And that’s the way the day went.
She found herself a new sunhat, and over lunch they talked about Alejo again. More about his childhood here, anecdotes she remembered, and ones their son had recounted to Rigo. Many of them the sort of thing boys hid from their mothers, mostly not to worry them.
In Alejo’s case, it was definitely nothing worse. “He hated wanton destruction,” Godiva said. “Though he loved fireworks on the Fourth, he never went through a phase of throwing cherry bombs to destroy things, or tossing rocks through windows.”
Rigo grinned. “He and his buddy Lance saw themselves as some kind of Avengers, from the comic book. Alejo didn’t know it yet, and Lance had been raised to know, so he didn’t think about it, but they got their strength and speed from their shifter heritage, so though they weren’t the biggest boys in their environment, nobody could beat them. He told me they liked roaming around swooping on bullies, then vanishing. He never said, but I think at age twelve and thirteen they both had to deal with severe disappointment that this was not the age of capes and masks.”
Godiva burst out laughing. “You’re absolutely right. When he was small, I remember he tied his bath towel around his shoulders when he jumped around the apartment.”
The rest of the afternoon sped by as they switched rapidly from one subject to another, until the street began to show the long shadows of late afternoon. Godiva’s stomach was beginning to remind her to look for dinner about the time Rigo took out his phone, then exclaimed, “Alejo is awake, and wants to know if it’s time to switch shifts.”
“Okay,” she said. “How about I go across the street and make one more check, then I’ll get Alejo and come back? I need to stretch my legs.”
“Sure,” Rigo said—as by now she knew he would. Because she had suggested it.
She left and crossed the street. After she found the box empty again (which was odd, surely the test letter had to have gotten here by today!) she walked out into the melding shadows of impending sunset, her emotions like a big, wobbly balloon roughly the size of Texas trying to crowd around her heart.
She knew exactly what this feeling it was. She was grappling with a major shift in perspective.
For years—decades—one thing she’d held firmly onto was her victimhood. She had been abandoned before her son was born, and then that son vanished, leaving her with nothing but the sense of having been wronged.
Rigo never made any reference to a sense of wrongness on his part. That didn’t mean she couldn’t see it. The most unsettling part was the realization that all this easy talk, the funny anecdotes, were all meant to prevent her from feeling what she was feeling now: remorse. Sorrow, even, for what he’d missed. What both of them had missed.
He had taken responsibility for it all. But she had to admit her part, for she had worked strenuously during those years not to be found.
For the first time, she was considering what it must have been like for Rigo to miss the birth of his child. For those seventeen years he hadn’t known if the child was a boy or girl. He had no part in the choosing of the child’s name. He was not there for the first tooth, the first step, the first words—which never included Dad. There was no Dad in his son’s early life, except for scathing references to one of those Bad Dads that the boy knew shadowed the lives of many kids around him, once he got old enough to ask questions.
The fact that Rigo accepted all the blame somehow made her realization worse, because she knew that she could have tried to find him when Alejo had been young. But she hadn’t made the least effort. Quite the opposite, because her anger had distorted him into something he wasn’t.
Her walk didn’t steady her mind. She was fighting against that clogged throat and the sting in her eyes when she reached the B&B.
Alejo waited inside, as handsome as his father as he lounged with his father’s grace in the little lobby, chatting with the desk person. He turned to her, his own version of his father’s easy grin lighting up the room. “Mom! Ready for a sitrep!”
“It’s all a big nothing,” she said gruffly, moving toward the stairway.
He began to follow.
She turned to wave him off. “I just want to chuck this laptop in my room. I’ll be back in thirty seconds.”
“I’ll come with you,” Alejo said. “I want to see if your room is as nice as mine is.”
She could not say no to him. So she led the way, breathing deeply to defeat that sting in her eyes as he said, “Is Dad ready for dinner? I have some suggestions.”
“I’d like to hear them.” Godiva keyed the room open.
Alejo followed her in, running his eyes along the elegant crown molding and the framed Aubrey Beardsley prints on the wall behind the bed. “Nice! Mine has Gustav Klimt prints, and Dad’s is in shades of blue with prints from Erté.”
Godiva pulled the laptop out of her bag and laid it on the desk. When she turned, Alejo was looking across the room at her, his face serious. “Mom, I just wanted to say, because I know Dad won’t. If—if it matters. There’s never been any other woman in his life.”
Damn, there was the sting again. Godiva crossed her arms tightly as she said, “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“He’d tell you right out if you did. Here’s the thing he probably won’t tell you, but I think you ought to know. Shifters mate for life. I’m not laying this on you as a guilt-trip. I think you’ve seen that he’s living a good life. It’s just a life without any woman in it, because there is no other woman but you.”
Godiva’s heart constricted. Technically, this stuff about mates bonding for life wasn’t news. Rigo had told her that very first night, but somehow she’d taken that as something all the other shifters out there had.
That Doris and Jen and Bird had. Not her.
Alejo said, “He doesn’t want to lay any guilt trips on you either, but even though I never got to know you as an adult, from what I remember, I think you’d rather have it straight.” He frowned. “And I really want to know why I didn’t get to know you as an adult. With that thought, I’m off to the post office for my first tour of duty. I only wish we’d thought of that years ago, but . . .”