by Jen Talty
Forcing a child on Reese would only continue the loveless cycle. All Patty wanted was an honest life. She could handle anything with an honest life.
Patty walked into the local greasy spoon, looking forward to a late breakfast with Lacy. She also looked forward to a big order of their soaked French toast with crispy bacon. What she hadn’t looked forward to were the questions from everyone in the restaurant about her experience at gunpoint, and the fact that the smell of grease and bacon made her stomach flip and flop.
“You must have been terrified,” the waitress said. “Is it true what they say? That your life flashes before your eyes.”
“Not really.” Patty didn’t feel bad at all about bursting this young girl’s fantasy. “But you do think about life.”
The waitress frowned, but then followed up with, “Bet you’re glad you didn’t get shot like that poor other guy.”
“I’m not glad anyone got shot,” Patty said.
“Can we order?” Lacy interjected.
The waitress frowned again, but took their order and stopped asking questions.
Finally, when their food was brought, people in the restaurant seemed to get the hint that she didn’t want to talk about it. “This the best French Toast ever.” Patty had shoved the bacon to the side, unable to even look at it with feeling as though she might loose her appetite.
“I know,” Lacy said. “Every time I come here, I gain five pounds.”
“It’s not too cold out. We could go for a walk,” Patty said.
“Your idea of cold and mine are two different things.” Lacy had lived in Vegas, and it had most definitely thinned her blood for the cold, as they say, though April in Lake George could be thirty and snowing, or fifty and sunny. Today it was forty-two and partly sunny, but it was a push in the right direction.
“Saw Reese at your place yesterday. What’s up with that?”
“Well, now that’s an interesting story.” Patty took a few more bites, then pushed aside her plate. “Seems I’m pregnant.”
“Holy shit,” Lacy said, dropping her fork in her plate.
Patty nodded.
“And how do you feel about it?”
“I’m scared, but happy.” Patty let a smile spread across her face. Even with all the chaos, she was happy.
“How’d Reese take that news?”
“Better than I excepted.” She believed, one hundred percent, that he was happy to be a father, but not that he wanted any kind of relationship with her. He didn’t seem to understand that being a father didn’t mean they had to be a couple.
“Does that mean you’re back together?” Lacy used to be a cynic and certainly didn’t believe in a happily-ever-after. A lot has changed over the course of a year.
“We were never really together to begin with, so that would be a no.”
“But he didn’t run out on you.”
The man that left her apartment yesterday wasn’t the man she thought knew. When he’d first come to town, there had been a bit of gossip about him. Patty knew quite a few women who’d tried to bed him with the intent of landing him. They had all failed.
Reese was discreet. Their relationship—and she decided it was something of a relationship—had never been on public display. “Nope. He suggested we move in together.”
Lacy laughed. “I’m kind of surprised he didn’t offer to marry you. He is the noble type.”
“When he said we needed to be a family, I asked him if he meant marriage. Should have seen the look on his face. It was like I’d kicked him where it counts.”
“But does he want to be a father?”
“I believe he does, but he seems to think being a couple is going to make or break a child’s happiness.”
“And you believe differently?”
Patty nodded. “I don’t want to be with a man who only wants to be with me because I’m carrying his child. I can’t live my life that way.”
“Have you really given him a chance?”
Lacy proposed a valid question, one that Patty wasn’t sure she could be totally honest about because she wasn’t sure if giving him a chance meant having her heart ripped to shreds, or having her kids heart broken. The former she could live with. The latter was a deal breaker. “I’m giving him a chance now.”
“No,” Lacy said. “You’ve given him the opportunity to run.”
“That is not...” Patty knew Lacy was right. Patty had set up the entire conversation so that Reese could walk away and not feel guilty. She let out a long sigh. “When he didn’t high tail it out of my apartment, I did tell him to go think about things. That’s something of a chance.”
“Yeah. A chance to run. It sounds like that is what you want. Or maybe expect and the idea he’d do anything different freaks you out.”
“Could you take my side on this?” Patty let out a puff of air.
“I am,” Lacy said. “Perhaps its time for you to take a risk and let him in.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Patty admitted.
“I think you owe that to your baby.”
Patty wanted a happy, healthy environment for her child. From the second she found out she was pregnant, she loved the baby more than anything in the world. “I don’t want my child to feel like I did when my mother ran out. It took years of very expensive therapy to get over that one.”
“You have no idea what things will be like in twenty years. If I had continued to live my life with that kind of thinking, I wouldn’t be here right now. There are no guarantees in life.”
“I understand, but I’m not making the same mistakes my parents made.”
“All right,” Lacy said. “Tell me. How do you really feel about Reese?”
That was a loaded question, one Patty wasn’t sure she could answer honestly, and not just to Lacy, but to herself. “He’s a good man but no one is close to him,” Patty said. “I once asked him about his family, and he said he didn’t have a family. I asked him what happened, because everyone has parents, and he just shrugged and changed the subject. He’s more than a private person. He’s downright secretive.” That worried Patty more than anything else. Having a child with him, without knowing about all of him, scared Patty. Secrets hurt people. She didn’t want her child to be hurt by his or her own father.
“Why didn’t you push him to tell you?” Lacy asked.
“Honestly, I didn’t want to know. It was supposed to be a fling.”
“But you have feelings for him.”
She might feel something for Reese, as the father of her baby, but she couldn’t risk her heart, or their baby’s on a man who not only had secrets, but didn’t want to ever have a family to begin with. People don’t change that quickly.
If at all.
Reese wondered what was worse, the hangover or waking up in his boss’s house, at noon, with no recollection of how he got there.
He opted for the latter, based on Jared’s expression at the lunch table.
They didn’t speak much while Jared’s wife and three children ate their lunches. Reese politely answered questions from Caitlyn, Jared’s inquisitive daughter while distracting the twins, who constantly tried to get Reese’s attention and played peek-a-boo with each other. He thanked Ryan, Jared’s wife, for her hospitality, then tried to explain hospitality to Caitlyn while his pounding headache continued to wreck havoc on his ability to think straight. Lucky for him, the television in the family room seemed more interesting to the children than the still-drunk man in the kitchen, and they quickly left to watch their favorite movie.
Reese held his head high, though he wanted to drop it in shame. Rarely did he ever drink to the point of no return. Not only did he dislike being out of control, but it brought back certain childhood memories that he would rather forget.
“You need to drink that water,” Ryan said. “If you can stomach it, you should really eat that insanely greasy egg, sausage, bacon, and cheese sandwich I made. Instant hangover cure.”
“I can attest to that,
” Jared said. “She used to have to make me those all the time, before we got together.”
Reese wanted to ask why, since Jared wasn’t the biggest drinker on the planet, but between cotton-mouth and the fear of losing his cookies, he opted for another sip of water then forced down a small bite of the greasy sandwich. Odd how that worked; it did ease the cramping and gurgling of his intestines, but nothing could ease his mind about the woman that carried his child. He’d acted liked a stupid teenager when she’d told him, reverting back into the dark place he’d lived for so long until he took the job as a State Trooper and met Patty.
She had changed so much of his life. He thought about other people in a way he hadn’t done so in years. The timber of her laugh made his heart sore. Her smile made it skip a beat. Everything about her made him want to be a better man. Only, he fought it every step of the way. Truth be told, he was still fighting. “I’m sorry,” he managed. “It was a rough night.”
“What do you remember?” Jared asked. He’d pushed his plate aside and was now leaning back in his chair, swirling the cup of hot coffee his wife had poured, acting like some father dealing with a teenager who’d gotten drunk for the first time. “I remember being at the Mason Jug, drinking heavily, but that’s about it.” Stupid way to react to being a father, but it wasn’t being a father that scared him.
Being without Patty was what screwed with his mind. He hadn’t been prepared to face that, much less deal with it before being transferred.
Ryan excused herself, then left the kitchen, closing the old-fashioned swinging door to the family room.
“My brother-in-law owns the bar. He called me when you picked a fight with him when he took your car keys.”
“I kind of remember that,” Reese said, embarrassed. “I wasn’t going to drive. I wanted to sleep it off.”
“Not the point,” Jared said. “He takes it personally when someone, especially one of my troopers, calls him a few choice names.”
“I will make sure I apologize,” Reese said, trying to recall as many of the evening’s events as he could, but most memories came to him in a drugged, dreamlike state, making it impossible for him to trust any single one.
“The incident at Conrad’s office?”
Reese nodded, though that wasn’t really the truth, and he wondered if he would have acted differently during the crisis if he’d known about the baby before the kill shot. The baby changed everything. “I suspect the shooting isn’t what has you so twisted inside.”
Reese took another small bite of the sandwich, keeping his gaze on the plate. Jared was only fifteen years older, tops, but a million years wiser. He was like the old man down the street that knew everything, loved everyone, and was loved by all. A long silence passed. Reese wasn’t sure what to say, or how to say it. Jared didn’t let him off the hook, either.
“I know you and Patty were somewhat of an item, but you broke up?” Jared phrased it as a question, as if he didn’t know the details, and Reese knew damn sure knew he did. Jared knew things about people because Jared was in tune with the world around him. A people whisperer. Reese had enjoyed working under Jared, but it was also unnerving. Jared didn’t pry often, but when he did, he was always on the mark.
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s a cop-out,” Jared said. “And what you did yesterday is more powerful because you care about her.”
“Been there. Done that. Bought the T-shirt,” Reese said. He knew it was a flippant response, but until he found Jessica and properly divorced her, it was the only response anyone would get. He couldn’t expect Patty to start a life with him when he was already married, and he didn’t see the point in upsetting her any more, considering all she’d been through. Until he had his ducks in a row, he would take things one-step at a time.
That would be an interesting change of pace.
“When your personal life interjects itself on the job, it affects us. That’s a reality.”
“It is personal, but it’s not going to affect how I do my job. How I did my job.”
“All right,” Jared said. “Is there something you want to ask me?”
“Why do you say that?”
Jared let out a short laugh. “You told me to revoke your transfer last night.”
“I don’t remember that,” Reese admitted, “but can you?”
“I can, but you need to answer me a few curious questions first.”
Reese took another bite. This one going down much easier than the last. Ryan had been right about the sandwich. His head no longer pounded and the ache in his stomach subsided. “Ask me anything. I’ll answer.” He knew he should be opening up to Patty, but this was a start.
“When I picked you up, you were rambling on some crazy shit about your mother and father, and how you don’t know who your father was and how unfair that was.”
“I guess I was pretty hammered.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Jared said. “I thought your father was in jail.”
“He’s not my biological father, according to my mother.” Reese pushed his plate aside. He hadn’t told anyone about his family in years. He’d been ashamed. Didn’t matter it wasn’t his fault, but the little boy inside believed everything he touched went to hell in a handbasket, as his mother had told him on numerous occasions. She’d even said his real father wouldn’t have wanted him anyway. “Some current events have roused some emotional baggage from childhood.”
“Ryan had it really rough as a kid. Her stepfather beat her mother to death. It’s not something you go around talking about with everyone you meet. So I understand. But last night you said how easy it was to fuck up a kid’s life without even trying, and no way in hell would you be doing that, and Patty was just going to have to suck it up.”
“Oh.” Reese didn’t remember a thing about that. “What, exactly, did I say?”
Jared leaned forward and stared at him. “You told me Patty was pregnant.”
Reese sat in silence, contemplating those words and the shock he still felt. “Probably shouldn’t say anything to anyone since I just found out last night and, well…that conversation didn’t end well.”
“Frank’s going to come after you with a shotgun,” Jared said. “It won’t be loaded, but he’ll enjoy watching you sweat.”
“You’re not funny.” Reese knew Frank wasn’t going to be upset over the baby, but the marriage? That might be an entirely different story. Reese needed to take care of that right quick.
“I have my moments,” Jared said, “but all kidding aside, this is some big shit, and the plan you laid out for me last night isn’t the answer.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“This isn’t about manning up and doing the right thing.”
“I’m not running out on them,” Reese said.
“I understand that, but expecting her to suck it up and move in with you isn’t going to work, either. I take it that’s why last night’s conversation with her didn’t end well.”
“This isn’t your business.” Reese knew he was being rude, and worse, rude to his boss, in his boss’s own home, but he had barely digested the situation himself. The last thing he needed was Jared up his jock.
Or maybe it was exactly what he needed.
“You made it my business,” Jared said sternly. “Both you and Frank are like family, and I also have a station to run, and the last thing I need is a shit-ton of drama from the two of you.”
“I don’t mean to put you in an uncomfortable situation.”
Jared arched one brow, while tilting his head to the side. “You’re joking, right? I pick your ass up while you’re babbling all sorts of crazy shit. You sleep on my couch and all you got is ‘you don’t mean to put me in an uncomfortable situation?’ That shit isn’t going to fly anymore.”
Reese nodded, knowing he’d have to be honest with Jared about everything. Even if it meant opening up a vein full of old wounds.
“Answer me this,” Jared said. “Do you, deep down,
truly know you want the baby?”
Reese admired Jared’s directness, but he didn’t always know how to respond to it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the baby. He’d vowed no child of his would be fatherless.
After Jessica, he disconnected his heart. He promised himself he’d never love again. He would never have children. He would live out his life without allowing that kind of pain. He hadn’t know what a lonely that existence was until just now.
“It was unexpected,” Reese said, “but yeah, I want the baby. Very much so.” He wanted Patty. But one thing at a time.
“Ryan,” he yelled. “Reese and I are heading out for a while.”
Reese waited out by the Jared’s SUV while Jared kissed his wife and children goodbye. Ryan was a good ten years younger than Jared. Reese had heard some stories about them, but ultimately, they were the ‘it’ couple. The couple that beat the odds. The couple by which all other couples were measured.
Reese suddenly felt very small. Insignificant in the scheme of things. Being in a child’s life, and being its father, were two entirely different things.
And he had never experienced either one.
“Where are we going?” Reese asked.
“Just follow me.”
Reese got in his beat up old Ford and did as instructed. At first, he thought they were headed to the station, but Jared made a turn off the main road, and then a few more, into an unfamiliar section just north of the village.
Jared pulled into a cemetery. Reese got out of his truck then followed him down a winding path, covered in melting snow, to a tombstone. Both men remained silent.
Reese read the words on the tombstone: Johnny Blake.
“My son,” Jared said.
Reese felt his heart slow as he held his breath for a long moment. A slow chill crept up his spine. He couldn’t even imagine what might have happened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you and Ryan had another child.” Living with that kind of loss every day had to be impossible, yet Jared was the strongest, kindest man Reese had ever met. There were no words, but he said once again, “I’m sorry.”
