“Hey, sweetheart,” Dad says to me, drawing me out of my thoughts. His salt and pepper hair is perfectly combed as always, even when dressed casually in a Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt and jeans like he is today. He still carries a comb in his pocket in case a hair gets out of place.
I give him a smile, the sight of him playing with my daughter on the floor tugging at my heart. He used to play with me the same way—Barbies, board games, you name it, he always made time to get on the floor with me and engage in whatever I wanted to do. He worked all day at insurance sales, but as soon as he was home, he spent all his free time with Mom and me. We were the three musketeers, and it was always clear to me that family was his priority. He even put off retiring so he could save just a little more to help Maddie and me.
My mom, on the other hand, retired early so she could be home to help me with Maddie as a baby. She’d been a teacher, spending the last decade or so of her career at the alternative high school in the next town over. So I wasn’t the first pregnant teenager she’d come across. Maybe that helped her accept my pregnancy as calmly as she did, addressing the practicalities and keeping my father from exploding when I told them. His face turned red and that vein in his forehead stood out, but Mom laid a hand on his arm, kept her voice neutral and her attention on me, asking my plans, if I’d been to a doctor, how I wanted to proceed.
I’ve always known I was loved, but never more than I did that night. I was so relieved that they didn’t scream at me or demand I give it up. Or, in my worst imaginings, kick me out and disown me.
They did none of those things. Instead, they offered to help me however I wanted. However I needed. It was my choice to stay here, to stay close to them. I could’ve still figured out a way to get my degree, to pursue writing, but I wanted to stay close to home. To stay close to my support system, and close to the people who love Maddie and me the most.
Because that’s what I’ve always wanted for Maddie. For her to grow up secure in the knowledge that she’s loved. I thought Mom, Dad, and me would be enough, but …
Was it a mistake keeping Maddie from Aaron for all these years? My dad’s pretty awesome about playing with her, and she sees Kyle pretty regularly, but it’s not the same as having free access to your actual dad. Because despite not wanting to teach kids piano, Aaron’s a sweet guy. I can see him playing ponies with Maddie.
I swallow back the bile trying to climb my throat. I’ll find out really soon if that vision will come true.
“Everything alright?” Dad asks, probably worried about me standing and staring at my daughter for longer than normal.
I force my smile wider. “Yeah. Everything’s great. I just missed Maddie last night. Everything go okay here?”
“Everything went great,” Mom says from the doorway to the kitchen on the opposite side of the living room. “We read three books, and she went right to sleep.” She walks over to give me a hug, still wearing her glasses. When she goes out for the day, she wears contacts, but I’ve always liked her glasses. The red frames give a splash of color that contrasts with her gray hair. She stopped dyeing it after she retired and decided to embrace the gray, saying that since she was going to be a grandma she might as well look the part.
“Really? She never goes down that easy for me.”
Dad chuckles from the floor. “Yeah, well, she went right to sleep with your mother lying next to her.”
With a sigh, I look back at my mom. “You don’t have to do that, you know. I’m trying to get her to sleep in her own bed. It’s okay to tell her no.”
Mom shrugs and brushes aside my comment. “It’s easier when she’s here. She asks for you, and won’t settle if I’m just sitting in a chair next to her. It’s only one night. She’ll get there soon enough, don’t worry.”
Sighing, I let it go. Because arguing won’t change anything now. And it’s not like Maddie doesn’t end up in my bed almost every night anyway. I want to get her into her own bed. I start her off in her own bed. But I have to get up early for work, and we both get more sleep if I just let her crawl in with me in the wee hours of the morning than if I got up every hour and took her back to bed.
Like Mom said … we’ll get there. Eventually. I hope.
Mom gestures me into the kitchen. “Did you eat breakfast? Do you want something? You could’ve left her here until lunch, you know.”
Swallowing, I follow Mom into the kitchen. “Just some water is fine.”
She shoots me a knowing look. “Need to hydrate, huh?”
I chuckle. “I’m not hungover, Mom. But drinking water’s healthy. Is that a problem?”
She fills a glass from the fridge and sets it in front of me. “If you weren’t out drinking last night, why do you look like hell?”
It still surprises me when Mom casually curses in front of me. Growing up, that wasn’t allowed. We were good churchgoers who walked the straight and narrow and ticked all the right boxes. I messed that up when I got pregnant the summer after high school. Well, I suppose I technically messed that up sooner, when I started having sex with my high school boyfriend. But everyone found out about it with the pregnancy.
After putting up with the looks, the whispers, and the occasional outright shaming every week for months once I started showing, I refused to go to church with my parents any longer. After Maddie was born, I guess my parents got fed up with it too. They tried a few other churches, but eventually stopped going altogether. And now my mom cusses. Crazy how things can change.
Staring at the table in front of me, I sip my water and try to figure out how to bring up Aaron’s return.
Mom sits across from me with her own glass of water, and I flash to the previous big conversations we’ve had here. The one where I finally told them the truth—that I was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby and wouldn’t be going to college in the fall after all. It was a Wednesday afternoon, about a week before we were supposed to go to Virginia for new student orientation, and we all had glasses of water just like now. Dad had just gotten home from work and was still wearing his dress pants and button down shirt, but had discarded his tie and jacket on the way home because of the August heat. Mom seemed to sense that I had something serious to talk about, because she turned off the stove where she was making dinner, wiped her hands, and sat down next to Dad, patiently waiting for whatever I had to say. Just the memory of that day still makes me want to throw up, the combination of nerves and morning sickness making it impossible to keep anything down.
Maybe Mom was so calm because she’d been home witnessing me puking all day and already suspected the truth. Huh. I never thought about it that way before.
And then there’s the other conversation—the one where I lied through my teeth and said that I’d told Aaron I was keeping the baby and that he didn’t want anything to do with us. I waited till dinner was almost over that night, not wanting to make Mom throw away whatever she’d been making and get takeout like she did when I told them I was pregnant. Dad was furious, dropping his fork on his plate with a clatter and throwing his napkin on the table. Standing, he shouted, my Mom unable to calm him with a hand on his arm. He threatened to go after Aaron, force him to get a job and support us. But Mom finally managed to calm him down, and I’d persuaded him not to do that. Which is good, because that would’ve been an enormous surprise for Aaron. And I’m quite sure that Dad wouldn’t have had to force him to do anything once he found out the truth. But they’d been riding my case for weeks about telling Aaron, and despite my resistance, they wouldn’t let it go.
I still stand by my decision. If I hadn’t made the choice I did, Aaron wouldn’t be where he is. He would’ve dropped out of school—which I guess he did anyway, but it was to join Cataclysm, so that’s not at all the same—gotten a job, and worked to support Maddie and me. Maybe we would’ve gotten married.
My breath hitches at the thought, imagining how that would be. Having a partner. Having someone who loves me, who loves Maddie, with us all the time. My parents are aw
esome, but it’s not the same. Blinking, I shake that fantasy away. It’s not how it would’ve been, because we would’ve had a marriage of obligation. He would’ve eventually resented me for not following through with our plan. For changing my mind and making him throw away his future along with my own.
No. I made the right choice.
Even if I have to pay for it now.
“Everything okay?”
I raise my eyes to my mom’s and give her a wan smile. Open my mouth to tell her that everything’s fine, that I’m just tired. But instead I say, “No.”
Her eyebrows jump in surprise. “Did you not have fun with your friends last night? What’s wrong?”
With a fortifying breath, I give myself a quick mental pep talk that my parents love me and support me and have always been there for me no matter how much I’ve messed up. They’ll forgive me for lying to them. “Kami got tickets for the Cataclysm concert last night.”
At first Mom’s expression doesn’t change. Then her brows draw together in confusion, her eyes darting to the side as she connects the dots, and then widening with realization. Her face hardens, her lips pressing together in a flat line. “He’s back in town. Has he contacted you?”
I clear my throat. “Um. Yes, actually.”
Mom sets her glass on the table hard. “What? What did he want? Decide to be a man and live up to his obligations? I still can’t believe you haven’t gone after him for back child support. Especially with how much money he must have now.”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head. “Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?” she asks carefully. I don’t blame her. Those words have preceded several unpleasant conversations in the past, after all. “Should I call your father in?”
I shake my head. “Well, maybe. But he’s keeping Maddie entertained, and I don’t really want her in here for this.”
Mom’s shoulder slump and she rubs her forehead with her fingers. “What’s wrong, Samantha? Just spit it out so I know what we’re dealing with.”
“I never told Aaron about Maddie.”
The sound of Maddie’s giggles and Dad’s deeper voice answering carries from the living room, keeping us from being encased in silence as Mom just stares at me.
“I’m sorry, say that again?” Her voice is dangerously quiet. The kind of unnatural quiet that precedes a nuclear explosion.
I swallow against the dryness in my throat. “When I was pregnant. And you and Dad kept insisting that I needed to tell him. I never did. All this time, he had no idea that I’d kept the baby. When I first found out I was pregnant, I talked to him. And at the time, I’d decided to terminate the pregnancy. But then …” I turn my hand palm up on the table. “I scheduled the appointment. But when it came time to go, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t—” I choke on the tears threatening to break free and shake my head. With a slow breath in and out, I get my voice under control. “But I also couldn’t make Aaron give up his dreams. It was one thing for me to change my mind, to change my whole life, but I wouldn’t do that to him. So I never told him.”
Mom blinks at me, her expression, which had softened a shade when I got close to tears, hardens again. “But you sat right here at this very table with your father and me and told us that you’d called him. That you’d told him you’d decided to keep the baby. And you said that he wanted nothing to do with you.”
I nod. “I know.” Clearing my throat to get rid of the catch in my voice, I say it again. “I know. Yes. I did. I lied. I told you what you wanted to hear because I knew you wouldn’t let it go.”
Her nostrils flare as she inhales sharply, her chest expanding with her breath and her eyes flashing. “So instead you let us hate the father of our granddaughter, believing that the boy we’d gotten to know was really a selfish little shit unworthy of our time and love for the year you two were together.”
Meeting her eyes, I nod, keeping my voice calm despite the rising anger in hers. “Yes. I did what I thought was best.”
She leans over the table, pounding her index finger into the oak top. “You thought it was best to deprive your daughter of her father? You thought it was best to keep a young man you claimed to love in the dark about the fact that he is a father? And you thought it was best to lie to your father and me?”
I nod again. “I did.” I spread my hands in front of me. “I’ve already explained why. I understand that you don’t agree, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
As she deflates, Dad’s head pops through the doorway to our right. “Everything okay in here?”
Mom takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes, her face desolate when she looks at him, shaking her head no. “Why don’t you take Maddie downstairs to play for a bit. I’ll fill you in later.”
Dad looks between us before reaching down for Maddie’s hand. “Come on, sweet pea. Let’s head downstairs. You wanna bounce?”
My parents have a little rebounder trampoline downstairs that Maddie loves. She squeals and claps her hands. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Let’s bounce, Papa!”
I smile as they leave, but it quickly fades away as I face my mother again. She’s still angry. But she takes another deep breath to calm herself. “So what now? You said he contacted you. How?”
Sipping my water, I decide to go with the most simple and straightforward answer. Which is unfortunately more of a story than I think Mom would like right now, but she’ll want all the details eventually. “Kami surprised me with tickets to the Cataclysm concert. They have a song where they pull someone on stage and serenade her, and Kami shoved me forward and made enough of a commotion to draw the lead singer’s attention. He called me up. When the song was over, they had an intermission, and Aaron ushered me backstage, we chatted for a few minutes, and then he gave me backstage passes for after the concert.”
Mom gives me another hard look. “So did you tell him about Maddie at intermission or after the show? Or did you still think it best to lie to everyone and you’re just going to date him again without telling him he has a four-year-old daughter?”
Sighing, I slump in my chair. “I told him after the show.”
Mom raises an eyebrow. “And? What did he say?”
I snort. “First he demanded that I bring him to her right then. But since it was almost midnight, I convinced him to wait until today. He gave me his number and told me to text him when and where to meet.” Shaking my head at the memory of the fury etched on his face, I whisper, “He was so mad.”
Nodding, Mom purses her lips. “Well, at least that’s positive.”
“What? That he was furious with me? That he wanted me to drag a four-year-old out of bed in the middle of the night? Or that he was willing to wait until today?”
Mom waves a hand. “All of it, actually. If he weren’t mad, then we would’ve been right about him all along. Any sane man would be furious when faced with an ex having hidden his child from him. The fact that he wants to meet her is also good. He deserves the chance to be part of her life if he wants to.” She pins me with another glare. “And Maddie deserves to meet her dad.”
With a sigh, I nod. “I know, Mom.” She gives me a doubtful look. I resist the urge to roll my eyes and shake my head. “My goal was never to deprive my child of a father. But I don’t want someone sticking around out of a misguided sense of obligation. And I don’t want him thinking I’m popping up now just because I want money. Maybe it was wrong of me to keep Maddie from him all along, maybe it was wrong to lie to you, but if I hadn’t, he wouldn’t be where he is now. And I’m not sorry for that.” Standing, I forestall whatever Mom’s opening her mouth to say. “I’m tired. I don’t need a lecture about something that’s over and done with. You can yell at me more about it another time. Or take Maddie so Dad can. You can tag team me later, though. I need to take Maddie home and figure out what I’m going to tell her before we meet Aaron this afternoon.”
Mom rises to her feet, following me out of the kitchen. “You aren’t going to t
ell her the truth?”
I shrug. “I don’t know yet. All he said is that he wants to meet her. He’s in the middle of a tour, though. He’s not going to be around much. I don’t know if I want her to get attached if he’s only going to show up sporadically.”
“What if he wants more of a presence in her life than that? What if …?” Mom lets the question hang, but I’ve been imagining all the ways to finish it since last night. What if he wants shared custody? What if he wants to take her from me? What if …?
“I don’t know,” I whisper, afraid to give the response full voice. “I need to talk to him more. Find out what he’s thinking. He was too angry last night and stormed out after ordering me to text him.”
Mom nods, her hand on the knob of the door leading to the basement from the kitchen. “He might not even know what he wants yet.”
“Yeah. I guess we’ll all find out together.”
Chapter Nine
Aaron
Walking into the suburban McDonald’s is like taking a big step back into my childhood. It looks just the same as I remember. With a hat pulled low over my eyes and a two-day beard, I keep my head down, walk to the back, and push through the doors separating the play place from the main dining room.
A loud squeal makes me jerk in surprise, but I recover as fast as possible, gritting my teeth and heading for the corner booth where Samantha sits with a little girl with sandy blonde hair. The same color as Sam’s.
I touch the packet in my jacket pocket, reminding myself that I need to find a way to ask for the DNA sample to confirm paternity. I doubt it’ll go well, but Blaire made me promise before I left that I’d at least broach the subject.
We’re only in town until tomorrow. This leg of the tour is almost over, only two more weeks’ worth of shows. But that means today is my only chance to hammer out some details with Sam in person.
Everything I Want Page 5
