Thomas Gardner—my father—never knew anything about me.
“She never told you,” I said quietly. I tried to picture my mom—the woman who tucked me in at night and played the piano when I couldn’t sleep—as a band groupie who got pregnant with me after a drunken one-night stand. I shook my head. The picture didn’t fit who I knew at all.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t decide if I should tell you how it was or not. I toyed with the idea of telling you we were madly in love or something, but I thought maybe you’ve been lied to enough.”
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head again.
“I want the truth,” I told him. “No more bullshit.”
“Right,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is that…um…enough for one sitting?”
His voice cracked, and when I looked up at him, I thought he was going to lose it or start crying or something. He looked totally distraught, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Are you okay?” I asked, confused.
He laughed, but there was nothing humorous in the sound. He dropped his head into his hands again.
“I swear, Thomas,” he said, “I swear if I had known before then I would have done something…I would have insisted…but what your dad said made sense, at least at the time. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you or make any of this worse. I don’t know shit about kids…but you’re not really a kid now anyway…but I wasn’t there for you. Not for any of it. Shit.”
“What did he say?” I asked. “What did Dad say to you?”
“You sure you want more?”
I could only nod. My throat felt tight, and I had to keep swallowing over and over. I sipped at my ice water and stared at my own hands for a bit.
“When I saw you, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, you had obviously just lost your mother, and I was in shock as soon as I laid eyes on you. I remember walking toward you—you were sitting on an overstuffed chair—and then stopping. I didn’t know what I could say to you. I was at a total loss. I think I had pretty much planned on leaving at that point and maybe trying to reach out to you later, when your…your dad came up to me.”
“He must have known…recognized me somehow...or just saw the resemblance and drew his own conclusion. I don’t know. But he stopped me from getting any closer to you, said he knew who I was and not to upset his son any more than he already was. I remember just kind of looking up at him—at Lou—and I think I asked him if you were mine. He made it pretty clear that he was the one who had raised you and that I needed to leave. I wasn’t about to make some sort of scene at a funeral home, and as I said—he had a point. I didn’t want to upset you. He took my number and said he’d call me in a few days.”
“He didn’t call. It was about two weeks later when I ended up calling him instead. He said you didn’t know anything about me and that frankly, neither did he. That’s when he asked what my name was, which I thought was weird since he said he knew who I was before. I told him, and he flipped. Then I figured it out—Fran never told him my name, but she…she named you after me. He lost it—just for a minute. Then he started laughing and then calmed down again pretty quickly. I knew he had to be…to be grieving. I figured maybe that was just his way.”
I had my own opinions about that.
“After a while, he agreed to meet with me,” Thomas Gardner said. “I flew back to Portland, and we met for dinner. He told me a lot about you—how much you…”
He paused and looked away for a minute.
“What?” I prompted.
“How much you loved playing soccer,” he finally said. “How you were some kind of goalie prodigy or something and that you wanted to play pro. He said your mother didn’t want you to know me—that she never wanted me to know about you. He said if I came into your life, then it would just make everything harder for you. You had just lost your mother—your life was in enough turmoil.”
“I couldn’t really argue with that,” he continued. “I didn’t want to be a disruption. We communicated every few months, and he’d mostly tell me about your soccer playing. He even said once that you had a sketchbook and you liked to draw, but I think that was kind of a slip on his part.”
I met his eyes for the first time in a while. He offered me a half grin, which was just another opportunity for me to freak out. Every time I looked at him, it was like looking into the mirror.
“I felt really…proud,” he said quietly, “when he said that. Like…maybe you got something from me besides hair that won’t stay where it’s put.”
I chuckled a little and ran my hand through my unruly hair.
“It’s not as bad if you keep it shorter,” he said.
“Nicole likes it a little bit long.”
“She seems really good for you.”
“She is,” I said. I immediately felt defensive. If he even tried to hint that I shouldn’t have her in my life…
“Easy,” he said as he held his hands out in front of him. “It was a compliment. I’m glad you have her and that you’re staying with her and her father.”