Deep 6 (Multiple Love)

I don’t think I could deal with my part in that. Jake died, and I left…I was responsible.

“…but Suzanne, she made me take a pregnancy test, and it was positive.”

I feel like my heart has dropped into my stomach. “I left you to deal with this alone. I…If I’d known.”

“I know that now,” she says quickly, “but at the time, I thought you didn’t love me.”

“That wasn’t it,” I snap, needing her to know. “I loved you. I still love you, Sandy. Nothing will change that. Nothing you can say will make it different…”

“You can’t know that,” Sandy says, shaking her head, but she continues regardless as though she wound herself up like an old-fashioned toy, and now she’s going to speak until the end of her planned speech. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, and then Suzanne asked me if I’d consider letting her adopt the baby.”

“Adopt?” I shake my head, trying to let everything sink in. “You had the baby? You didn’t terminate it?”

Sandy turns to me, blinking slowly. “That’s what you thought? No, I didn’t have a termination. I had the baby…a little girl…and I let my sister adopt and raise her.”

“You had a little girl. I’m a father?” My hand reaches out to touch Sandy’s knee. It’s an automatic reaction…a need for connection to the woman delivering such overwhelming news.

Sandy nods, and then her face falls, and she shakes her head. “Sophie has a father…my sister’s husband. She has a mother…my sister Suzanne. I’m her fun Auntie San San…” Her body seems to crumple, and a tear runs down her cheek. “I gave her up, and I know…I know you’re not going to be able to forgive me.”

“Forgive?” The word drops out of my mouth with shock. Is that what she’s worried about? Me blaming her for doing what she had to because I wasn’t there to support her? If I need to forgive someone, it’s going to be me. “I have a child, Sandy. We have a child.” My voice is breathy and filled with awe and it’s enough to make her turn and stare at me.

“You don’t hate me?”

“For what?”

“For not being there for you?”

Sandy’s brow forms a deep frown. “I can’t hate you for that. You didn’t leave willingly or maliciously. You left because of something terrible. I could never hate you for that.”

The tight feeling in my chest seems to ease a little, but I still have so many questions. “What does Sophie look like?”

Sandy reaches for her purse that fell to the floor when she sat. She opens her wallet, and inside is a small picture of a little green-eyed girl who looks like me. I don’t consciously snatch it from Sandy’s fingers. It’s the deep fascination within me that drives my hand to seize the wallet so I can bring it closer and take in this little flesh and blood part of me that I didn’t realize existed all these years. Although she looks like my double, there is also very clearly something Sandy-ish about her too. Her smile, maybe, but her eyes, her hair, and the rest of her face are mine.

A small sound of amazement leaves my lips. “She’s perfect,” I say with awe. “Absolutely perfect.”

“She is,” Sandy says. “She’s such a good girl and really smart.”

“She’s smart?”

“Yeah…she’s reading already and counting well. I think she’s at least a year ahead of expectations.”

“Wow…she definitely takes that from you,” I say, smiling.

Sandy blinks, her eyes still watery. “I spoke to my sister about telling you. She is obviously worried about what is going to happen next…if you’re going to want to meet Sophie…what that might look like…what your expectations are, you know?”

“I’d love to meet her,” I say. “But I understand that she’s been adopted, and she’s only little. There will come a time for us to be transparent with her, but it isn’t yet.”

“She knows she grew in my tummy because her mommy can’t grow a baby,” Sandy says. “I guess we can explain that you put your seed in my belly to help. It’s the truth, at least. The rest can come later. If that’s okay with you?”

“Will your sister be okay with that?” I ask. It’s more than I could have hoped for under the circumstances.

“She will. She’s nervous, understandably. She doesn’t want anything to hurt Sophie, but I know you won’t want that either. We just have to do whatever it takes so that she’s not unsettled.”

“Definitely,” I say. I bring the picture closer to me again and use my finger to trace the little face I see there. There is something in her sparkling eyes that reminds me of Jake, too, and that fills my heart. “You know she was growing in your belly before Jake died,” I say. “When he passed, I thought I’d lost everything, but now I see that something else just as precious came into my life. I just didn’t know it then.”