A Baby Affair (Parent Portal 2)

“So...do you share a biological father?”

“Yes.”

He watched her, making her think of an examining room and allowing the doctor to diagnose what ailed her.

She didn’t need his diagnosis.

But didn’t seem to mind the questions. Maybe she should, but she didn’t. Should she be worried about that?

“Your father left when your sister was born?”

“So, technically, I misspoke,” she said, simply because his gaze required the truth. “I didn’t actually live with him the first year of my life. He was in the picture. He moved out shortly after my mom found out she was pregnant with Angie.” Might just as well get it over with. Personal questions weren’t her fave, but she understood his need to know more. He wasn’t going to be in his child’s life, this man who’d already lost a son to a system that didn’t seem just. Knowing the details of the life of the woman who’d be raising the child would be a comfort to him. She hoped.

Although her job wasn’t to comfort him...

“I was a little over three months old. He and Mom had been high school sweethearts. They’d married shortly after graduation and then I came along that first year. He thought it was cool at first, when it was all new and they were making great plans. But when reality set in, he wasn’t ready for the responsibility.” All according to her mother—the only source she had to go on.

Like Angie coming along so soon after Amelia. Her mother would have known better than to have unprotected sex when her baby was still so little. But “the father,” as they’d called him between the two of them, had probably been looking for what he needed and she wouldn’t have denied him. Or stopped him long enough to protect herself.

Margaret had been breastfeeding Amelia and back then there hadn’t been a birth control pill you could take and still safely nurse.

“He moved in with a buddy of his for a time, but still apparently came by and took care of things at the house, mowed the grass, paid his share of the bills.”

And those six months of contribution had given Margaret hope, undying, constricting hope that he’d be back. She’d watched that hope eat her mother alive. Had somehow known, even as a young girl listening to her mother talk about her dad, that her mother wasn’t seeing everything straight.

“After Angie was born he left the state. Took a job on a pipeline and never looked back. Never sent a dime. Never contacted her again.”

“What about child support?”

“Mom never went after him for it. She wanted him to be free to do what he needed to do. She didn’t want to fight with him. She married Duane when I was ten, and once he was in the picture, my father’s name was never to be mentioned. It’s like he never existed. Mom fully supported Duane’s stance and wouldn’t answer us if we ever asked anything. She’d rebuke us instead, reminding us that Duane was supporting us and that we needed to respect him and abide by his wishes.”

She heard the small bite of bitterness in her voice. And took it as a warning to not let the past rob her future. She was her mother’s daughter, but she wasn’t going to make her same choices. Her same mistakes.

Mike’s infidelity had been a blessing, so she left before they were married and had had kids who would suffer. After all of those years of Christmases spent with a mother who always kidded herself that “this year” was the one that their dad would be back, having to stay close to home so they didn’t miss him, she hadn’t been willing to forgive Mike and take him back. To “love” him enough. To be “understanding” enough.

“Now that you’re an adult, have you ever tried to find your father?”

She shook her head slowly. So oddly comfortable sharing things with him that she normally never talked about. And again she wondered if she should be concerned. Was this just for him? “Angie did, though.” She continued to answer questions that belonged inside a family.

“Was she successful?”

“Depends on your definition of success.” She shrugged. Hugged her shin. “She found him. In Alaska. He’s captain of a fishing boat that spends months out at sea at a time. He asked why she was contacting him. What she wanted from him. Made it very clear he had no interest in her, and had nothing for her to get from him. They had the one phone conversation and that was it.”

“Did he ask about you or your mom?”

Funny how this man was sensitive enough to come up with that question. And maybe that was why she was talking to him. Because he really listened—beyond words.

“No.”

She didn’t blame “the father.” Not really. She just learned from him. From both of her parents. Angie had started her search for their father after the incident with Duane. During the time when Amelia had been all in with Mike and virtually ignoring the rest of her loved ones. Letting them all down. Angie had been devastated by their father’s response to her call.

“This is why I’m not going to risk putting a child of mine through that,” she told him. “Just like I’m not going to be trapped by love into having to live with a man who makes me unhappy. Angie and I have felt abandoned our entire lives, but it was kind of a nebulous sort of thing there, not tragic, you know? A part of us, but not completely defining us. But after that phone call...”

Angie hadn’t called her, but after finding out that Mike had slept with some woman he’d met in a bar a short time later, Amelia had gone home for the weekend.

And after those two days with her sister, she’d gone back to college, ended things with Mike and put her

self in counseling.