Worth the Risk(39)

“Nothing happened.” He spits the words out at me, but his bottom lip quivers.



“Hi. What’s up?” Sidney’s voice filled the line and aggravated every single part of me—good and bad. “Where are you?”

“I can’t make it.”

“What?” The superior tone in her voice sliced open my temper, the intonation implying no one ever cancels on her and she didn’t quite know how to handle it.

“I can’t make it.” Deal with it.



I think back to what a day it’s been so far, and hell if I’m not sitting here at seven o’clock at night, trying to coax my eight-year-old to explain what happened. All I got out of the principal was that it had to do with that goddamn photo in the paper, some teasing, and then Luke threw the first punch.

I try again.

“Something happened, or you wouldn’t have hit him.”

“I told you, nothing happened.”

Christ. I shove a hand through my hair and walk to one end of the room and back. This is something Grant should be doing. He’s the cop. Skilled at interrogations. I should call him to come do the dirty work for me—play bad cop so I can be good cop—because this parenting shit is for the birds.

“Fine. Then nothing is going to happen for you, either. No baseball this weekend. No sleepover at George’s house. No—”

“He asked me if the lady you were kissing in the paper was my mom.” His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him.

“What?” I ask, even though I heard him perfectly well.

“I told him no. I didn’t know what picture he was talking about. He laughed and said you weren’t going to get married, and it was because of me. How could she want to be my mom when my own didn’t love me enough to stick around? Is that what you wanted to know?” He shoves the chair back so hard it falls to the floor, making a sickening thud.

Angry tears well in his eyes. His little body shakes with anger, and his fists are clenched so tightly his fingers are turning bloodless. All I can do is stare at him—my heart broken, my head more than fucked up.

“That’s a lie.” No parenting award for that one, but it’s all I can muster as I sit and watch my little man.

“Then where is she?” he screams at me as the first tear slips down his cheek. “If she loves me like you say she does, then how come she never comes home? How come she never calls me? How come all the other kids’ moms love them and do things with them and mine doesn’t? How come she doesn’t want me?”

I catch him as he tries to run past me. I take a hit to my shoulder and kick to my thigh as I pick him up and hold him to me as tightly as I can. The agony I feel as a parent is a hundred times more painful than any hit or kick of his ever could be, so I squeeze him with every ounce of love I have until his struggles turn to sobs and his hands fist in my shirt. His tears are hot through the fabric.

I was warned this phase would come, by the psychologist I talked to after Claire left. By the friends I’ve met whose husbands stepped out of their children’s lives during their infancy. The rage and the hurt and the sense of unworthiness. No amount of warning could have prepared me for hitting this head-on.

All the hate, all the hurt, all the everything Claire made me feel when she left . . . it’s like someone took a truckload of dynamite and detonated it, with all of the debris falling and landing on Luke.

There’s no way in hell I can protect him from it.

No fucking way.

“You know that isn’t true.” I will repeat the lie as long as I can to make my son feel better about himself. It won’t work much longer, and every time I mutter it, I feel like more and more of a complete asshole.

“Did you know the day you were born was the best day of my life?” I murmur into the crown of his head as he hiccups with sobs. “Your mom was eating a piece of chocolate cake, and all of a sudden, you let her know you were ready to meet us.”

“But she finished eating her cake first.” His voice is muffled, but he’s calmed some.

This is our routine. A set of memories to let him know he came into this world being loved. With parents who wanted him.

“Yes. She loved chocolate cake.”

“Just like I do.”

“Mm-hmm.” I think back to the panic. The excitement. The wonder of that day. “We ran around excited, getting everything together and getting to the hospital. Then, a few hours later, you were crying so loud when they put you in your momma’s arms.”

“And you were crying, too.”

“I was.” Looking back, I can see the panic on her face and the uncertainty that I thought was a normal thing because I felt it, too. We were responsible for this perfect little human. We were his smiles, his reassurance, his everything. How was I to know that look was a sign of what was to come? “And even though we’d only officially met you a whole five minutes before, we both knew we’d never loved anything as much as we loved you.”

Silence lingers as the story I’ve told countless times replays in both of our minds in completely different ways.

“If she loved me, why did she leave?” His whisper wavers.

“She still loves you, Luke. She loves you with all her heart, but sometimes, people are afraid they aren’t going to be enough for their child. They think that being around will hurt their kid more than help them.”