The Daddy Box Set

“You look so happy,” I said, turning the pages. “I just can’t get over how in love you two are, and how you spent the last several months traveling all over the globe. It’s so damn romantic. I hope that one day, I will have the same thing.”

“Well, being a mother, I worried about you girls constantly while I was gone,” she said. “In fact, had I known that there was a relationship brewing for my youngest and a baby on the way for my oldest, I probably would have decided to stay home and be there for you two.”

“Don’t be silly.” I laughed. “We are grown women. We missed you terribly, don’t get me wrong. But you deserved every second of that trip.”

“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head. “I leave for vacation, and you start dating your brother, and your sister gets knocked up. Doesn’t sound like you two have everything under control.”

“Mom,” I said, gasping.

“Oh, honey, I’m just kidding.” She laughed. “Besides, Ryan is technically your stepbrother, no blood relationship. You are both consenting adults, so I had no issue with it at all. I just wish I could have been here to help you through all the hard stuff. And as far as your sister is concerned, it’s her third marriage and first baby, so I would say that was a win. I have a good feeling about this one, and that baby will definitely bring some much-needed grounding into her life. Don’t get me wrong, though. I do admire her free sensibilities. I just want to see you both happy.”

“I know.” I sighed. “As far as Ryan is concerned, I can’t stress enough that it is over between the two of us. Christina, Kayla’s mom, came back into the picture, and that was that. It was really hard for me to accept that it might be the best thing for Kayla, but I saw how bad that little girl struggled without her mom close by. I told Ryan that he owed it to Kayla to try to make it work, and at least see where things could go. I couldn’t be the one responsible for breaking up a family, and I knew that if I played any role in it, Kayla would never forgive me. Things would never be perfect like they were, just hours before Christina showed up, and there was no way around that fact. Christina has the upper hand in this situation, and I knew that it would be better for me to back away gracefully than scratch and claw for something that I wasn’t sure I had any control over at all.”

“Good for Kayla? Yeah, right. That woman wouldn’t know how to be a parent if she wrote the book herself. She is a good-for-nothing person that left her husband and baby behind, and then expects to walk right back into their lives like nothing ever happened. She deserves to be single and alone.”

I laughed a little to myself, surprised by my mother’s reaction to it all. She wasn’t the kind of person that would normally spite others for her own thoughts and feelings. She definitely had an opinion about Christina. That was for sure, but I wasn’t completely sure that it was unbiased since she saw how in love I was with Ryan at the party. She was a mother bear that wanted to protect her cubs, something that I always loved about her, even when it wasn’t what aligned with my own thoughts. She always taught us to be moral and do what we thought was right, which is what I had done for Ryan. Only then, I started to get second thoughts about it. I brushed the feeling off, assuming it was due to the fact that I really missed them, and I was struggling being away from the two of them.

“I know.” I sighed. “I don’t like her any more than anyone else does. I just know how important it is for a little girl to have her mother in her life. Kayla was so lost when I started to come around, and the way she is now, well, it is like night and day. A mother is really important in a child’s life.”

“I agree with you,” she said. “A child needs a mother, or mother figure in their lives. It is really important to growth and emotional stability. That being said, Christina is not a mother in my eyes. She put her wants and needs to be with another man over those of her husband and her child. She lost her privilege to be a mother to that child the moment she stepped foot out of that house without any intention of ever coming back.”

“That is true,” I said. “It was really hard to believe that she actually cared about them when she begged Ryan to take her back. She was exasperated, and she seemed like she was looking for something, but it wasn’t the comfort of her child. I really couldn’t read her very well, but if I had missed all that time with my daughter, the first thing I would do would be to spend time with her and then approach that subject later, not standing in the living room in front of company.”

“Well, I don’t necessarily believe that her intentions were truthful,” my mother said, closing the book.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can see her crawling back to that life not because she wanted to, but because she got dumped,” she said, shaking her head. “When you have nowhere else to go, you pick the destination you can manipulate to your needs the best. If he does take her back, I can see her leaving again in the near future.”

“I just don’t understand how you can fall in and out of love so quickly,” I said, frustrated. “I mean, it has plagued me ever since Dad left. When you love someone, it should take great acts to make you fall out of love with them. In my eyes, it’s easy to love, and it’s hard to walk away and get rid of the feelings. Anyone who has ever been broken up with knows that feeling all too well.”

“Love is a tricky thing,” she said. “And let me just remind you, Alissa, Ryan has been divorced for quite some time now. It isn’t like you fell in love with a man that was off-limits. It doesn’t make you able to let go any easier, knowing that you didn’t do anything wrong in the situation. I can understand how being bested by that blonde twit could be extremely frustrating.”

“It just makes it hard because fighting for Ryan means that it will affect Kayla in one way or another,” I said. “I don’t want to do that if I can manage to avoid it.”

“Honey, either way, that poor girl is going to have some sort of feelings about the situation,” she said, patting my leg. “You would be shocked to realize just how intuitive little girls really are. Listen, if you want to fight for your man, then do it. You are not in any way, shape, or form in the wrong for doing so. Ryan was a free man when you started dating him, and any claim Christina had to him was left behind when she signed those divorce papers. If you fight for him and that beautiful little girl that you love so much, that does not make you a homewrecker. What it does do is make Christina a homewrecker for coming in and stealing what was not hers. She gave up on that man and that little girl when she abandoned them. You have to stop seeing yourself as the villain and realize that you just might be those two’s hero.”

“I never thought about it that way,” I said, biting my nails and staring off into the distance.

“That’s why I’m here.” She chuckled. “You sit here and ponder. I’m going to go make us some tea. I think I’ve had my fill of wine for the day. Otherwise, you might find me taking a nap in the garden later.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding my head and focusing on the chair across from me.

I was so confused about what to think, how to think, and what I should even do about all of this. On the one hand, my mother made a very good and perfectly valid argument. I was not in the wrong whatsoever for dating Ryan. On the other hand, I was still worried about what it would do to Kayla if I were to fight to stay a part of their lives. I knew that if he took Christina back, I would never be able to be around them again. It would change the whole dynamic of how I handled my family and the holiday gatherings we all loved so much. In the end, though, that wasn’t even my biggest concern. My biggest issue was that I loved him, and I felt deep in my gut that I should be fighting for him and making sure both he and Kayla knew how much I loved them, how invested I was in their lives, and how much I wanted us to be a family. Once they knew that, if they still decided to bring Christina back, I had done all I could do to win them back.

It was a difficult decision, but I knew that I was going to

have to make it, and sooner than later. The longer I allowed that woman to inch back into their lives, the less likely I was to get a good response when I went knocking on their door. I wasn’t even sure if it was already too late.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ryan

Laughter bellowed from my chest as Kayla bounced out of the car and down the walkway to the house, wearing her new elephant hat and duck shoe covers that I got her at the gift shop at the zoo. I knew that this outing would be a hit for Kayla, since she pretty much loved the zoo with everything in her being. It was hard to do these kinds of things without constantly thinking about Alissa, but I tried to stay the course, not wanting to take myself backward into something that I wasn’t sure I had any control over anymore. It had been weeks now since Alissa and I had been together, and we hadn’t talked at all, not even through text. I tried to respect that, knowing how hurt she probably was.

I reached the front door and unlocked it, letting Kayla run inside and wait for Christina to catch up. I was assuming she wasn’t used to the energy level of an 8-year-old, but at least this time, she had worn jeans and a T-shirt with sneakers instead of traipsing around in high fashion next to the lion pit. She walked past me and smiled fakely with her lips tightly pursed together. I rolled my eyes and sighed, walking in behind them and shutting the door. Kayla raced upstairs to put away her stuff, and I looked over at Christina, not sure what to say to her.

Everything still seemed so stressed, almost forced from her, and I couldn’t figure out why. By now, I would have figured she would be back in the flow of things with Kayla at least. She was very distant from Kayla and was doing things in a way that was “expected,” and not just relaxed and with the flow of the moment. She also seemed to forget that Kayla was old enough to do things like wipe her own nose and tie her own shoes, which had led to an embarrassing moment for Kayla at the zoo in front of the monkey cages. I was no longer going to sit by and just let it continue like that, not if this was supposed to decide whether I let Christina back in our lives or not. She had to either let me know what was going on, or things needed to change, because at that moment, we were at a complete standstill.