by Megyn Ward
How I can make it right.
“I just didn’t want him to look at me and see those other women,” I say, finally landing on the reason I kept Noah to myself, even after I knew who Tobias was. “I didn’t want him to think I got pregnant on purpose or that I was after his money.” I shrug. “I don’t know. I was afraid—”
“That’s not why you didn’t tell him about Noah,” Delilah pipes up out of nowhere from her chair where she’s steadily plowing her way through a box of Dingdongs, the growing pile of foil wrappers in her lap making me wonder just how sober she really is.
“Excuse me?” hearing her say it, I’m instantly defensive.
“I mean—” She shrugs, turning the chocolate covered cake over in her hand so she can dig crème filling out of its belly with a long, glittery fingernail. “I’m sure you feel that way,” she says, scooping white fluff and bits of chocolate into her mouth. “But that’s not why you didn’t tell him. You didn’t tell him about Noah because you were afraid.” The last of it is delivered around a mouthful of Dingdong.
“That’s what I just said,” I say, struggling to keep my temper in check. Scratch my earlier assessment. My sister is as high as a kite. “I was afraid he’d think—”
“You were afraid he wouldn’t love Noah,” she says, glancing up from her snack cake to nail me with a look that makes it suddenly hard to breathe, her sky blue eyes going slick and shiny with tears. “That he wouldn’t want him. Ignore him the way our mothers ignored us.” Delilah looks down at the pile of white goo and waxy chocolate in her lap. “You know better than anyone that all you need is one parent who loves you. Noah has you. He doesn’t need anyone else.”
It’s not what she says.
It’s what she doesn’t say that squeezes and tears at my throat.
Of my ten brothers and sisters, I am the only one who isn’t monumentally screwed up in some way and the reason is because our father loved me best.
Raised me.
Wanted me.
What she doesn’t know is that I’ve always worried that that love was conditional. That I’m living in a minefield. One wrong move, one wrong step would destroy everything. Leave me alone.
Just like her.
“Lilah, I—“
Before I can say anything else, there’s a knock at the door, soft but insistent.
The three of us sit there, staring at each other, not knowing what to do until Jane finally sets her wine down and stands. “I’ll get it,” she says, skirting around the coffee table to make her way to the front door.
I know who it is. I don’t have to watch her open the door but I do anyway and my heart does a strange double-tap in my chest when I see Tobias standing on the other side of it.
“We need to talk.”
38
Tobias
I have a son.
I have a son.
I have a son.
Those same four words have been on repeat in my brain since I saw him.
I have a son.
And Silver kept him from me.
I don’t remember telling Angus to take me to Logan’s place but I must’ve because here I am, banging on his front door like I have a search warrant, yelling at him to open the damn door. Finally, after what feels like hours, he yanks the door open.
“What the fuck, Tob?” he yells, soaking wet, towel clutched around his hips. He still has soap in his hair, running down his arms. Water puddling on the floor at his feet. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”
Am I out of my mind?
Maybe I am. Maybe I totally misread the situation. Maybe I can’t do simple addition and subtraction for shit. Maybe that kid looks nothing like me. Maybe I made it all up in my head like last time because I was about to tell Silver I love her and that scared the hell out of me.
Maybe.
“I have a son.”
As soon as I say it out loud, I know I didn’t misread anything. I didn’t make it up. I can add and subtract just fine.
I have a son.
Logan’s posture instantly changes. His shoulders sag and his face softens as he angles himself out of the doorway to let me in. As soon as he shuts the door, he turns to look at me for a second, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with me. “Let me get dressed and call Patrick to tell him I’m going to be late for my shift.” He wipes soap off his face. “Wait here.” He glances at the conference table where his bank of computers seem to be working overtime, their screens flashing and scrolling faster than I can track. “and don’t touch anything.”
He comes back a few minutes later, hair still wet, wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt with a picture of a kitten, playing with a ball of yarn on it. “Thanks, Patrick,” he says into his cell, nodding his head. “I appreciate it.” He hangs up and jams his cell into the back pocket of his jeans.
“What did you tell him?” I practically snarl the question because all I can think about is how Noah wants Patrick to be his mother’s boyfriend.
“That my rash flared up,” he says—his way of telling me to mind my own business. “Now explain.”
I tell him everything. About meeting Silver on her twenty-first birthday. Taking her home. What I thought the morning after. How I treated her.
That one earns me a dirty look. Logan’s got a thing about men who mistreat women—more than most. I’m sure it has something to do with his mother but I never asked. I could’ve and he would’ve told me but I never have because that would mean I’d have to reciprocate.
Talk about my own mother.
What it was like to watch her die.
Why I had to do it alone.
I shove the thought aside, focusing on the now. I finish telling Logan about Silver. How I walked into that meeting with his friend/boss and there she was. That I strong-armed her into dinner and basically kidnapped her (earning myself another dirty look) to New York. That I ended up taking her to the Hawthorne. That she took off on me and I chased her back to Boston and ended up face-to-face with my own son.
“You took the mother of your child to your sex pad?” He looks at me like he thinks I might need a CAT scan.
“I didn’t know she was the mother of anything,” I gripe back. “And I took her there because she asked me to.”
He glowers at me like he’s mentally docking me humanity points for not being able to predict the future. “Gotta be honest,” he says, shaking his head at me. “I was sure it’d be Jase I’d be having this conversation with someday.”
Yeah. Me too.
“Okay,” he says like he gives up. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want to see his birth certificate.” That’s what I want. Even though I know I’m not listed as his father. Even though I know she didn’t give him my last name. I want to see it for myself and I know he can do that for me. I know it’ll take him about five minutes to hack his way into the Department of Vital Records. It’s what Logan does. He finds things.
People.
Information.
“Why?”
For a second my mind goes blank. My chest goes tight and hot like someone packed it full of hot coals. “What do you mean why?” I say, my voice raised, louder than necessary. “Because he’s my kid and I have a right to see it.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Not really,” he says, his own tone calm and reasonable. “Not if you’re not prepared to do the right thing. Not if you just want to see it to fuel your own bullshit fantasy about how this woman did you dirty.”
“She had my kid and kept him from me—that’s the fucking definition of dirty.” Even as I say it, I know it’s wrong. I know I’m wrong but I can’t seem to stop the river of bullshit spewing from my mouth. “She—”
“Woke up to an empty apartment and a stack of cash on the nightstand,” he interjects, his tone sharpening just enough to cut through my tirade. “Take it from someone who’s been bought by Tobias Bright—it feels like shit.”
It’s like he punched me in the mouth. That’s how muc
h it hurt. How fast it shut me up.
“I never bought you,” I say even though, if I look at it objectively, that’s what I did. What I always do. When something in my life starts making noise, I throw money at it to shut it up. “All I’ve ever done is try to help you. You’re my brother. It’s my job to protect you. Take care of you.”
“The fact that you actually believe that is the only reason I’m still standing here.” Logan shakes his head like I’m a poor dumb bastard and he feels sorry for me. “Look, man,” he says, running a hand over his face. “I’ll do it. I’ll dig up the kid’s birth certificate for you but you’ve got to promise me that you’re gonna leave him and her alone. That you’re not going to chase this thing unless you’re prepared to do the right thing.”
The right thing.
“I promise,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure I have no idea what the right thing is anymore.
Not that I ever did.
39
Silver
I wasn’t surprised when Tobias showed up at the restaurant this afternoon but I’m surprised now. Once he found out about Noah, I never expected to see him again. I expected lawyers and judges and gag orders but I never expected to see him on my doorstep.
I stand up, staring at him over the back of the chair Delilah’s still sitting in. “What are you doing here?”
He looks at me like I just asked the dumbest question he ever heard. “We need to talk.” He repeats himself, enunciating each word like he thinks I might have brain damage before shooting Jane a quick look. “Alone.”
Jane laughs at him, her shoulders going stiff when he says it, mouth open like she’s about to tell him to fuck off.
“It’s alright, Jane,” I tell her before she can say a word. “Tobias is right, we have some things to talk about. Private things.”
From the look on Jane’s face, she disagrees but she doesn’t say anything. “Come on, Lilah,” she says, letting go of the door to reach over the back of the chair to pull my sister out of it.
“Fine,” Lilah grumbles, swiping the bottle of wine and a half-eaten package of Nutterbutters off the coffee table before letting Jane shove her out the door.
“We’ll be right down the hall,” Jane says it to Tobias, making it sound like a threat.
“And I’ve got the Craig’s List app on my phone and my lawyer on speed dial,” my sister chimes in, giving him a thin, narrowed-eye smile. “So behave.”
Jane laughs, pulling the door shut behind her so she can herd Lilah down that hall.
Suddenly alone, Tobias and I stare at each other, neither of sure what’s supposed to happen now.
“So, is he?” he finally says, hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket. Even from here I can tell they’re cranked into fists
“Is who what?” I say, turning away from him to make my way to the kitchen.
“Is Patrick Gilroy your boyfriend?” I can hear him behind me. He’s following me rather than raise his voice.
“Seriously?” I say, shaking my head. “That’s what you want to know?” Undoing the safety latch, I open the cabinet under the sink and pull out the garbage can before turning to find him standing a few feet behind me. “If I have a boyfriend?”
“No,” he shoots back, jaw flexing and tightening, planted in front of me. “I want to know if he is your boyfriend?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” I say, turning away from him to skirt the breakfast counter from the other side. Carrying the garbage can into the living room I start cleaning up, throwing half-eaten Twinkies and mostly empty bags of Cheetos into the trash while he stands over me and seethes.
“You’re the mother of my son,” he says in a tone that tells me he’s struggling to keep himself in check. “That makes it my business. I have a right to know who—”
Hearing him say it out loud rips away whatever self-righteous indignation I managed to scrape together. “No, Tobias,” I tell him, setting the trash can down between us. “Patrick isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my friend. He’s been good to Noah and my father adores him. They both tried playing matchmaker a few times but Patrick is involved with someone else so it never went anywhere—does that answer your question?”
I don’t tell him the rest. That I asked him out once and he turned me down. How relieved I was when he said no. That I’ve been hung up on him for the last five years and getting involved with a man like Patrick would’ve been a mistake. Because men like Patrick are the kind you keep. And even though I know that, that he’d make a good husband and a great father, he’s not who I want. “Anything else?”
His hands unclench inside the pockets of his jacket like he’s purposely trying to relax himself. “I want to hear you say it.”
I don’t have to ask what he wants me to say. I already know. It’s the same thing I’d want to hear if I were him.
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly, trying to relieve some of the pressure in my chest. “Noah is your son, Tobias.”
His face softens, his teeth and jaw unclenching slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would I?” I laugh, a nasty, one-note sound that stiffens his shoulders under his jacket. “And how, exactly?” I reach down and swipe the rest of the junk food buffet into the trash can. “How was I supposed to do that, Tobias?”
“You knew where I lived,” he says, totally misunderstanding my question. “Your mother is my fucking neighbor, for Christ’s sake. You could’ve—”
“I could’ve what?” I laugh again. “Knocked on your door? Asked you to be my Lamaze coach? Filed a paternity suit?” I can feel tears start to push against the back of my eyes, the pressure of them burning my sinuses. “I was barely twenty-one. Scared shitless and ashamed because the guy who got me pregnant thought I was a prostitute. How was that conversation supposed to go exactly, after the way you treated me?” I stack my hands on my hips, fingers digging until it hurts. “How was I supposed to come to you with something like that, knowing what you thought I was?”
40
Tobias
Take it from someone who’s been bought by Tobias Bright—it feels like shit.
Logan’s words come back to me, the truth of them shaming me instantly.
“I had a right to know,” I tell her, refusing to accept what she’s telling me. “He’s my son and you kept him from me.”
“He’s my son,” she shoots back “And I did what I had to do to protect him.”
From you.
That’s what she doesn’t say.
But she doesn’t have to.
I hear it anyway.
Loud and clear.
“I would’ve taken care of you. Him.” I shake my head, jaw set at a stubborn angle. “I would’ve done the right thing.”
“You wouldn’t know what the right thing was if it ran up to you and spit in your face, Tobias.” She shakes her head at me, her gray eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Because when you found out you had a son, all you said, all you asked, was what I wanted from you.” She runs her fingertips under her eyes, wiping away the tears that spill over her lower lids. “I meant what I said—I don’t want anything,” she shoots back. “In case you missed it, Noah and I are doing just fine without you or your money.”
“Mom?”
As soon as she hears him, her face softens, her gaze shooting past me. I turn to see Noah in a pair of monster truck pajamas with what looks like a headless Chewbacca doll tucked under his arm. Dark hair sticking up, gray eyes squinted against the bright light of the living room.
“Hey, kiddo,” she says, pushing a smile on her face. “Did we wake you?”
“No,” he says to her but he’s staring straight at me. “Can I have some water?”
“Sure.” She smiles again, picking up the trash can. “Get back in bed and I’ll bring you a drink.” She carries the garbage can into the kitchen and puts it away. I can hear her washing her hands. Getting a cup from a cabinet, running the tap to fill it with water.
“You’re the man from the restaurant.”
It takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me. Watching me with the kind of wary expression that makes me feel like an intruder. Someone who came here to do harm.
“I am.”
His jaw juts out, the same angle as his mother’s when she gets angry. He opens his mouth, on the verge of saying something else but then Silver shuts off the tap and he bolts back down the hall to get into bed like she told him to.
“I think you should leave,” she says to me, carrying Noah’s water through the living room. “This is going to be hard enough as it is for him without you coming here and confusing him.”
“Okay,” I say, watching as she disappears down the hall. I mean to leave, to do as she asks but somehow I end up following her down the hall. Stopping in front of Noah’s open doorway.
Bright blue walls. Solid oak Captain’s bed. Star Wars themed bed spread. Bins full of toys. A low-slung table under the window, piled with crayons and coloring books. Han Solo poster above his bed.
I lean against the doorframe and watch while Silver perches herself on the edge of his bed and hands him his water. “Do you need to use the bathroom?” she asks, taking the half-empty cup from his hands to set it on his nightstand.
“No,” he answers her before looking straight at me. “Are you my dad?”
As soon as he says it, Silver’s shoulders lock up, stiff and ridgid—like she’s bracing for impact. She knew I was standing here, I’m sure of it. She was just ignoring me. Hoping I’d disappear. Go away and leave them alone.
“Yes.” I tell him because maybe I didn’t deserve the truth but he does. He deserves to hear me claim him. To know he matters. “Yeah, Noah. I’m your dad.”
“I’ve never been fishing,” he says it like he finds the fact equal parts shameful and exasperating. “Papa’s always too busy and besides he doesn’t know how. I want to ask Patrick to take me, he’s been lots of times, but Mom says I—”