by Miley Maine
“I understand,” James said. “But if the attacks intensify, just know that it’s an option.”
“If they get more serious, we could take Ian and go stay at James’s condo, just the three of us. If that’s okay with you,” Mary said, looking at me.
“If they go beyond random power outages and they get dangerous, then yes. That would be great,” I said.
“Good,” James replied. “I know I’m trained to think of the worst-case scenario, I just don’t want you all to be stuck here if there is a prolonged power outage or a lack of resources. I’ve seen some scary incidents caused by people’s fear of not having water or food.”
“Thank you for looking out for us,” I said, and Walter spoke up, too.
“Yes, son, thank you. We appreciate it.”
James nodded. “You’re welcome, but it’s my job.” As I suspected, James’s face went into his usual blank mode whenever things got slightly emotional. If I had to guess, his father’s admission meant something to him, so he was going to ignore it.
He stood up, taking his plate with him to the sink. Once he’d rinsed it, he went straight to the door. “I have to go now. You all have a good day.”
Before he could leave, Ian came running from the living room and attached himself to James’s leg. “See you later, alligator!” he yelled.
“After-while, crocodile,” James replied, bending down to give Ian a big hug goodbye.
Well, that was weird. A month ago, I’d never have believed someone if they told me that I’d be semi-living with my ex-boyfriend, who was also the father of my child but didn’t know it, and that he and his estranged father would very slowly attempt to heal the giant rift between them.
There had been no time to talk to him about Ian. It would have to happen tonight.
I left Walter, Mary, and Ian on clean up duty and got ready for my day at the vet’s office. The hours flew by, and at lunch I got a text from James.
I’ll be done by 7:00. Want to go out?
I very much wanted to go out. I wanted to go out on a date, but more importantly, I wanted some time alone to break the news to him about Ian.
I replied with a big yes, and he said he’d see me later tonight. Even though I knew this needed to happen, my stomach went into its familiar twisted pretzel shape.
There was no way he wasn’t going to be angry. He was going to be furious. I just had to hope he’d be fair.
“I heard Momma say you were going out. I wanna come, too!” Ian shouted.
“He can come, if it’s okay with you,” James whispered in my ear.
“I really do need to talk to you. Alone,” I said.
“Sorry, little man. It’s just us tonight.”
“I can take my costume off. I know it’s not for nice dinners. I put on good clothes. Look!” he declared. And then my child, who had bawled when he had to take his Superman costume off to be the ring bearer in a wedding, ripped off the construction goggles and hard hat he’d been wearing, and revealed a pair of khaki shorts, a nicely ironed polo shirt, and his cute little face, free from any masks, hoods, glasses, or goggles.
His cute little face that looked exactly like his father’s.
“See? Good clothes,” Ian said.
“I see,” I said.
Beside me, I felt it happen. James looked at Ian, really looked at him. Then his gaze went to the row of school photos that hung beside the fireplace. His eyes zeroed in on the kindergarten one. He walked forward, closer to the 8x10 photo.
My heart started thundering and my stomach went beyond twisted to mangled. Every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire.
James stared at the photo for at least thirty seconds. Then he turned back to Ian, who was still beaming at us. When James saw Ian’s hopeful expression, James crouched down. He held his arms out for Ian, and when Ian rushed into them, he folded his arms around my son. I could tell from the way he held him that he knew. It wasn’t a possibility that Ian was his son, it was definite.
He held onto Ian until he started to squirm.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, and his voice was choked up. “I need to talk to your mom alone. But then afterward, maybe we can hang out. Would that work?”
“I want to go out,” Ian said. “Because I have also put on nice clothes.” Ian held his arms out, once again showing off his polo.
“I’ll ask your mom if it’s fine if I take you out, okay?”
So it was going to be like that. He was going to want time with Ian, away from me. I wasn’t ready for that. I couldn’t take a custody battle. I couldn’t lose my son.
My breath came faster. Please don’t let me lose him.
This was all my fault. But it was too late to change the past. All I could do was try to make this right for James and, most of all, Ian.
18
James
Ian was my son.
My eyes burned. I didn’t need a blood test or a DNA test. I’d noticed in an offhand way that he didn’t look much like Bree. I’d figured he looked like his father, and because I didn’t like thinking about Bree with another man, I’d just put the whole thing out of my mind.
I never thought to question whether he might be mine.
I should have. He was four years old. He would have been born nine months after the last time Bree and I slept together. And like a moron, I’d believed her story about a one-night stand with a random sailor. It wasn’t my business at the time, but that hadn’t sounded like her. She didn’t judge other people for how they dated, but it had taken her a long time to want to be intimate with me, so a night with a stranger was out of character.
I didn’t know what to do. My brain was spinning, going in circles as I tried to grapple with the fact of having a child. A child I had gotten to know. A child I’d never have met if I hadn’t gotten this assignment.
I let go of Ian, afraid I was going to hug him too hard. I stood up.
Blinding fury surged through my body. Bree had kept him from me. She’d had no intention of letting me know that I had a child. If these terrorists hadn’t cropped up here, she’d never have told me. Blind luck was the only reason I’d ever seen my kid. I could have gone my entire life and never known I had this perfect little boy.
My chest heaved as I tried to regulate my breathing. If I’d been alone, I’d have punched a hole in the wall. But I wouldn’t, not with Ian around. Now I had a kid to set a good example for, because there was not a fucking chance that I was going to leave Laurel Bay when this assignment was over and not demand to some kind of visitation with Ian.
“Okay, James,” Ian said, knocking me from my daze. “We can go later. But soon,” he said, holding up one finger.
“Okay, buddy.” I ran my hand over his mop of brown hair. “I’ll see you soon.”
I turned toward Bree. Her face was completely white, but I didn’t feel sorry for her.
“Outside,” I said.
She followed me outside without protest. The smell of smoke was strong in the air. Someone was burning debris. On top of the lone tree in the yard, a mockingbird sang.
Once we were clear of the house, I kept walking toward the perimeter of the ranch. I didn’t want Ian to hear us, nor did I want my father and Mary to hear us.
My father. Had he known? God, I was stupid. Of course he’d known. He’d let Bree live with them and then he’d given her his ranch, which was the most important thing in the world to him. It was certainly more important to him than I’d ever been.
He wouldn’t have given it to her because he felt sorry for her. He must have taken one look at Ian after he was born and decided he was getting a second chance at raising a kid.
I spun to face Bree. “He’s mine.” I wanted to say the words aloud. “Ian is my son.”
She nodded.
Okay. At least she hadn’t tried to lie. “There was no other man.”
“No. There’s never been anyone else.”
“Does my father know?” I knew the answer, but I needed to hear it out loud.<
br />
I needed to hear that they’d all conspired to raise my son here in this place that I hated. The place that stifled me and made me feel inadequate, because I rejected what it had to offer, because I didn’t want to be slowly strangled, miserably eking out a life on this desperate ranch. Because I’d dared to leave and try and do something different with my life.
“I’m not sure if he knew at first.” Bree wrapped her arms around herself. “He didn’t ask. He’s aware now.”
“How do you know?”
She looked at the ground before looking back up at me. “He said something when you got into town this time.”
I needed the whole story. Every fucking detail. “How did you end up here on this ranch?”
“I was working part-time for the vet. I was planning to go to college in Dallas. When I found out I was pregnant, after you visited that first time during college, I was already five months along. No one else would hire me, and the vet wouldn’t give me extra hours because of the risk. After my mom passed away, I was living in her house but I couldn't afford the mortgage. Your dad showed up one day at her house and he told me to come live at the ranch. At the time, he was still handling everything himself.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.
Bree scoffed. She kicked at the dirt with her sandal. She’d changed out of the clothes she wore to work on the ranch and was wearing a cotton shirt and some kind of capri pants. Normally, I’d stop to think how pretty she looked, but her looks no longer mattered to me.
“I was still so angry at you,” she said. “I felt like you betrayed me.”
Was that the story she told herself? “How was it a betrayal to get an education?” I asked.
“Because you left without me, damnit!”
“I asked you to go.” I was so pissed off I could barely get the words out.
“No. You most certainly did not. You asked me to marry you. Then you informed me where we’d be going.” She drew in a great gulp of air. “You didn’t ask me where I wanted to go. You just assumed that because I hadn’t gotten any acceptance letters yet that I’d just follow you without hesitation.”
“It made the most sense—”
“It made the most sense to you. To you. My father was never around, and you knew what that was like because of your shitty mom. But you still had your dad, whether you liked it or not. But my mom was dying. Dying, James. And you knew that. You knew she had stage four cancer. You wanted me to leave her to deal with that alone after she’d sacrificed everything for me.”
Bree’s hands clenched into fists as she took a step closer to me. “Then when I didn’t do what you wanted, you left. You left me to deal with that alone.”
This was really not fair. “What was I supposed to do? Hang around town? You broke up with me!”
She threw her hands up. “I knew how much you hated this town and how much you wanted to leave. I didn’t want to be the reason you came back here and then hated Ian and me for trapping you. Or the reason you stopped by once a year and saw Ian on some lame holiday like St. Patrick’s Day or Valentine’s Day, because you were too busy with a glamorous job in Paris or London to stop by on any day that really mattered.”
Was she being serious right now? “Do not blame this on me.”
“I’m not. You asked.” She spat the words at me like venom.
“I asked how you could do something like this—keep my son away from me, and me away from him. I didn’t ask you to figure out how to make it all my fault.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought it was for the best.”
“And you think you have the right to decide what’s best?”
“You sure as Hell weren’t going to decide what was best for my child.” Bree lifted her chin as she spoke. “You left. You made that choice. You didn’t show back up here for a year after I got pregnant. You didn’t visit, you didn’t call, you didn’t text. You had one goal, and that was your career,” she said, her voice rising as she spoke. “Well, you got what you wanted. Congratulations.”
She was really going to stand there and blame all of her bad decisions on me. “You told me to leave.”
She scowled at me. “Not until the last time.”
“Ian was already born by then. How old was he?” I asked. My blood pressure spiked as I thought about how I’d stood right outside the house where my infant child was being hidden from me.
“He was three months old.”
“That’s why you didn’t let me in the house. You kept me from my own child. Can’t you see that he needs a dad?”
“You didn’t seem too wild about yours,” she said.
That hurt, and it was a low blow. “No, I didn’t, but I see that you seem to think he’s just fine to raise my child.”
“He’s changed. He realized he wasn’t fair to you. He’s trying to make up for it.”
“Well, I’m so glad all of you have decided what’s best for my kid, and it’s not being allowed to see me.” Unbelievable. Fury swelled through my entire body at her words. My father deserved a second chance, but I didn’t?
She exhaled. All the tension seemed to drain from her body and she rubbed her hands over her temples. “I did what I thought was best.”
She was so full of shit. “How could you sit there last night and say you loved me?”
Her shoulders even sagged. “Because it’s true.”
“You cannot love someone and lie to them like that,” I said. She might be drained, but anger still vibrated through every cell in my body.
“Well, same,” she said. “You said you loved me everyday years ago when we were eighteen and yet, you walked away and didn’t look back. So excuse me if I didn’t think you’d be a very good dad!”
I squared my shoulders. “Are you implying I’d have left him, too?”
She propped herself up against a fence post and looked me up and down. “Why would I think any differently? I don’t leave people. I didn’t leave my mom. I didn’t leave you. And I won’t leave my son. Michigan State was more important to you than I was. Why wouldn't the FBI be more important than Ian?”
“I would never have chosen the FBI over Ian,” I said. “Never. But you don’t know that because you didn’t give me a chance.”
“Chances don’t mean anything to a kid,” Bree said. “Because a shitty thing for a kid is for his parent to be around and then leave. You know what that felt like.”
“Which is why I’d never do it!”
“I had no way of knowing that.”
“You did,” I insisted. “You knew me.”
“I thought I did. Until you pulled that letter out and hightailed it out of here. You never even looked back.”
Was she ever going to let this go? It was like she’d forgotten that she was the one who broke up with me, not the other way around. “It is not wrong to go off to college.”
“It is wrong to not tell your fiancé that you’re planning it.”
“Why are we still talking about me and the ancient history between us? Ian is my kid, and you kept him from me. I missed everything. Birth, first steps, first words.”
“Well, you’re here now,” she said.
“No thanks to you!” I couldn’t help shouting. “If I hadn’t gotten this assignment, I wouldn’t even know.”
“I was going to tell you. Last night.”
“Fine. Assuming I believe that, it doesn’t change the fact that I still wouldn’t know about Ian if the FBI hadn’t sent me here.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “Walter’s been great with him. But he’s a grandfather, not a father. I was getting there. I even asked a few people for advice.”
“The fact that my father got to be with my kid and I didn’t doesn’t help,” I said. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I don’t want to be around you right now. But I do want to see Ian, and I don’t want to let him down.”
“You can see him.”
“Well, thank you for allowing me to see my chi
ld. I’m glad I have your permission.” I kicked the dirt. “See. That’s fucking bullshit. I do have to get your permission, because legally I have no rights. I’m just some random man you let fuck you at night.”
“James!” Bree’s eyes blazed a deeper green as she glared at me. “Do not talk to me like that.”
“Do not push me right now.” I took a deep breath. “I will have time with Ian. If you can’t be reasonable, then we’ll go to court. I’m warning you. If you try to stop me, I’ll start by filing to establish paternity tomorrow morning.”
“James, I—”
I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m going to go ride one of the horses. Once I’m calm, I’m coming back and I’m going to hang out with Ian.”
Bree’s eyes went from rage to despair. Tears formed and then spilled over, big tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please don’t take him from me,” she said.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” I said. I turned away from her and headed to the field where the horses were grazing. I hated seeing her cry, but she was the one who did this.
Now that I’d walked away, the fight drained from me, too. I never shied away from conflict at work, but conflict with Bree had me reeling. Now that the heat of the moment had passed, I felt sick to my stomach and cold all over.
There was no good answer to this. She was the one who’d kept me from my son and the one who’d told my son he didn’t have a father.
How could I forgive her for that?
19
Bree
By the time I’d reached the house, I was crying so hard I couldn’t see. I didn’t usually believe in hiding emotion from Ian, but I didn’t want him to see me sobbing—not over this.
I went through the flowerbed, trampling a few of the azaleas to get to the outside water spout. The water was freezing cold, but maybe it would make my eyes less puffy. I splashed water all over my face, dousing my shirt at the same time.