by Violet Howe
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen. And never been kissed. Hard to believe, huh?” I smiled, and he smiled back. “It was a whirlwind romance. It took off and grew way too serious, way too fast. I didn’t really know anything about him other than how he made me feel. I’d never felt that way before, and I thought it was love. It seemed like love, and we both said it was love, but what did I know? I was naive, and I had a medical condition at the time due to my extreme workouts and my low body weight that prevented me from having regular periods. I foolishly thought I couldn’t get pregnant if I wasn’t having a period. Sex wasn’t something my mother and I ever discussed. It wasn’t something the doctor brought up with me while my mom was in the room. And since I’d never been sexually active, I didn’t think to ask.”
If Dax was uncomfortable with me discussing my sex life in my youth, he didn’t show it. He sat and listened without any sign of judgment or surprise.
“Long story short, I found out I was pregnant with my son, Cabe, not long after I discovered that Gerry, Cabe’s father, was still very much married to a woman in New York.”
Dax’s eyes widened and his eyebrows lifted slightly as he sat back in the chair. “Whoa.”
“Yeah, a double-whammy.”
“How’d you find out he was married?”
I took a deep breath and looked back toward the pool, squinting at the orange glow of the sun setting beyond the fence. “My parents told me.”
“Really?” His eyes opened wider, and he gave a slight shake of his head. “That must have been an interesting conversation.”
“You could say that. My parents were upset that I was seeing a man they knew nothing about—actually I went to Aruba with him against their wishes—and my dad hired a private investigator. They told me the day I got home from Aruba, and I broke all contact with him immediately. It wasn’t until a couple of months and a whole lot of depression later that I realized I was pregnant.”
“What did he say when you told him?”
“Gerry?”
Dax nodded.
I picked at a loose thread on the seam of my pants, avoiding his eyes.
“I didn’t tell him. I had asked him not to call me again, and this was before the days of cell phones and social media and being able to see someone’s life from afar. I disappeared from my apartment and my life, and I assumed he went back home to Margot, the wife.” It was amazing how I still couldn’t say her name without it tasting bitter in my mouth, even after all the years that had passed. “I mean, obviously if he had wanted to find me, he could have. It wouldn’t have been hard to track down my parents, and he knew Sandy and Alberto, the best friends I lived with throughout my pregnancy.”
Dax looked surprised. “You didn’t live with your parents?”
“No. I hated the cloud of disappointment I’d cast over the house. Not only was I unwed and pregnant with a married man’s child, but I’d lost my position at the ballet company. Their daughter was no longer the talented up and coming ingenue worthy of massive life-size portraits hanging over the grand staircase in the foyer.”
His eyes darted to the bedroom door, outside which, said painting hung at the end of the hallway.
“Yeah. That painting,” I said, standing and walking over to look at it. “I came home one weekend, and it had been removed. I was replaced by a beautiful watercolor swan in a pool surrounded by an English garden.”
“Ouch,” he said as he came and stood behind me.
“My mother said she did it so it wouldn’t be a painful reminder for me, but I think it was more for them. They stood by me, though. Their love never wavered, but God, how it must have hurt them.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and bent to press his lips to the top of my head.
“Sounds like they weren’t the only ones who got hurt.”
I leaned back against his chest, reaching up to intertwine my fingers with his on my shoulder.
“Why do you keep it?” he asked.
I’d never really thought about why, and I stared at the portrait, trying to determine what masochistic pleasure I derived from seeing it every day.
“It reminds me, I suppose. It was in the attic when they packed up to move to the house where they live now. I asked Mom if I could have it, and of course, she said yes. I see it when I come down the hallway, and it reminds me of who I was. Of what I lost. That girl in the painting had no idea a firestorm was about to consume her and destroy everything she believed in. I look at her, and she reminds me to stay guarded. To not allow myself to ever get that close to anyone again.”
I’d been lost in the past as I spoke, but when I felt Dax stiffen, I realized who I was talking to and what my words would mean to him.
I turned in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean….”
He shrugged. “You were being honest.”
I stretched on my toes to reach his lips, and he returned my kiss, but his arms didn’t tighten around me, and his back remained stiff.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I’ve been completely preoccupied, and I didn’t even consider that you haven’t eaten.”
“I could eat,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”
“I’m not really up for going out, nor am I dressed for it,” I said, looking down at my lounge wear, “but we could order in. Chinese?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
He followed me to the kitchen, and I couldn’t help but notice his quiet demeanor, so out of character for him. I didn’t know if it was my comments about the painting or the facts I’d revealed, but something had him deep in thought. His eyes held a sadness that hadn’t been there before, and his gaze seemed to land anywhere but on me as he leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed.
I called the Chinese restaurant once we’d made our selections from the menu I kept in a drawer, and then I joined Dax at the kitchen table.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked.
He glanced in my direction and looked back down at his hands as he toyed with the napkin ring.
“Just processing.”
His silence made me nervous, and I wished I could see inside his head.
“You said when you began that Gerry is the kids’ dad. Your daughter and your son?”
I looked away from him and nodded. “Yes.”
“So, I’m assuming at some point he found out you were pregnant?”
I nodded again. “Yeah. At the very end of my pregnancy, someone told him. I never found out who, and I don’t know why he was in Miami at the time. But yeah. He knew about the baby, and he visited me in the hospital the day Cabe was born. In fact, Cabe is named after Gerry’s brother. I know that probably sounds insane considering the circumstances, but it was his kid, so I felt like it was the right thing to do.”
Confusion twisted Dax’s features. “So, you guys got back together? He left his wife?”
I took a huge breath and rubbed my hands over my face, wishing I could fast-forward past the worst parts of my life story.
“He stuck around for the first six months of Cabe’s life. No, we weren’t together then, but my dad’s attorney advised that Gerry had the right to see the baby, and if we wanted to avoid some kind of legal intervention with assigned visitation, I should let him come over. So I did. He brought diapers. He brought toys. He came every day for a while, and it was just too much. All the hurt, the anger. I was trying to adjust to a new life with a baby and the loss of the life I’d known. I couldn’t deal with that and be around him, too. I couldn’t get over what he’d done. So, we argued back and forth, and finally I asked him to leave town when Cabe was six months old. I told him it was too much of a reminder for him to be around, and that if he loved Cabe and wanted him to have any kind of stability, he should just go back to Margot and forget we existed.”
“And he did?”
I nodded with a shrug. “Yeah, but not for the reason I thought.”
Dax put up his hand.
“Wait, okay, was he still with the wife that whole time then? Where was she? Where did she think he was for those six months?”
I shrugged again. “God only knows. I think she was home in New York? I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t care at the time. I just wanted him gone. It was hell to have to share a child with someone who had ripped my heart from my chest, betrayed me in a huge way, and basically ruined my career.”
“I bet,” Dax said. He grew quiet again, and the unanswered question hung in the air between us.
“So, I guess you’re wondering how I ended up with Galen if Gerry left so easily.”
Dax looked at me, his expression unreadable. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. It was too late to turn back, and as embarrassing as it was, there was no way I could avoid telling Dax that getting pregnant with Cabe was not the biggest mistake I ever made. Getting pregnant with Galen was.
40 IN SEARCH OF HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Gerry may have gone back up north, but he didn’t leave me alone. He called continuously until we changed our phone number and got one that was unlisted. He wrote me letters that I threw in the trash unopened.
Eventually, I settled into some semblance of normality. I taught dance during the week, taking Cabe to work with me, and we visited my parents most weekends. They adored Cabe, and despite the dark cloud that had hung over his birth, they couldn’t get enough of him.
He was such an easy baby, and I didn’t feel like a single parent since I had Sandy and Alberto to help me at home.
But despite being surrounded by people all the time, I couldn’t shake the feeling of loneliness. My heart ached to love and be loved, and in the still of the night when everyone had gone to bed and the house was quiet, I cried myself to sleep more times than I cared to count.
That’s not to say that I didn’t have happiness in my life, or that I didn’t have love. I was rich with love shared with my friends, my parents, and my beautiful son.
I felt like something was missing, though, and I never could find peace with the way things had turned out.
The week after Cabe’s second birthday, I had taken him for a walk while Sandy and Alberto were performing in a Saturday matinee.
I noticed an unfamiliar car in our drive as we returned, and I slowed the stroller, uneasy about approaching without knowing who it was.
He had been sitting on the steps watching for me, and he stood and walked to the end of the drive as my hands tightened on the stroller and my stomach twisted in knots.
“Hello, Willow.”
He smiled this huge, enthusiastic smile, like he thought I would be excited to see him. He was wrong.
“What are you doing here, Gerry?”
He ignored the question, squatting in front of the stroller to talk to Cabe. “Hey, buddy. Do you remember Daddy? Do you? Daddy remembers you! And I’ve got good news for you, Cable. Daddy is never going to leave you again, okay?”
Panic gripped me, and I turned the stroller so that he couldn’t see Cabe. “What are you talking about? What’s going on, Gerry?”
He stood and smiled again. “I told you I’d fix it. I told you I’d make it right. I filed for divorce, Willow. I’m back. I can’t bear to live without you and Cable. I’ve rented a place here in Miami, and I’m going to prove to you that I deserve your love and your forgiveness. I’m going to be the father I always should have been.”
I pushed the stroller around him and glared as I passed. “You’re insane, and you’re wasting your time. We’re doing fine without you.”
He followed me up the drive undeterred.
“I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. But you’ll see. I’m going to make it up to you.”
I whirled around and got in his face. “You can’t make it up to me. There is nothing you can do or say that would come close. The only thing I feel for you is contempt. You’re not welcome here.”
None of that seemed to matter to Gerry.
At first, he would come and visit Cabe, lying on the floor to play with him or spending time on the playground Alberto had set up in the back yard.
It killed me that I couldn’t forbid him to be there without risking a court battle and losing all control over when he saw Cabe or how often.
After a while, he began to ask to take Cabe places, and I wasn’t comfortable letting him go alone, so the three of us spent even more time together.
I don’t know when the shift started. I don’t remember a specific time when my anger began to diminish or when I started being able to laugh in his presence. There’s no memory that stands out of things getting better or my stance against him softening.
It was gradual. It was the three of us always being together. It was seeing how much Cabe adored his father and how good Gerry was with him.
At some point, I stopped dreading his visits. I wouldn’t say I was looking forward to them—yet—but the nausea that would set in when I knew he was coming ceased.
He didn’t push the matter of a reconciliation. In fact, after that first day in the driveway, he never mentioned the possibility of there being an ‘us’ at all. He simply set about being the father I’d always dreamed of Cabe having, and I suppose in hindsight, that’s how he wore me down. Maybe it was purposeful, and maybe it was genuine and happened to work in his favor, but I couldn’t help wanting to see my child be happy.
My parents were unified with Sandy and Alberto in thinking that I spent way too much time with Gerry. They warned me not to fall for him again. Not to let myself be caught up in another web of deceit.
But for all appearances, he was telling the truth. He had an apartment that I was allowed to visit at any time without restriction. He was working out of an office in South Beach, and no matter when Cabe and I stopped by, he was there when he said he would be.
“Are you going to your parents’ this weekend?” Sandy asked when she saw me packing my bag.
“No, Gerry booked a place in the Keys. He wants to take Cabe to see the dolphins.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Sandy said. Her frown and her disapproval were both expected, but they still put me on the defensive.
“What do you want me to do, Sandy? Should I have him take my two-year-old to the Keys by himself?”
She bit her lip and looked away from me, and I went back to packing.
“I worry it’s all getting a little too cozy. You guys are spending so much time together, and even when he’s here, it’s like the three of you are a family or something.”
“Well, I suppose we are a family. A dysfunctional, untraditional family, but we are a family. A daddy and a mama and a baby.”
“You used to think of it as a mama and a baby, and then a daddy and a baby. A daddy who had lied to the mommy and cheated on his wife to get the mommy pregnant.”
Her words stung and knowing she spoke the truth only added salt to the wound.
“I’m doing the best I can, okay? This is certainly not the life I envisioned for myself, but it’s the life I have now. Cabe is happy. He has two parents who love him very much, and he has stability and normalcy. That is more than I could have hoped for when he was born.”
“But he can have those things without you and Gerry being together. People co-parent all the time.”
“And what if he’s telling the truth? What if we really were meant to be together, but he met and married the wrong person first? They got married young, and even he will tell you he was more in love with her money and her position in society than her. He gave all that up for us. He walked away from the money, the status, the power that the marriage brought him. He did that for me and Cabe. So, what if this is what’s supposed to happen?”
Sandy shook her head. “I think you’re reaching to try and make him fit into some princely mold so that you get the happily ever after in the end.”
“But what if you’re wrong and I’m right? What if all that pain—all that heartache—was just part of what we had
to go through to get to here? Wouldn’t everything I went through be worth it if it means we both know that we’re truly committed to each other and committed to Cabe?”
“Oh, Mags. You’re playing a dangerous game here. I don’t think he is who you want him to be, and I’m scared you’re setting yourself up to get hurt again. To be disappointed again. Then what happens to Cabe? When Gerry screws up and the two of you split again even more contentious than before, what happens to that precious boy then?”
I didn’t want to listen to her. I didn’t want her to be right. In fact, I wanted to prove them all wrong. I wanted to show them that I hadn’t been the fool.
If Gerry really did love me, and if we ended up spending the rest of our lives together as a family, then I hadn’t been a failure after all. Or at least that was my reasoning at the time.
“Look, I’m not saying that I’m going to move in with him next week or anything, okay? I’m taking it slow. Hell, he’s been back almost a year, and it’s not like I’ve jumped back in bed with him. I’m keeping my eyes open. I’m looking for any red flags. But is it so wrong for me to want Cabe to have his father in his life? And does it make me a terrible person if I want us to be a family? The way we should have been?”
“No, it doesn’t make you a terrible person. I think it’s natural and normal for you to want that. But this is not a natural and normal situation, Maggie. He failed to tell you he was married, and I’m pretty sure he failed to tell his wife he was screwing around with you.”
“I haven’t forgotten that. How could I? But she’s no longer in the picture.”
“Are you sure? Have you seen the divorce papers? Do you know for a fact that his marriage has ended?”
I zipped the duffel bag shut and dropped it on the floor. “It’s not final yet. But I’ve seen the papers. He definitely filed for divorce. Their lawyers are just hammering out asset division, so it’s taking a while.”
Sandy’s face registered her shock. “You told your parents it was final. You told me and Alberto it was final.”
“Because I knew all of you would freak out, and I had enough pressure on me just trying to get through day-to-day with Gerry back in our lives. It’s going to be final soon. The important thing is, he filed. He ended it. He moved back here, and he chose me and Cabe. That’s what really matters.”