Sins of Sevin

by Penelope Ward

  While Lance and Olga knew that Evangeline was getting divorced and living with Addy, no one had yet told Lance that he had a granddaughter. Certainly, no one told him who the father of said granddaughter was. For the time being, it was better that way.

  Evangeline knew I had gone to see Rose that first time, but she had no clue that I returned to Spearville twice a week after work. She made it clear that she was opposed to the idea of my disrupting Rose’s life in any way. But I just needed to see my daughter. Rose’s games were my own private time with her. So private, the poor little girl didn’t even know about it. No one got hurt this way.

  Until the one day I slipped and unintentionally revealed myself.

  It started out just like any other Thursday. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was starting to go down over the grassy field that was filled with five and six-year-old T-ball players and their parents. Some people set up folding chairs while others hung out on the bleachers.

  I assumed my spot on the top row with my travel mug of coffee. There was so much waiting involved with that sport. I’d spend every second of it watching her, whether she was just staring into space, giggling with the other kids or actually playing. Whenever she’d step up to the plate, my heart would do flips. Filled with pride, I’d always stand up so that I could see her better. It was amazing what she could do with one arm. She’d whack the ball with her one right arm and run to first base. She’d hit it on the first try almost every time. The cheers for her were always the loudest. I had to give the Simonsens credit for putting her in a sport that would defy her disability. They could have stuck to soccer or something where she didn’t have to use her arm, but clearly they wanted to show her that she could do anything if she put her mind to it.

  A stray ball made its way to the corner of the field near where I was sitting. For some reason, Rose separated from everyone to go after it. A rush of adrenaline hit me. My heart was pounding faster with every step she took toward me. She’d never travelled in my direction before. The ball ended up rolling toward the bleachers. She went in search of it.

  Unsure of whether it was the right thing to do, I walked down the bleachers and made my way behind them to where she was looking for the ball. She was tiny. She shouldn’t have been back there by herself. What if I were a bad person? And why hadn’t anyone noticed her leave the game?

  “Do you need help?”

  “I’m looking for a ball.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, cherishing the moment of hearing the sound of her sweet little voice clearly for the first time. It travelled through me and squeezed at my heart.

  “I’ll help you find it.”

  She followed me around behind the bleachers. There was no sign of any ball.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s back here.”

  “Okay.”

  She started to walk away.

  I wasn’t ready to let her go. “Wait.”

  She stopped and turned around.

  I took a long look at her confused little doe eyes. I smiled upon realizing that even though she was the spitting image of me, her eyes were actually brown like Evangeline’s.

  “Do me a favor, okay? Don’t wander away like that anymore. And don’t talk to strangers. I’m a good guy, but not everybody is. You should never follow anyone anywhere, especially when there are no other adults around.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s alright. Just don’t do that again, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She started to walk away again. I was struggling with my emotions because I didn’t want to let her go. My eyes wandered to the left and suddenly landed on a bright white softball sitting on the grass.

  “Rose!” I called out.

  She turned around.

  “I found the ball! It’s over here.” I ran over to pick it up then walked over to where she was waiting, knelt down and handed it to her.

  “How did you know my name?”

  Shit.

  “Wild guess. You look like a rose maybe?”

  “Thank you for the ball.”

  Thank you for existing.

  I stayed kneeling, waiting for her to leave. For some reason, she didn’t. She just stayed there looking into my eyes. It was like some weird cosmic connection that could only exist between a parent and a child. Something came over me, and against my better judgement, I lifted my hands to her face and pulled her toward me, kissing her forehead. My palms remained wrapped around her cheeks. In that moment, an epiphany came to me. It was the answer to the one question I’d spent my entire life asking. I finally knew my purpose, what I was put on this Earth for, why I was allowed to live when my mother died. I was born to give life to this precious human being.

  I must have gotten carried away in my thoughts because I’d forgotten my hands were still on her face. The next thing I knew I heard footsteps, followed by a man’s voice.

  “Hey! Get off of my daughter!”

  I jumped back.

  He knelt down and placed his hands on her shoulders. “What did this man do to you?”

  “Nothing, Daddy. He just helped me find my ball. Then, he kissed me.”

  His eyeballs nearly popped out of his head as he slowly turned to me.

  Holding my hands up, I pleaded, “It’s not what you think.”

  “My daughter disappeared from the field, she turns up with a strange man who kissed her, and it’s not what I think! It’s not what I think? You’ll be telling that to the police!”

  “Mr. Simonsen…Robert…” I said.

  He squinted. “How do you know my name?”

  I couldn’t say it in front of Rose, but I needed to explain myself if I didn’t want to be carted off to jail. “My name is Sevin Montgomery. You know Olga Sutton…”

  He released his grip on her. “Rose, go back to your coaches.” She hesitated to leave, looking between him and me. “Go on!” he yelled. She glanced at me one more time before running toward the other players. When Rose was out of earshot, he looked at me. His voice lowered. “What about Olga Sutton?”

  “Five years ago, Olga Sutton arranged the adoption of my child without my knowledge.”

  “That’s insane. Olga’s daughter didn’t even know who the father was.”

  “It was a lie. I’m the father.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “Look at my face, then look at Rose, and tell me I can’t prove it.”

  CHAPTER 25

  EVANGELINE

  Addy was pressing her uniform in preparation for the grand reopening next week. A loud whooshing sound escaped from the iron as she let some steam out onto the thick navy material. “Have you heard from him?”

  I was sitting on a stool watching as she took each wrinkle out. “No. Not since last Thursday night. The more days that go by, the more I’m seriously starting to worry that we’ll never be able to repair our relationship.”

  It had been nearly a week since Sevin’s last visit to Addy’s. While he’d been helping her with the business side of the reopening through emails mostly, he was keeping his physical distance from me.

  Last week, though, he’d come over to confess what happened with Rose’s adoptive father at the baseball field. I had no clue he’d been going to Spearville every week. It helped explain his temporary absence from my life. Sevin’s resilience was not a surprise. Even though I’d made it known that I felt it was a bad idea for him to confront the Simonsens, I knew that it was inevitable.

  Apparently, when Sevin made his identity known that day, Robert Simonsen softened, begging and pleading with him to stay out of Rose’s life, pointing out that it would devastate the little girl to discover that everything she knew to be true was a lie; Rose obviously had no clue that she was adopted. Robert told Sevin that if he really cared about Rose, he wouldn’t try to disrupt her life. Sevin left Spearville feeling defeated and confused, especially since having the close contact with her had only reinforced his feelings of unconditional love and attachment. At the
same time, he felt a responsibility to protect her from getting hurt. The situation was left unresolved for the time being.

  Not a day went by when I didn’t think of Rose. The fact that they’d kept the name I’d chosen for her both broke and warmed my heart at the same time. Sevin was a lot stronger than I was, because I couldn’t even bear to see her face, knowing what I did.

  Addy now knew the whole truth about my time away and the reasons behind it. She spent almost every day trying to encourage me not to give up on a future with Sevin.

  Fluffing out her newly pressed uniform, she hung it up and took a seat. “Five years of damage is not going to undo itself easily. This is going to be a battle you may have to fight for a very long time. You betrayed him. But guilt and self-punishment are a waste of energy. Let me ask you this. Why did you stay married to that donkey for so long?”

  God bless Addy for always finding a way to make me laugh under the worst circumstances. I chuckled at her use of that term to describe Dean, who luckily had left me alone and was cooperating with the divorce. The threat against his marijuana operation apparently worked.

  “Primarily, it was out of fear that Dean would find my family and tell them about the pregnancy, but it was also because I felt like I didn’t deserve any better after both betraying my sister and giving Sevin’s and my baby away. At my worst, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live anymore. My depression made me indifferent about things, especially the marriage. The stripping, too, was just another display of my own self-loathing and lack of respect for myself.”

  “Okay…so you spent all of these years focusing on self-punishment, which really got you nowhere. I’d say you put enough time and energy into that, wouldn’t you? It’s time to find your inner-strength—we all have it. Sometimes, it gets buried by fear, depression…all the negative stuff. It’s time to focus your energy instead on getting your life back—getting Sevin back—if that’s what you want.”

  “Of course, it’s what I want. How do I do it, though, if I’ve shattered his trust?”

  “You don’t do it by sitting around focusing on guilt and shaming yourself, baby girl. He needs to know that you’re strong, here for the long haul, that even when he’s trying so hard to punish you with distance, that you’ll be waiting for him when he’s ready.”

  “But what if he can never forgive me for giving Rose away?”

  “It took two people to create that precious baby. Don’t undermine his own sense of responsibility in all this. Yes, he’s mad that you made a decision without including him, but he’s also angry at himself. He’s admitted that he feels guilty for not being more careful with you, for getting you into that predicament in the first place. I can’t guarantee you that he can get over it completely. Sometimes, we don’t get over painful things, we just learn to live with them.”

  Addy was so wise. She always made me see things in a different light.

  “Okay, so if I want to earn back his trust…where do I start?”

  “You start with you. I think you need to talk to someone other than me—a professional—to come to terms with the guilt first. Only then will you regain the strength you need to fight for Sevin.”

  ***

  I ended up taking her advice and booking an appointment with a local therapist, Dr. Zinger. It took a while to get in to see him, since there weren’t many practices taking new patients locally.

  After several sessions, he’d helped talk me through the subjects that I’d been avoiding the most. Nestled into his tweed loveseat while overlooking the oak tree outside his office window, I’d opened up about the most upsetting things, like Sevin’s intimacy with Elle, the circumstances of her death and giving up Rose. Lots of tears were shed on that couch. Facing those tough topics wasn’t easy, but it was necessary to my eventual recovery. Dr. Zinger’s goals for me were a lot like the serenity prayer: gaining the strength to change the things I could and to accept the things I couldn’t.

  Sevin was making it extremely clear that the ball was in my court. He hadn’t come around except on the shop’s reopening day. I’d catch him sneaking looks at me while I was working, but he avoided conversation and never stayed for the celebratory supper that night.

  One of the realizations I’d come to through my sessions with Dr. Zinger was that Sevin had always been the fighter when it came to us. Even in the early days, he was always the one so sure and confident in what we had. He always maintained that nothing could break us, as long as we stuck together. I was always the one who ran. Not anymore. It was my time to step up to the plate, prove my love to him—run to him, not away from him.

  ***

  I’d rehashed what I planned to say over and over during the drive to Sevin’s that night. He’d recently moved out of the guesthouse and purchased a small two bedroom home on the outskirts of Dodge City. It was further away from everyone and in my mind, the move represented his alienating himself from us.

  I double checked the address written down on a slip of paper to make sure I was pulling up to the right place. When I confirmed Sevin’s house number, all of the practiced words in my head seemed to evaporate when I spotted a familiar beige Toyota parked out front.

  Nancy.

  What was she doing here?

  The old Evangeline might have turned right back around and returned to Addy’s. Instead, with my heart palpitating, I got out and slammed the door to the used Chevy that I’d recently purchased, unintentionally closing it on the skirt of my dress.

  Overcome by a feeling of wild possession, I marched to his door and knocked hard. My breath was visible in the cold night air as I exhaled.

  I was not going to lose him now.

  When he appeared at the door, relief washed over me upon the realization that he was fully clothed. She was sitting at the kitchen counter.

  Sevin looked shocked to see me. “Evangeline…”

  “What is she doing here?” I asked.

  “Nancy was just visiting.”

  Stepping down from the stool, she said, “I’d better leave…”

  “Yes. You should,” I retorted.

  Sevin lifted his brow at me, his mouth curving into an unexpectedly amused smile in reaction to my blatant jealousy.

  “I’m sorry, Nance. Thank you for coming by.”

  “Of course.” She forced a smile at him. Without looking at me further, she grabbed her brown leather satchel.

  He walked her to the door, and she whispered something to him before lightly kissing him on the cheek. I knew I had no right to feel this way, but I was burning with jealousy. I’d been working so hard to get myself to a place where I could muster up the courage to see him, and her presence was a really unwelcome surprise.

  After she left, his stare was penetrating, even though his expression still reflected a slight amusement. “Well, that was rude.”

  “I don’t want you with her.”

  “I’m not with her. She came by to check on me. I told her about Rose. You’re seriously jealous after everything you’ve put me through?”

  “Yes. I’m jealous. And angry at so many things. But I’m done running from them all. I want to be here with you. I want you to open up about Rose to me, not her.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

  His admission caused a lump in my throat.

  “I know. Even if you’re not ready to open up to me…I want you to know that I am here, that I’m not going anywhere. We shouldn’t have to face things alone anymore. I want to be here when you’re thinking about Rose or Elle or the poor decisions I’ve made. I want to share in your pain. If you’re mad at me, I want to be here so that you can unload your feelings onto me even if it hurts me. I don’t care what Daddy or anyone thinks anymore or who finds out the truth. You’re my truth. The only thing that has ever felt natural to me is loving you. No one is going to tell me I can’t love you openly anymore. I’m done running, Sevin.”

  “You’re done running from reality?”

  “Yes.”


  He gestured with his fingers. “Come here.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Instead of touching me, he reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone. After swiping through a few times, he faced it toward me.

  On the screen was a picture of a beautiful little girl with dark hair. Unprepared for the image—one I was never supposed to see—my chest suddenly felt heavy. At the same time, it was an unexpected gift. The photo was taken from the side. With a beaming smile, Rose was in a royal blue baseball uniform and clearly didn’t know her picture was being taken.

  “Look at what we lost,” he said.

  Taking the phone from him and choking back tears, I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not gonna fight the adoption. My mind is made up. I don’t want to rip apart her world. I love her too much.”

  I looked over at him. “I think that’s the right decision.”

  His indignant stare permeated me. “One I should never have had to make.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But I take some responsibility too, you know. I should have been more careful with you back then. I was so crazy in love with you that I didn’t always make the most responsible decisions.”

  “Both of us.”

  “I still have very little control of my feelings around you. That’s why I needed to stay away, why you haven’t heard from me while I tried to come to a decision on Rose. I’m still working on coming to terms with it. That’s partly why Nancy was here. She’s actually adopted. I wanted to pick her brain about her feelings toward her birth parents, stuff like that.”

  “No explanation needed. And I totally understand why you’ve stayed away.”

  “It hasn’t been easy keeping my distance from you.” He took the phone from me. “Addy told me you’ve been seeing a therapist.”

  “Yes. He’s really helped me see what I need to do moving forward.”

  We spent the next couple of hours opening up to each other about our feelings when it came to Rose. Sevin confessed that he, too, had been seeing a therapist to come to grips with his anger issues.