by Nella Tyler
“Think about it reasonably, Lauren,” Mom said gently. “He was emotional when he made his decision to enlist. Once he was committed, he couldn’t get out of it; he had to stick with the military for four years, so it wasn’t as though he could get on a plane and come back home.”
“What’s your point?” I asked narrowing my eyes at her.
“My point is that he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances,” she continued. “He wrote to you. How many letters do you have in that box of yours?”
“Fifty-one,” I replied slowly. I sighed deeply. “I think I’m going to head out for a run,” I said. “That’ll help me clear my head. Hopefully by the end of it, I’ll have a better perspective.”
Mom nodded just as Cole burst through his room door and came charging at us. “Mama!” he screamed. “Grandma!”
“Morning, little monster,” I said grabbing him and laying a kiss on top of his head. “Slept well?” Cole nodded vigorously as I pulled him onto my lap.
“What would you two like for breakfast?” Mom asked, looking at both of us.
“Mama said I could have pancakes today,” Cole piped up immediately.
“Oh that’s right,” I nodded, having completely forgotten about my promise from the night before.
Mom got up and moved to the fridge. “I don’t think we have enough ingredients to make more pancake batter.”
“Aw,” Cole said as the corners of his mouth drooped a little.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mom suggested. “Why don’t I nip down to the grocery store with Cole and get what we need? That way you can squeeze in your run before breakfast, Lauren.”
“That’s a good idea,” I nodded, painfully in need of a run.
“I wanna go with Mama,” Cole said quickly. “I wanna run too.”
I had been running at the same grounds for ten years. It was a peaceful little place whose track wound through lush gardens that had a Japanese sensibility about them. I loved running there, and it felt like I had made most of my decisions on that track. After Cole was born, I hadn’t wanted to stop my running, so I had taken him with me.
I would stick him in his stroller and then I would run, pushing the stroller along in front of me. Quite apart from being an excellent workout for my arms and legs, considering the extra strength it required to push the stroller, Cole ended up loving the runs. He would sit giggling in his stroller with the wind in his face, cooing with abandon.
As he’d gotten a little older, I had managed to squeeze in a few solitary runs on my own, but every so often, he would insist on coming with me and I would have to get his “big boy” stroller out. My pace was considerably slower when I ran with Cole now, but it was still an excellent work out.
“Please, Mama,” Cole said, fixing those big brown eyes on me. “Can I come?”
I smiled. “Yes, you can come,” I conceded. “Why don’t we both go and change out of our pajamas?”
Reluctant as he was to change out of his comfy pajamas, he did as he was told and I moved into my room. I put on my sweats and my favorite Nike sports bra, and then I tied my hair up into a tight ponytail and got my shoes on. When I walked back outside, Cole was jumping around the living room in his little khaki shorts and a white t-shirt.
“Ready, Freddy?” I asked.
“Yup!” Cole said, running at me.
I got his stroller and the three of us left the apartment together. We said goodbye to Mom at the corner as she turned in the direction of the grocery store and Cole and I headed towards the garden park. Back when I was in college and I had lived with Chase, I had needed to drive to the garden park for my runs. But now that I lived with Mom, it was an easy ten-minute walk that helped warm me up.
Once we got there, I helped Cole into his stroller. On any other occasion, he would have thrown a fit at the indignity of being pushed around in a stroller like he was a baby. But somehow, when it came to running at the garden park, he was always happy to get in it.
“Ready, Freddy?” I asked again.
“Yes, Mama,” he nodded vigorously as I strapped him in and got behind the stroller.
Soon, I was running on the perfectly paved track with my ponytail flying behind us. I could hear the sound of Cole’s sporadic giggling every time we headed down a slope or took a sharp bend. Every now and then he would yell, “Yay, Mama,” as though he were cheering me on.
I had just finished one full circle, which was approximately one mile long, when I slowed my speed and brought the stroller to a stop. I was breathing heavily, but I felt good. My body had loosened up a little and my muscles were a lot less sore. Cole handed me the water bottle I had kept beside him.
“Thanks, hon,” I said as I took a long swig of water. “Do you want some?”
Cole nodded so I bent down to give him a drink. I was putting away the bottle when I noticed someone jogging towards us. I glanced up and my breath caught as I realized it was Chase.
“Lauren,” he smiled. “Funny running into you here.”
My eyes narrowed. He knew I came here to run most Saturdays. This was no coincidence; Chase had come here hoping to see me. I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of that possibility and for bringing Cole along today of all days.
Chase’s eyes flitted to Cole immediately and his smile faltered a little, but he managed to keep it in place. “Who’s this little guy?”
“I—”
“My name is Cole,” my son piped up loudly.
I glanced down at Cole and then back towards Chase, who was looking at me in shock. “This is…Cole?” he said as though he were trying to understand why I had claimed my boyfriend was a four-year-old kid.
“We’ve got to go,” I said quickly as I turned Cole’s stroller around so that Chase could no longer see him.
“Lauren?” Chase’s tone was insistent and slightly shell shocked. “Who’s the kid?”
He started walking after us and panic gripped my throat. I pulled the stroller to a stop and turned it sideways so that I could see Cole sitting there looking at me with confusion. I gave him a big reassuring smile before I grabbed Chase by the arm and pulled him a few feet away so that Cole wouldn’t overhear us speaking.
“Lauren, what the hell is going on?” Chase demanded, glancing at Cole every few seconds.
“I lied to you last night, okay?” I said in a fierce whisper. “Cole is obviously not my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend. At least not an exclusive one.”
“I…” Chase said. “Then who’s the kid?”
I glanced at Cole as the panic rose. There was no way I could get away with not answering the question, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth either. Not with Cole sitting just a few feet away. “I babysit him,” I blurted out instinctively.
“You’re his baby-sitter?” Chase asked in confusion.
“Yes,” I said. “And I have to get him home now.”
With that, I turned, got a hold of the stroller, and started pushing hard so I could get away from Chase as quickly as possible.
“Who was that man, Mama?” Cole asked after a moment.
“He was…just someone I used to know, sweetheart,” I replied with my head in a whir of emotion.
“Is he your friend?”
“Well…he used to be,” I said.
“But he’s not anymore?”
“I guess not,” I said desperately thinking of a way to change the subject. “Are you ready for pancakes?” I crowed. “I’ll bet Grandma’s got them on the pan right now.”
“Yup,” Cole nodded as he clapped his hands together.
“Good,” I said. “Me, too.”
My head was spinning, and I couldn’t stop myself from reliving the encounter with Chase in the garden park. I had lied to him about Cole, but I had been lucky that Cole hadn’t called me Mama within Chase’s earshot. I didn’t know if what I had just done was right or wrong. But what I did know for sure was that nothing was going to be simple from there on out.
Ch
apter Twenty-Eight
Chase
I could only stand there in shock as I watched Lauren leave, pushing the stroller as she went. I stared at her until she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. I still couldn’t bring myself to move. After a moment, I walked over to one of the benches by the side of the track and sat down.
I didn’t know why, but I had the distinct feeling Lauren had been lying to me about something. Maybe it was the way she had said she didn’t have a boyfriend. I tried to remember her exact words. What was it that she had said? “I don’t have a boyfriend. At least not an exclusive one.”
That struck me as an odd statement. Either you had a boyfriend or you didn’t. Was it possible that she did actually have someone special in her life? Or perhaps he wasn’t special; maybe he was just someone she slept with. My stomach turned as I pictured the thought of Lauren sleeping with anyone else. It felt wrong, horrible, and painful.
“Something’s not right,” I said to myself.
I went over that moment again in my head. She had been kneeling beside the stroller as I had approached. I remembered the look on her face as she had been tending to the child in the stroller. She had looked at him in a way that could only be described as maternal. Was it possible that she had lied about being the child’s babysitter? What if she was his mother?
My head spun and a thousand different possibilities came to mind. I started to remember little things that were starting to make more sense under the circumstances. I remembered how the whole group had been excited to see Lauren yesterday because she had been so MIA in the past few years. I remembered the fire in her eyes as she’d stared me down after I’d driven her home as she said, “You’ve had no idea what I’ve been through.”
The possibility of the child being hers was starting to seem more and more plausible. I just couldn’t understand why she would lie about it if that were the case. I tried to figure out how old the boy looked…maybe three or four. Which meant that she had gotten pregnant with him soon after I’d left. Did that mean she rebounded with some jerk that was looking to take advantage of her vulnerability? Or was she cheating on me? Nothing really made sense.
I turned and walked back to the car. I didn’t even think about it, I just started driving home as though I would find my answers there. I found my parents in the garden. Mom was sitting on the patio with a pitcher of lemonade, and Dad was tending to the flowerbeds with his pruning shears in hand.
“Mom, Dad,” I said as I walked onto the porch.
“There you are,” Mom said. “We just finished breakfast.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said quickly. “I’m not hungry.”
“Are you all right, son?” dad asked as he straightened himself up to look at me. “You look a little pale.”
“Lauren has a baby,” I blurted out before I could phrase the sentence better.
“What?” Mom said as she set down her glass of lemonade. Dad walked around the flowerbeds and came up the steps of the porch.
“Well…I don’t really know,” I said, shaking my head and trying to get my words straight. “I mean…I just saw her at the garden park and she had a child with her.”
“Did you speak to her?” Dad asked.
“For like two seconds,” I replied. “But she seemed in a heck of a hurry to get out of there the moment she saw me. It was almost like she was trying to hide something.”
“It may not necessarily mean what you think it does,” he said practically.
“I know that,” I said. “I just…I guess I was surprised to see her with a child.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?” Mom asked.
“A boy,” I said. “He looked like he was about three or four years old. I couldn’t tell for sure.”
“Did you ask her who he was?” she asked.
“Yes,” I nodded. “She told me that she was his babysitter.”
“Babysitter?” she repeated.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I said shaking my head. “Lauren has a good job. Why would she babysit on the side?”
“She always wanted to start a gym of her own,” Dad pointed out. “Maybe it’s more costly than she first anticipated.”
“But why would she choose babysitting as a side job?” I asked. “There are better paying ones out there.”
I saw them exchange a glance, and I wanted to scream. They didn’t have answers – how could they? I started pacing the length of the porch as my head started trying to join the dots and find the connection I was so obviously missing.
“Do you think she’s lying?” Mom asked cautiously after a moment.
“Yes,” I said more forcefully than I had intended. “I do think she’s lying.”
“Are you saying you think the child is hers?” she asked, her tone was getting more controlled and very gentle and I knew she was scared that I might blow up at any second.
“I have suspicions,” I said in my calmest voice.
“Son?”
“Yes?” I said looking up at my dad.
“Is it possible the boy is yours?” he asked it in a matter of fact voice that stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t even gone there, but now that he had said the words, I was forced to consider it.
“Mine?” I said. “No…no, he can’t be.”
“Why not?” Dad asked. “You said the child looked around four.”
“But I’m not sure,” I clarified. “Sometimes I can’t tell a two-year-old from a five-year-old. I might have been mistaken. He could have been seven for all I know.”
“Seven-year olds don’t sit in strollers,” Mom pointed out practically.
“She was so familiar with him,” I said trying to pick up on any clues that my memory had missed. “Their relationship seemed so intimate.”
“She could be telling the truth,” she pointed out.
“You’re saying this could all be in my head?”
“It is a possibility,” she said gently.
I sighed and turned to Dad. “He can’t be mine,” I said. “If Lauren had been pregnant when I left, she would have told me. She would never have kept that from me.”
My parents glanced at each other once more and I knew they were nervous to speak their mind. “What is it?” I asked. “Just say what you need to say.”
“She was very hurt when you left,” Mom said slowly.
“Yes she was,” I nodded without bothering to deny it.
“She was angry.”
“Yes?”
“You told me she blocked your number,” she continued.
“I know all this,” I said in frustration.
“My point is…if she was angry enough to have blocked your number, maybe she was angry enough to keep a secret from you.”
I looked between my mother and father, and they were both looking at me sympathetically. “She wouldn’t have done that,” I said. “She…wouldn’t have.”
I started pacing again and this time they both stood back and watched me. Finally, when I had managed to let a few things sink in, I turned to my mother. “Mom, can you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“I need you to find a way to run into Lauren or her mother,” I said. “I need you to find out if Lauren was telling me the truth or if she was lying to me this morning. I need to know what’s going on.”
She nodded. “All right, darling,” she said. “If that’s what you need, then I’ll do my best.”
“Lauren’s Mom is a church goer,” I said. “I think finding her at Sunday mass might be your best option.”
“Noted,” she nodded.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going to go up now…and check my email.”
I was about to close the door behind me when my mom called my name.
“Yes?” I said.
“What did the boy look like?” she asked.
“I…I didn’t really get a good look at him,” I said. “I was a little blindsided by everything. I think he had brown hair.”
Mom nodded,
and I turned tail and rushed upstairs, seeking the privacy of my room. My heart was beating fast, and I couldn’t seem to slow it back down. In a fit of stress, I checked my email and realized that I’d received a letter from camp Pendleton. I held my breath and clicked it open.
It was an official offer letter for a special placement. The letter outlined the schedule and procedures of the camp and stated that I needed to accept the offer within two weeks of receiving the letter or it would be rescinded in favor of another applicant.
At the bottom of the letter was a contact number that would allow me to schedule an appointment for which I could drive down to the camp and personally look around and find out about its training procedures. I called right away and set an appointment for the next day, if only to get my mind off the turmoil it was currently in.
Unable to get my mind off Lauren and the little boy, I called Tyler up and asked for Beth’s number.
“Beth?” Tyler asked. “You want Beth’s number.”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you have it?”
“Yeah, sure,” Tyler said. “I’ll send it to you now.”
“Okay, great.”
“What happened with you and Lauren, by the way?” Tyler asked before I could hang up. “Everyone noticed that the two of you disappeared last night around the same time.”
“Long story,” I said. “I’ll tell you later.”
“You dog!” Tyler laughed obliviously.
“Yeah,” I said distractedly. “Send me that number, okay, Tyler?”
“Yeah, man, sure. Hey listen—”
I hung up before he had finished his sentence and then I stared at my phone until he sent Beth’s number over. I dialed it in and waited expectantly. She didn’t answer on the first try, but she picked up on the second.
“Hello?”
“Beth?”
“This is Beth,” she replied. “Who’s this?”
“It’s me,” I said. “Chase.”
“Chase?” she said, obviously wondering why I had called. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to speak to you about something,” I said.
“Okay…” she said cautiously. “What is it?”
“Does Lauren have a kid?”