Second Time's the Charm

“No, Kate’s not in the picture.”

“She’s alive, though?”

“Yep. Lives in New York City. She’s in advertising.” At least, the last he heard that was where she was, what she was doing. It wasn’t as if he kept track. Once she’d been satisfied that her parents were off his back, she’d disappeared just like she’d said she was going to do.

And if he wanted Lillie’s help, she probably should understand a few things.

“I was working for a construction framing company when I met Kate.”

He didn’t like to think about those days. They served no purpose. The first few months he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

The bump back to earth had been more painful than any that he’d experienced before. But he learned something, too. He wasn’t going to go through that again.

“Framing companies are hired by construction bosses—contractors who get the jobs and then hire smaller, more specialized companies who specialize in the various skills needed to put up buildings.”

“So your specialty is framing?”

He shrugged. Started to say, “When I got out,” and caught himself. “I worked two and three jobs back then,” he said. “I’m trained in framing, plumbing and electrical work, though I don’t have the certification to run big jobs. I was the guy who laid the pipes and put the wires in place, and the boss would check my work before turning on the juice.”

“What does it take to get certification?”

“Classes. A test.” He’d have gotten there one day—though more slowly once Abraham came along—if the Montford scholarship hadn’t changed his course.

She’d asked about Kate. They were trying to solidify Lillie’s role in Abe’s life.

For his son’s sake he said, “The contractor, a man with more money than I’d know what to do with, was a decent man. I rented a little two-bedroom house from his property management company, which is how I got the job to begin with.”

His parole officer had referred him to the contractor when he’d been set free. A young kid with a sealed record, a GED earned while serving time for armed robbery and no references didn’t just walk out into the world and get received with open arms. The contractor had a history of hiring newly released juvenile offenders, his civic duty, he’d said, to give them a trade and a chance to be a contributing member of society.

“Kate was the guy’s niece,” he said out loud. “She showed up on the construction site to see her uncle and asked me out.” She’d just graduated with a degree in marketing and had been bored, he’d later found out, waiting to land her dream job and leave Atlanta for even more populated pastures. The only problem was, her parents wouldn’t let her go. Kate had been determined, though. She’d been looking for trouble so that her father would agree that it would be a good idea for her to get out of town.

Jon withheld that part of the story. Either Lillie already had the information, or she didn’t need to know about it to help Abraham.

“Six months later she told me she was pregnant.”

He’d never forget the day. The...

“I’m assuming that was unexpected.”

With a quick glance in the rearview mirror, an instinctive reflex assuring himself that his son was right there with him—not a heavenly dream—Jon said, “In more ways than one.”

She was looking at him again. His peripheral vision told him her face was turned toward him.

“The morning Kate found me on break to tell me that we were going to have a child, I jumped off a four-foot-high block wall and hugged everyone in sight. Understand this, professionally and every other way, I wanted my son. I was ready to shout the news to the world. I imagined we’d get married. She’d move in with me and we’d buy a house....”

He’d been a fool. There was no point in hiding the fact.

Lillie gazed out the front window. He wondered if she thought he was lying to her.

And thought again about her childless state. About a husband who maybe hadn’t wanted children.

“Kate had come to tell me the news with one goal in mind—asking me to put up the money for the abortion so her family wouldn’t know she’d had it.”

They were supposed to know that she’d hooked up with an ex-con, not that she’d produced an heir to the Abrams throne.

“Wow.”

He’d been poleaxed himself. “She wasn’t a bad person,” he said. Because Kate was Abraham’s mother—and because the words were true. When Kate had caught wind that her mother was petitioning to take Abe away from him, she’d moved hell and high water to make certain that didn’t happen. Of course, she’d done so partially because if Clara had Abraham, Kate would be forced to see her son, to be at least a part-time mother. But Jon also knew that Kate wanted Abraham with him. She’d had tears in her eyes when she’d told him how lucky Abraham was to have a father who cared as much as Jon did.