Emotion rose up my throat. “Please do.”
Kayden watched Alex’s movements from his crib. “Boo,” he said pointing at the books.
“That’s right. You get a story tonight, my love,” I said.
Alex turned and showed me the cover of the book. “Is this okay?”
I couldn’t see a thing. “It’s fine.”
He plopped down on a rug beside the crib and showed Kayden the cover. Then he started reading. I sat on the floor and allowed myself to relax to Alex’s deep soothing voice.
He acted out the character’s voices, making us giggle, though I doubt Kayden knew why he was laughing. He probably just found the sounds that Alex was making funny.
I only realized after ten minutes that Alex’s voice had gone very low. I peered into the crib and saw that Kayden was asleep. “He’s out,” I said to Alex.
We both went to the crib and looked down at Kayden’s peaceful sweet face. I tucked the blanket around him and kissed his forehead, inhaling his sweet baby smells.
“You’re very lucky,” Alex whispered.
Emotion expanded my chest to almost painful proportions. I bit my lower lip to stop myself from blurting out the truth. I hated to doubt him but It was too risky to tell Alex now. I needed to know whether he was still the same Alex who could stand up to the right thing and to his parents.
I had woken up drenched in sweat plagued by nightmares of them taking Kayden away from me. I could survive many things, including the loss of my eyesight but not losing my son.
He was the reason why I kept moving forward even when things got tough.
Alex
“I emailed Amy and told her that I’d reconnected with you,” I said to Charlotte as we sipped an after-dinner glass of wine.
She went still before swinging her gaze to me. “You kept in contact with her?”
“Yes, we emailed back and forth a few times. She insisted from the first day you left that there was a mistake. That you must have had a reason for doing what you did. She wasn’t ready to see the truth. Even now. She said she has to hear it from your mouth to believe it.” I shrugged.
Charlotte didn’t say a word. It was an uncomfortable topic for both of us but mostly for Chaz. She had sacrificed so much for him and then he’d left her. “What was his name?”
She gazed at me in confusion. “Who?”
“The guy you left me for,” I said, my chest burning with a mixture of pain and jealousy.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said.
There was a perverse side of me that wanted to know everything. What did he look like? What had she seen in him that had made her leave our perfect life and run away with him? Had he been a better lover than me?
That last thought made me feel as if acid had been poured down my throat.
“How are your parents?” she asked.
“They are well,” I said. “Mother has mellowed since she became a grandmother.”
“I can’t imagine your mother as a grandmother,” she said. “Or mellowed.”
I searched her face and saw no traces of bitterness. She had every right to be after the way my family had treated her. They had rejected her when she had been so looking forward to being a part of a family.
I had toyed with that idea especially when Amy had insisted that there had to be another reason why she had left. That maybe she had left because of my family but that had made no sense. We had gotten married and things had been wonderful, more so when Chaz found her family.
There had been no other reason for her leaving except for the one she had expressed.
“Helen and her family are well too,” I said. As with Amy, Helen and I exchanged sporadic emails. I hadn’t told her the news yet.
“I miss them,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“I understood why you didn’t want contact with me but why them? Why lose your family and friends too?”
“Can we not talk about the past?” she asked after a moment. “Please?”
The anguish in her eyes was unmistakable. She had paid the price with her own heartbreak. Maybe it was time to permanently say goodbye to the past.
“It’s getting late.” Charlotte got up and carried the wine glasses to the kitchen.
When she returned, I was already on my feet. “What time should I come tomorrow morning?”
“Is ten thirty too early for you? Hannah, that’s my boss, reduced my hours and I’ll be starting work at eleven.”
“Ten thirty is a breeze. I’m a lawyer, remember? We’re used to starting work at crazy hours.”
She walked me out to the car and I noticed when we were outside that she was moving even slower than usual. As though she was scared of falling.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.