He wanted what his parents still had after forty years together.
Life was unpredictable. He saw that every day at the clinic. Seemingly healthy young people developing life-threatening problems. Elderly patients ready to go who continued to live and grow older.
Family and love: those seemed to him to be the glue that kept happiness present. Both certainly played a huge part in the healing process. He’d seen evidence of that time and time again.
None of which was pertinent here.
And Tricia—maybe she’d somehow known, on some level, that her life was to be short. The thought offered an odd comfort now and then. And didn’t really ring true. If she’d known, she’d have made arrangements for Gavin...
“I’m assuming you broke up?” Amelia’s tone seemed to have softened by the time she broke into the silence that had fallen.
“Tricia was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago,” he said. “A drunk driver crossed a double yellow line just outside of town.”
“This town? Marie Cove?” She sounded surprised. “You hooked up with her when you moved here?”
“Before, actually, but we made it official when I moved here.” He glanced around the home he’d moved into upon graduation from medical school when he’d agreed to be a part of the start-up, physician-owned clinic at Oceanfront. “I met Tricia through Dr. Miller, Tad’s mother. I don’t know how much you know about Marie Cove’s history, but the town has long been a haven for LA’s rich and famous who want to be able to exist in a somewhat normal, if luxurious, atmosphere. Tricia grew up here, the daughter of one of the big city’s wealthiest plastic surgeons and a married man she never named, but whom Tricia firmly believed her mother loved until the day she died.”
More than he’d needed to say. Or maybe, exactly what she’d needed to hear to be able to ascertain what he was asking of her. Either way, the conversation wasn’t unpleasant.
“So she was already gone before Tricia’s accident?”
“She died before Gavin was born.” She’d killed herself with a drug and alcohol cocktail, due to the pain of loving a married man. After the funeral, Tricia had slept with the first guy she’d come in contact with, got pregnant and nearly three years later met Craig. It was all neatly documented in his mind. Facts that fit together in a way that made sense to him. Facts that helped distract him from the gaping hole inside him—left not just by Tricia, but by the boy he’d loved like a son, thought of as a son, and then lost.
“Oh.”
“Oh, what?”
“Oh, no.”
Sitting up abruptly, Craig slowed his motions as Talley’s head popped up, her eyes wide and alert as she studied him.
“What’s going on?” he asked when there was nothing further from the other end of the line.
“Nothing. Just... Gavin... What happened to him? Because you’d have said you had a son to feed or something if you had him, instead of just a dog to pick up. And there were no grandparents on Tricia’s side to take him with her mother gone and her father unnamed. The dad was just an after-the-funeral thing. So that leaves...he was in the car with his mother, wasn’t he?”
It was a hard thing for him to get right with in his mind.
“No.”
“You do have him, then?”
“No.”
“It’s not good, is it?”
“Tricia had money. Gavin’s father knew that. He was named on Gavin’s birth certificate. I knew the guy was no good. I petitioned the court, promising Gavin that I’d keep us together...”
Again with the facts...the rest of it...how did you go on when you could hardly draw air? When you felt so helpless you weren’t sure you’d ever be in charge of your life, or be able to make things right ever again?
“Oh, God. I know where this is going.”
Partially, she probably did.
“The jerk got custody, you lost your son because he wasn’t biologically yours and now...”
“Not only that but the jerk also abused his son, but even when family services got involved, they refused to allow him to be adopted.”
“By you.”