted back, mounting the stairs to put on a touch of lipstick at least. She felt like a ghost, but she didn’t need to alarm anyone else by looking like one.

  “I’m going out with Meredith for a little while,” Jess told Max, leaning into his room with one hand on the doorjamb.

  He shrugged.

  “Todd’s coming over with pizza.”

  That got him to look up, but just as quickly as his eyes flashed to Jessica’s they looked away. “Whatever.”

  Half an hour later Meredith and Todd swept in on a wave of forced cheer and the aroma of hot pizza. Todd stomped his feet as if there were snow on his shoes, even though it had yet to fall. Then he held high the pizza boxes he was carrying and announced: “Anchovies and veggie delight. Your favorite, right, Gabe?”

  “Ew!” Gabe shrieked, wrapping both his hands around his throat as if he might choke. “That’s disgusting!”

  “It’s good for you,” Todd said, nodding seriously. His glasses slipped down his nose and it struck Jessica, not for the first time, that he looked a bit like a nutty professor. Tall and thin with dark brown hair and a full beard to match, he liked to wear wool pants and plaid shirts tucked in. He was so different from Meredith it was almost comical, but they seemed to get along well enough. Who could really tell? They didn’t fight. At least, not in public. But Mer was all sparkle and glam, while Todd was about as interesting as a spreadsheet. He was friendly, though, and good with kids. Gabe loved him.

  “Sausage is my favorite,” Gabe said, following Todd into the kitchen and trying to peek inside the square boxes.

  “Phew, I guess it’s a good thing I got sausage, then.” Todd winked as he put the pizza down on the table. “And all the meatiest toppings I could order for Max. Where is he?”

  “In his room,” Jess said, accepting the hug that Todd offered. He was a master of the quick, one-armed hug, and she was in and out and zipping up her coat mere seconds later. “He’ll come down for supper if you ask him. Please ask him. Maybe you can get him to come out of his shell a bit.”

  Todd nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “And we won’t be late. I’ll be back to tuck the kids in.”

  “We might not be late,” Meredith amended. “We’ll see how things are going.”

  Jess secretly rebuked her friend. She would be home. She didn’t want to go
at all. But she smiled thinly and held her tongue as she slid her arm beneath her hair to free it from the collar of her coat. “Love you, bug,” she said, planting a kiss on Gabe’s sweet cheek. He threw his arms around her neck and held on.

  “I want a Star Wars LEGO,” he whispered in her ear. “And Max wants a hoverboard.”

  “Who says I’m Christmas shopping?”

  “Auntie Mer did.”

  Jess gave him one last squeeze and ruffled his hair as she let go. “Be good for Todd.”

  “He doesn’t have to be good for me.” Todd laughed. “We plan to get in lots of trouble, right, Gabe?”

  Gabe giggled as he lifted the lid of the top pizza box, and Meredith took the opportunity to grab Jessica’s hand and lead her toward the door. “See?” Meredith stage-whispered. “They’re already having fun. They’re going to be just fine.”

  “It’s not them I’m worried about.”

  “You need this,” Meredith said. “It’ll be good for you to get out, even if it’s just for a few hours.”

  Auburn didn’t have a mall, but there was a small historic downtown lined with quaint shops. A couple of stores catered to a slightly more upscale crowd, but there was also an old-fashioned drugstore that carried everything from over-the-counter cough syrup to toys around the holidays, and a hardware store that specialized in trikes and bikes and scooters. It was a strange hodgepodge of shops, but it was still fun to walk around downtown Auburn during the holidays. The city strung multicolored lights across the street so that the entire road was lit up like Santa’s Village, and they even piped Christmas music from speakers on the corners. Best of all, the coffee shop and wine bar on the corner sold hot buttered rum.