RECLAIM MY HEART(48)

She tugged off one glove and looked at her son. “That was nice of you.”
Zach shrugged. He focused on the large weed. “Listen, Mom, I’ve been wanting to…” He cleared his throat, reached out and plucked a green leaf. “I’ve been, like, thinking.”
Announcing the need to talk was a rarity, a near impossibility, for a teenaged boy. At least, she’d found that to be true for her son.
Tyne pulled off her other gardening glove. “I’m listening.”
He didn’t look up from the dandelion. “I want to apologize. For the way I’ve been acting. For the trouble I got into back home. I didn’t act like, well, you know, like I should have.”
Staring at her son, she was astounded. Unexpected tears scalded the backs of her eyelids and the knot rising in her throat choked her. But she took a breath and willed the emotion aside. “Zach—”
He looked up and immediately narrowed his gaze. “Now, don’t make a big deal about this.”
Her gaze darted to the pile of weeds she’d created and she did her best to blink away the tears. “Why would I do that?” The gloves slid back on with ease and she tackled the flower bed with renewed gusto just to have something to keep her hands busy.
The dandelion popped free of the ground and Zach tossed it aside. “Uncle Jasper says that, like, the only thing a man really has is his honor. Every decision I make, every word I speak, every action I take reflects on, like, my integrity. And the kind of person I am has an impact on, like, you know, the whole family. Uncle Jasper called it a clan. ’Cause I’m…?one of ’em.” Zach picked up the trowel and stabbed at the dirt. “What I did before, Uncle Jasper says, isn’t, like, as important as how I act now. I mean, now that I’ve been told. Now that I know how important honor is to a man, to a person, to their family, and their whole clan. But even though Uncle Jasper is willing to let me off the hook, it’s bothering me. I mean, like, my behavior. You know, the trouble I got into.” He sighed in frustration. “I’m not explaining this very well.”
Sentiment softened her smile and she cast him a quick glance. “You’re explaining it perfectly.”
“Anyway, I can’t blame other people for my decisions.” He jabbed at a vine-like weed, picked it up and shook the soil from the roots. “I can’t, like, blame you or Rob or, ah, Lucas, and, and not even those kids I was with that night I got arrested. I got in trouble because of the choices I made.”
Tyne smoothed her gloved hand over the ground, leveling out the area of the flower bed she’d been fussing over. Zach would have been horrified if she were to grab hwerth="5%">Tyim and plant a big kiss on his cheek, so she continued working the earth between her fingers.
“Uncle Jasper says becoming an adult means, like, taking responsibility for your actions. The things you do, the things you say. Even the things you think.”
That was a lesson she hadn’t learned until she’d become a mother. While staying at her Aunt Wanda’s home in Florida, waiting for her baby to be born, Tyne had accepted all the help her parents and her aunt had offered. It wasn’t until she’d held Zach in her arms, saw the child her actions had produced, that she’d finally put all the pieces together and realized the seriousness of her situation.
She was responsible for this baby. She was the one who had to grow up and start making mature, sensible decisions.
Now here she was, seeing her son learning the same lesson…?only he was learning it at an earlier age than she had.
Zach tapped the tip of the metal trowel against the brick-lined border. “I guess I, like, knew that. I should have, anyway. But the way Uncle Jasper explained it, I really understood, you know?”
Tyne couldn’t stand it any longer. She jerked off her gloves and swiveled her feet under her so that she was propped up on her knees, sitting back on her heels. She turned to Zach. “I don’t want you to make a big deal about this, but would it be okay if I gave you a hug?”
It was obviously the last thing he wanted, but he suffered through her embrace. She pressed a kiss to his hair, hoping he didn’t feel it.
“I’m proud of you,” she whispered. Then she slid along the flower bed a foot or so and went back to weeding, afraid her emotions would overwhelm her.
“I’m going to go get a soda,” he told her, rising to his feet.
The screen creaked open, but it didn’t close.
“Mom,” he called from up on the concrete stoop.
She lifted her face.
“I am going to try to do better. I promise.”
Again, her smile was tight; it was necessary to keep her chin from trembling.
“I don’t want you to be ashamed of me ever again.”
She gasped. “Zachary, I have never been ashamed of you.”
Skepticism planted itself between his brows. “The truth is important, Mom. I can handle it.”
Her eyes never wavered from his. “That is the truth.”
The crease on his forehead only deepened. “So why didn’t you tell him about me?”
Guilt jarred through her like a bolt of summer heat lightning.
“And why don’t you want your parents to know about me?”
She’d rather have been stripped of her clothes and forced to run down the street stark naked than answer those two innocent questions.
Abortion. Adoption. Bigotry.
The vileness of her teen years made her head swim. Taking responsibility for your actions was one thing. Hurting someone you loved with the painful truth was quite another.
Her son deserved answers. But she wasn’t willing to wound him by supplying them.