by Dana Nussio
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Aiden said, and then wiggled until she lowered him to his feet. “But I left a note. Just like you do when I go to Nadia’s.”
“I saw that,” she said, though technically she hadn’t seen it. “That doesn’t make it okay. You should have asked Nadia or me first.”
“You would have said no.”
None of them could argue with that, and Jamie appreciated that she didn’t try. Until today, she wouldn’t answer his texts, let alone have agreed to allow her son to go over for a visit.
“We can talk about this tomorrow,” she said. “It’s late.”
“But I’m so cold.” He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered visibly. “And I’m hungry. Can we get food?”
Sarah shook her head. “We should just get home.”
“Well, you know,” Jamie began. “I do live right by here. If it’s okay with your mom, we can get some hot cocoa and a snack at my place.”
Then before either of them had the chance to answer, he pointed to Aiden. “But you may come to my house only if you promise never to visit without your mom again.”
“I promise. Now can we, Mom? I’m freezing.” He chattered his teeth for effect.
Jamie braced himself for Sarah’s coming denial. Not only had she rejected every offer he’d made to her, but this particular one would reward Aiden’s bad behavior. Still, he’d had to ask. His insides were scrambled from the past few hours, and he could use some hot cocoa as much as they could. And no matter what he’d found out about Sarah, and what secrets she hadn’t shared and maybe never would, he still wanted to be with her.
As she hesitated in responding, he frowned into the darkness. Again, he’d pushed her into a corner. And again, he’d made her be the bad guy with her son.
“Okay.”
He turned to face her, wishing Aiden would have picked that moment to aim his flashlight on his mother’s face. “Okay?”
“Really, Mom?”
She nodded, her expression and her secrets still hidden beneath the cover of night. “But just for a little while.”
Chapter 15
Sarah shifted her sleeping son’s head and her tingling arm to make them both more comfortable as they cuddled together on a reclining end of Jamie’s overstuffed sofa. With Jamie’s brown tabby, Pancake, sleeping on the cushion behind their heads and a fleece blanket covering them both, Aiden burrowed deeper into her as if he needed to be as close as possible to her. She felt the same way about him tonight.
She could have lost him. Just the thought of it robbed her of her breath. She brushed her hand over the blanket and tucked the toy dolphin under his arm, Aiden’s warmth radiating through the cloth, assuring her that he was safe.
“He doesn’t look like a boy who’s just survived a harrowing night,” Jamie said from the second recliner on the sofa’s other end.
He grinned as he leaned to set his mug on one of the cork coasters spaced along the coffee table.
“He’ll get over it a long time before I do.” She shook her head and smiled back at him. “Before we do.”
His head sank back against the cushiony backrest. “You got that right. But I bet he won’t sneak out again anytime soon.”
“He’d better not.”
“Good thing his biggest disappointment about tonight will be that he fell asleep before he had the chance to drink his cocoa with marshmallows.”
Jamie brushed Aiden’s hair from his eyes in a caress so sweet and gentle that Sarah could almost feel it against her own head. Almost wished she had.
“Why is it that kids’ hair is always sweaty when they sleep?” He gestured toward the boy’s mess of blond hair. “Strange how that’s one of my earliest memories of Mark, brushing back his damp hair as he slept in his toddler bed.”
“I don’t know, but this one sweats like crazy.” She pushed her son’s hair off his forehead again and then cleared her throat. “Mark was lucky to have you for a big brother.”
They shared meaningful look, and then he took a sip of his cocoa.
“Sure you don’t want me to move him to my guest room?” He turned so he faced her, one knee resting on the sofa cushion. “You look so uncomfortable.”
“I don’t mind. Besides, I can’t let him go just yet.” She closed her eyes, but when horrific images appeared to her, she had to open them again. “I can’t stop thinking about what could have happened.”
“But nothing did. He’s safe. You both are.”
She shook her head, tears welling again, though she’d already shed many since they’d located Aiden. Once she knew he was okay. Only then, once the crisis was over, had she allowed the horrible possibilities that had been dogging her all night to swallow her.
“It could have been—”
“But it wasn’t. You got lucky. We both did.”
“Because of you.” She shifted taller in the seat, and Aiden’s head rolled forward, coming to rest on her lap. “I might never have found my son tonight without you. Thank you...for bringing him back to me.”
Her voice faltered on the last, but she couldn’t help it. He’d returned the most important person in her world to her.
“You’re forgetting that it was also because of me that Aiden was out at night in the first place.” His head lowered. “I should have known better than to give him even a hint about where I lived.”
“Learn to accept a thank-you, will you?”
He looked up again. “I’ll try.”
“You never told me what the note said.”
She pointed with her free arm toward his pants pocket, where he’d tucked it hours before.
“Oh. That.” He dug it out and unfolded it. “I didn’t figure it would be helpful for you to see it at the time.”
He handed it to her, and she read it aloud. “‘Dear Mom.’ He spelled it D-E-E-R. Anyway, he wrote, ‘I went to Mr. Jamie’s house. You always say no. Love Aiden.’”
She swallowed as she read it again.
“I guess it wasn’t only your fault. Apparently, I’m a horrible parent who says no.” She folded it again and tossed it on the table. “It was good that I didn’t see it then.”
“He obviously went to great lengths to spend time with me.” Jamie paused as if carefully considering his next words. “I wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t needed me.”
“Yeah, I got your text.” She stared at her hand that rested on Aiden’s shoulder, while trying to come up with the right words. What could she say that would make things right? She went with the simplest version. “I’m so sorry. For everything.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie. At least not really.”
“I know you did. I looked all of it up, and none of it checks out. Prison records. Divorce records. Birth records. I couldn’t find anything about Michael and Sarah Cline. Or even Aiden. Why would you make up some elaborate lie? What did I do to deserve that?”
Each of his accusations burned her far deeper than if he’d raised a hand to her. It would have been easier if he had. At least she would have known how to react to that, would have allowed the muscle memory to take over, the survival instinct to choose flight over fight. Always flight. But this was new to her. This time she’d caused the hurt that was so evident in his words. The betrayal had been hers.
“You didn’t,” she answered, in a roughened voice that even she didn’t recognize.
“I didn’t do what?”
“Deserve it.” She pressed her lips together, gathering the courage to tell the truth. The whole truth this time. “And you can confirm that everything I said was true. You were just looking under the wrong names.”
“Names? What are you talking about, Sarah? Wait. Is that even your name?” He didn’t give her time to answer before continuing. “I knew it! From the beginning, I knew it wasn’t normal to have no credi
t history. No vehicle. No social-media presence. But I told myself there was a simple explanation. And there was. You’re not who said you are.”
“Let me explain. Please.”
“Why would I believe you?”
Aiden startled in his sleep at Jamie’s raised voice, so he tried again in a lower voice. “How would I know that whatever you were telling me wasn’t just another lie?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but then lifted and lowered her shoulders. He was right. He couldn’t believe anything she said.
He blew out a breath. “Who is Sarah Cline, anyway?”
“Sarah was my great-aunt, my dad’s favorite aunt. We were very close. She died right after Aiden was born.”
“And you assumed her identity.”
“With her blessing, though I know it doesn’t make it right.”
“Or less of a crime.”
She nodded and then waited for him to ask. Even with the inevitability of his question, she couldn’t bring herself to volunteer the name she’d kept hidden all this time.
“If you’re not Sarah Cline, then who are you?”
“Maria,” she choked out. “Maria Brooks.”
She waited for him to call her a liar again. But she wouldn’t allow herself to look away. She’d kept her secrets for so long, and now she couldn’t bear it if he didn’t believe her.
“Brooks is your married name?”
He sounded so detached that she almost expected him to pull out his notebook and to interview her the way he would a suspect. Was she one? Would he feel honor-bound to arrest her now that she’d confessed to a crime?
“Yes. My maiden name was Norris. Maria Sarah Norris Brooks.”
“Maria,” he whispered, and then frowned.
Was he frustrated with himself for trying the name out, or did he think it didn’t fit her? It didn’t sound right in her ears anymore, either. No longer matched with the person she’d become.
“Please just call me Sarah. It will confuse Aiden. And Maria doesn’t seem like who I am anymore.”
He nodded. “It really is your middle name?”
“Dad adored his aunt and had insisted on naming me after her. Aunt Sarah never had children of her own but always thought of me as the daughter of her heart.”
“Your ex?”
“Michael Brooks. You’ll find him at Danville Correctional Facility.”
“What about him?” He nodded to the sleeping boy in her lap.
She shook her head, though he hadn’t specifically asked if Aiden was his name.
“It’s close,” she whispered. “His real name is Andrew.”
She brushed her fingertips over his soft little cheek. “He doesn’t remember being called anything else.”
“He looks more like an Aiden,” Jamie said.
He asked a few more questions, and she gave as many details as she could, aware that he would check out each of them as soon as he dropped her off at her apartment. This time he would confirm that she was telling the truth.
For several minutes, Jamie said nothing, as if taking time to absorb all the things she’d told him. If she’d believed that admitting the truth would be like an appointment in the confessional, where she could find absolution for her sins, she’d been kidding herself. She felt no relief from the shame. She hated that she’d lied to Jamie, had given him reasons to assume that she was incapable of telling the truth.
When the silence stretched too long, she found herself trying to fill the void with words. Any words. “I thought everything would be okay after the divorce, but the judge granted court-ordered visitation. For a baby and his monster father. I just couldn’t let that happen.”
“So, you skipped out on a court order and have been living under an alias.” He pinned her with his stare. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could be in? And what you’ve confessed...to me?”
“I’m so sorry. Like I said, I never should have involved you.” She leaned down and pressed her cheek against her son’s head. But when she sat up again, she met his gaze, unrepentant. “I had no choice but to disappear and start a new life.”
“You always have a choice. And because of your choices, there could be a warrant out for your arrest right now for failure to comply to a visitation order. Not to mention the consequences you could face for identity theft. Even if you didn’t hurt anyone.”
She shook her head, refusing to give in. “I’d do it again, too. I couldn’t let him near my son. And my body’s going to have to be stretched out at the morgue before he’ll ever get another chance—”
“Another?” Jamie tilted his head to the side. “Earlier, you said he had your baby again when you thought Aiden had been taken.”
She could only give a stiff nod and brace herself for Jamie to put words to the truth that she’d buried in the deepest part of her heart. A truth she never admitted to anyone, even Tonya, though her friend probably had suspected.
“The baby you lost—that wasn’t a miscarriage, was it?”
Baby. The word no one had wanted to use at the time. As if they could explain it away by using clinical terms. Those only stole the humanity of her child. Now Jamie’s use of that elusive word made her eyes burn and caused her throat to thicken with memories of the life that never was.
“I don’t know.” She shivered, chilled despite the blanket and the child draped across her lap. “I might have miscarried, even if it hadn’t happened.”
“What did happen?”
“We’d been arguing for days. He’d already shaken me a few times, but that night he pushed me, and I landed on my side on the bed. I thought it was no big deal.”
“How soon after that did you miscarry?”
“I started cramping the next morning. A few hours later it was...over.” Her voice wobbled on the last word as that horrible day replayed in her thoughts.
“Did you tell the doctor what really happened?”
“What do you think?”
He shook his head. He’d probably taken many statements from domestic-assault victims who’d covered for their abusers. She’d once been one of them.
“It could have been the stress of all the fighting or the fall. Or neither of those things. We’ll never know for sure.”
“How do you move on from something like that?”
“I did what I had to do,” she said with a shrug. “I just went through the motions, knowing I would never be the same. I was a mother without a child. And unlike some parents, who don’t know who to blame for their loss, I knew, whether I could prove it or not.
“I didn’t leave then. I was still too scared to try. But a secret part of me never forgave him, either. My child deserved at least that much.”
Jamie reached out and brushed his hand over her shoulder a few times and then squeezed once before withdrawing. Though Pancake used that opportunity to lean her head in for a pet from her owner, it was all Sarah could do to keep herself from begging him to touch her again.
“I’m trying to understand. Really, I am. But you stayed with him for years after that. Years. You even had another...you had Aiden with him after that.”
Though his body was still turned toward her, Jamie looked away then and reached for his mug.
“You don’t know what you’ll be willing to endure when you don’t believe you’re worth more than that. Or how you can cling to even the most destructive relationship if you think it’s all you’ll ever have.”
He turned back to her without ever retrieving the mug.
“How could you ever have thought that?”
“You can believe anything if you hear it enough times.”
“Then I’m going to tell you again, you deserve more. Better. You and Aiden both do.”
“You did say that.”
She chuckled as she spoke, but the sound caught in her throat as hi
s hand returned to her shoulder, his fingers splayed over the whole of it. He stared at her with the kind of surety that she’d never had about anything in her life.
“And I meant it. Now you have to believe it.”
“I want to.” It was the best she could do; he had to understand that. But she had one more question to ask, and his answer to it would affect everything else from this point on.
“You said I deserve more. Do you also believe that I should go to prison for what I’ve done? That I should lose my son, when all of it was to protect him?”
She expected him to pull away now, to remove both his hand and his support this time, as he remembered who he was and what he was obligated to do. The thought of it nearly closed off her throat. What would happen to Aiden if she couldn’t be there to put her own body between him and his father...if Michael was ever released? Would her child become a ward of the state or end up in a situation worse than the one she’d tried to escape?
It felt like an eternity waiting for Jamie’s answer. The guillotine lifted high above her head, awaiting the signal to drop. She shouldn’t have told him the truth, just like she shouldn’t have let herself feel anything for him. Now it was too late to take back either of those things. Too late to stuff the words back in her mouth and tuck those feelings deep inside her heart where they couldn’t harm her and her son couldn’t be hurt as collateral damage.
“No. I don’t.”
She blinked and stared at his hand, still firmly resting on her shoulder.
“How do you know I’m not lying now? That I didn’t make up everything I’ve said to you?”
“I don’t,” he repeated. “And yet I do.”
“Then what will you do now? Besides check out my story.”
Jamie shrugged, but the side of his lips lifted. At least he didn’t bother denying that part.