I was going to head right in and say goodbye to him, but something made me pause.
“Well, he can’t just show up here.” Sarah said.
I knew it was wrong to
eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help it.
“No, he can’t. If he keeps showing up like that, it could ruin my testimony. The story you helped me come up with to make sure I got full custody of my son. No one can know the truth.”
I took a deep breath wondering what she had lied about to get full custody of her son. It was such an awful thing to do to not only a father, but a child as well. I decided that I had heard enough and turned my attention back to what I had been doing; saying goodbye to Jake.
I didn’t hear any noise coming from his room, which was strange for the six-year-old. He seemed to be always making some sort of noise, whether playing with his trucks or imagining himself fighting the enemy. However, this time when I walked around the corner of his room, I found him sitting quietly on the edge of his bed, his face emotionless.
I took a deep breath and let it out, hating to see him that way. I walked over and ruffled his hair with my hand, taking a seat next to him on the bed. It was terrible that Jake was caught in this situation; he was nothing more than the innocent victim of two adults unable to put their personal issues aside and do what was best for their child. I reached my arm around his shoulders and squeezed him tightly, not even sure of what I should say. I’d only spent a couple weeks with him, but even I could tell he didn’t handle conflict well, so sending him up here on his own to overhear his mother and father fighting wasn’t the best choice Sarah could have made. I could feel him take in a deep breath and then slowly let it out, trying to let the pain escape from his chest. I knew that feeling all too well and was pretty sure I had sighed like that more in the last year than I had in my whole life. He tilted his head up and looked at me with his big green eyes.
“Hey there, handsome,” I said, smiling. “Are you hungry? I can make you something real fast before I leave to go home. That way your mom doesn’t have to worry about feeding you.”
“No,” he said, in his tiny little voice. “I’m okay.”
I looked down at his sweet face, his eyes looking as if they were about to fill up with tears. I couldn’t help myself; the motherly instinct in me wanted to make it all better for him. I turned and scooped him up into a big tight hug, my heart breaking as he laid his head on my shoulder. He was so little, and all of this was just so unfair to him. I set him back on the bed and picked up my bag, searching through it for a pen and piece of paper. I leaned the paper against the surface of the nightstand and wrote my phone number on the front in pen. I stared down at the piece of paper for several moments, making sure I was doing the right thing. I wanted him to know that he was not alone, even if he felt like it sometimes. I reached out and took his hand, opening it up and pressing the paper into his palm. I closed his fingers around the paper and looked him in the eyes. He stared at me in confusion, glancing at his hand and then back up at my face.
“This is my phone number,” I said, looking into his eyes. “If you ever need me, for anything, you can call me. Okay?”
Some might think giving a six-year-old my phone number was useless, but not for Jake. He was an incredibly intelligent little boy, and had been trained to memorize phone numbers, addresses, and knew how to make phone calls when necessary. Now the idea that a boy his age was being held responsible for such a big task made me sad, but at least I knew that I could be there for him if he needed me. He shook his head up and down, signifying that he understood. Just as a small smile curved his lips, his mother called him from downstairs. I pushed him on his way and got to my feet looking around his room. The hollow pain in my chest was unescapable and I quickly pulled my hood up and trotted down the stairs and out the front door.
This little boy had already won my heart. On my drive back to my house, I thought a lot about what had happened, about the situation that I’d just become aware of. It was a bit of a shock to see Sarah and Luke arguing like that, and it made me wonder what little Jake had witnessed when the two of them were still married. I only knew a few details about the divorce, which seemed normal, at least normal for any divorce in today’s society. The marriage didn’t work, they went to court, and Sarah had full custody of Jake. She said Luke had been verbally abusive to her, but there was no police action because she didn’t have the proof. I was always inclined to believe someone who said they were abused, but her story wasn’t sitting well with me. I couldn’t really figure out why she was expressing such hostility towards her ex, especially considering he funded her entire life. I considered myself lucky that I got to keep the house in our divorce, much less ever expect to see a cent from him toward living expenses. From what it seemed to me, she not only got the house, but he paid for it, and supplied a steady flow of cash for her to be able to live the way she did.
Everything about Luke, from his smile to the way he handled his little boy screamed nice guy to me. It was very obvious that his son adored him, which didn’t scream abuser to me at all. Usually, kids had a pretty good perception of these kinds of things, and all he seemed to want to do was talk to his daddy and enjoy being loved by him. Then again, I knew better than most that looks could be deceiving. My ex came off as the most loving, caring, and supportive man on earth, but when it came to our heartbreaking turn of events, he wasn’t any of those things. People had a hard time believing me when I told them how he had behaved, and I couldn’t blame them, I was in shock myself. When my son died, I thought it was going to be the end of my world. I never even had a chance to hold him after he was born, since he was raced off to the doctors and died shortly thereafter. Brian never even hugged me after the baby died, and was completely cold to me anytime I showed any sort of emotion about it. It was terrible. He seemed completely unaffected by it, leaving me to handle everything from funeral arrangements to my own dismal feelings about the whole thing. He just couldn’t understand why I had fallen into a deep depression, which only served to make me feel more isolated than before.
We separated one month after our son died, and divorced right after the period of separation was complete. Not long after that, I’d learned that he’d remarried, to a mutual friend who had come around quite often after the baby died. How a woman could be okay with a man who had no feelings over his dead child, I would never understand. I guess it was true what they said about love being blind; it never seemed to hit you over the head until after you were over someone. Then, when the tears had dried and the heart had stopped aching, you were able to see all the negative things you’d refused to see before. I hoped for her sake she didn’t have to go through it, and that she’d never experience the kind of loss that drove us apart in the first place. I’d tried to be understanding, knowing that grief strikes everyone differently, but he never seemed to have experienced any grief.
Last I’d heard, Brian and his new wife had one child and were expecting another in a couple of months. He got the family he wanted, and he left me behind in the dust. It almost made me feel like he thought I was a failure, unable to create a viable child for him, so he tossed me to the side, along with the repercussions of the event. He found someone new, someone that was able to give him a family when he wanted it. He had pushed me to try again right after the baby died, but there was no way, I couldn’t even think about anything but my own grief at that point. That turned out to be the tipping point, when he decided to move out and not even attempt to help me through the loss of our child. It was devastating all over again for me. Not only had I lost my baby boy, but I’d also lost the man I’d considered to be the love of my life. It was an extremely dark time for me.
Even now, I lived alone, still trying to get over everything, still mourning my loss. When Brian moved out, the house was silent, and I had to go through the whole place on my own, folding up the baby’s things and sending them off to a charity. I was able to see the light of day now, even though some days were harder than others. I had sunk myself into babysitting, yearning to feel that sense of family again, yearning to feel the warm, sweet hugs of a child, even if they weren’t mine. Jake did that for me, and what made it even better was the fact that Jake seemed to need me just as much as I needed him. He filled that empty space a little, and I knew that it was good for me. He was good for me.
All I needed now was to figure out what the hell had happened with his parents, so I knew how to comfort him on days like today.
Chapter Five
Luke
I got out of the car and looked up at the gray sky, thinking how it seemed as though the weather was mirroring my emotions that day. It was a drizzling and cloudy September day in Manhattan, Kansas, or the ‘Little Apple’ as some liked to call it. In reality, the names were the only things that this small town had in common with the monstrosity of New York City, but it made the residents here feel a little bit bigger in their small-town life nonetheless. As I looked toward the doors of the building ahead of me, rain began to drizzle down, so I jogged across the parking lot and into the office.
“Good afternoon,” the receptionist said. “May I help you?”
“Yes, I have an appointment with Amanda Goodall,” I replied.
“Very good,” the secretary said. “Attorney Goodall will be right out to see you.”
“Thank you,” I replied, turning and looking out as the rain picked up, splashing against the black asphalt parking lot.
“Mr. Thompson,” a strong voice called from behind me, forcing me to turn around.
“Ms. Goodall,” I replied, “Please, call me Luke.”
I followed Amanda back to her office, watching the stiff and pointed movements she made as she walked through her doorway, then closed the office door behind us. She was a no-nonsense attorney, from the way she handled her clients to the way she kept her appearance. Rising only about five-feet-six, with dark skin and a short, feminine haircut, her personality burst through any idea that she might be a pushover. I admired her, and that was half of the reason I had hired her to be my attorney. That bein
g said, I was more than excited to hear her approach, but was slightly taken back by it when she was done. For someone hell-bent on letting the truth be known, her ideas were slightly archaic.