Love on the Lake (Lakeside 2)

The next night I head over to my mom’s for dinner. Teagan sends me with biscuits and muffins. I half wanted to invite her along so I’d have the buffer, but it’s Thursday night and she has to work, and putting her in the middle of this situation more than she already is isn’t fair.

My mom lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a fiveplex. Everything in it is tired and in need of updating, but she refuses my help financially and always has.

“Hey, Mom.” I give her a hug, her small frame dwarfed by mine. She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a loose sweater.

“It’s good to see you, come on in. I wasn’t sure if you were bringing Teagan or not.” She seems disappointed by her absence.

“She has to work tonight, but she sent along some treats. You’ll have to come over for dinner one of these days. She can cook like nobody’s business.”

“That sounds lovely. She’s such a nice girl. And always on the go!”

“That she is. She’s not a fan of idle time.” To a fault, maybe. But I keep that to myself.

I help her prepare dinner, nerves making it hard for me to focus.

“Is everything okay, Aaron? You seem distracted,” she says as she pulls a root beer from the fridge and pops off the cap.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“Of course. You can talk to me about anything, you know that.” She offers me a small, concerned smile.

For the most part it’s not a lie. She’s always been there for me. She did the best she could as a single mom. Made the choices she thought were best for the both of us. But that’s the thing about choices—we make them framed in our singular experience, not always taking into account time or current circumstances. But there has always been one topic that wasn’t open for discussion, and I’m about to broach it in a way I never have before.

“It’s about my biological dad.”

Her expression shutters. From one second to the next the mood shifts completely. “You know I don’t have contact with him. I haven’t spoken to him since you went to college.”

“I know.” I take a deep breath, feeling like a teenager who stole the car and crashed it into the bushes—something I never did. “Please don’t be mad, Mom.”

“Mad about what? What could I possibly be upset with you for?”

“I’ve been in contact with Dad.”

“What?” She stops mashing the potatoes to gape at me. “When? Why would you do that? He’s a cheater and a liar!”

I raise a hand. “I know how you feel about him, but I need you to hear me out.”

She crosses her arms. “He abandoned us!”

“He made mistakes, Mom. We all do, because we’re human. And I’m not excusing him for what happened between the two of you, but there are two sides to every story, and somewhere in the middle of that is the truth. He wanted to be part of my life.”

She rolls her shoulders back and turns her head, looking out the window instead of at me. “He could have taken you away from me, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“I know you were trying to protect us.” And standing here, in the middle of her tiny, worn apartment, I can see that’s exactly what she was doing. Especially growing up in a small town and having fallen for a man who was in a much better position financially. Not to mention significantly older than she was. My dad has a good decade on my mom. She was the young home-wrecker. He was the wealthy doctor, married to another doctor, both of their lives so busy with work that they never had time for each other. “But I’m an adult, and I don’t need protecting anymore. What I do need is to be able to have a relationship with my father, even if you don’t.”

I lead her to the couch, needing to sit down so I can explain the rest. About having a relationship with him for the past nine years, about Devon, about losing him, about how difficult it’s been to keep those two parts of my life separate from each other and that I can’t and don’t want to do that anymore. It’s too hard, and it’s not good for me, her, or my dad.

She tries to blink back the tears, her trembling hand at her mouth. “Oh, Aaron. I am so, so sorry. This is all my fault. I can’t believe you’ve held on to this for almost a decade.”

I take her other hand in mine, my emotions frayed, but I’m aware this needed to happen. “It’s no one’s fault, Mom. Or if there needs to be blame, it’s everyone’s fault. Dad could have pushed to have a relationship with me, you could have done things differently, I could have said something years ago, but I didn’t. And all I was doing was creating a rift that I wasn’t going to be able to fix if I kept going this way. I thought I was protecting you, but really, it was hurting all of us.” And it took Teagan coming into my life to make me see that.