An Innocent Thanksgiving

Jenn laughed. “Touché, Mags. But I’m not kidding, here. I’m going to get you a new man, a good one. You deserve it.”

Yeah. Sure. “Whatever you say, Jenn.” There was only one man who’d ever captured my interest, and he didn’t want me anyway, so.

Life went on.

11

Cal

Maybe buying a house in a whole new city sight unseen wasn’t the smartest idea, but I was an artist and so I figured I was allowed to be a little spontaneous and eccentric. Besides, I had the money to spare. It had taken me only a little over a week to get everything settled and ready to go, and it wasn’t like this would impact my career.

It was ironic, though. Most people didn’t know about my marriage—Mark did, but I didn’t think that Maggie knew about it. It had been pretty short. Nothing against Kate, she was a good person, but we just weren’t right for each other. And I’d been pretty immature in my twenties. I didn’t blame her for getting angry, although there were things she could’ve compromised on as well.

One of our biggest arguments was about children. I hadn’t wanted any, and I had been frustrated that she’d married me with the idea that she could change my mind about that. Sure, maybe someday I would want kids. Maybe someday I would stop enjoying my art and would want to become a rancher instead. People changed. But going into a relationship expecting to change a person? That just never worked out well.

And now look. It was twenty-five years since the divorce, sure, and yet, I had in fact changed. I wanted to be Fern’s father. It was like the moment I got confirmation she was actually mine something wrapped a string around my heart and tugged viciously. I had to be in her life. I wanted to be in her life. I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try to reason with Maggie and show her that I could be there for Fern, that her assumptions about how this would go were wrong.

I wandered through the house, checking it out. The previous owner had just wanted to get rid of it—something about a divorce, and starting over, etc. Boy did I understand that feeling. The woman was moving to Europe and couldn’t bring anything with her, so the house had come with the furniture she’d used to have, and while it wasn’t exactly to my taste, it was nice enough and would do for now.

The place was nicer than I’d thought in the pictures. Excellent. I’d really scored a deal with this one. This wasn’t the first time that I’d uprooted myself. I’d originally been based in New York City, but after the divorce from Sandy I’d moved to Cincinnati to be near my parents. I’d felt like it was a good choice to ground myself, and they’d missed me—and then I’d just ended up staying. I had a real community there, so why not?

Now I was moving again, and once again I was doing it to be with family, although the context was entirely different. Once I put up my artwork around this house, though, it would feel like home. That was really all I needed. Fern was what mattered, and I couldn’t wait to start getting to know her.

Of course, there was still Maggie to consider.

As I unpacked and began sorting things into closets and onto bookshelves, I tried to think of what to do to handle her. Maggie had a right, I supposed, to not tell me. I hadn’t made it easy for her to think that I would want a child in my life. I was traveling all the time for art shows, would get lost in my head for days or weeks when I was in the middle of a new art project, and I wouldn’t know a proper routine if my life depended on it. And that was all before you considered the way I’d talked to her after our one night stand.

And yet… I couldn’t deny that I was hurt over being kept in the dark. A relationship was one thing, but a child was another. Even if I hated Maggie—which I didn’t, and never had, and never could—that didn’t mean that I would hate my child. I wanted to be a part of Fern’s life and I still felt, as illogical as it might be, that Maggie should have told me. Even if she wanted to keep Fern’s parentage a secret from her parents, surely we could have found a way around that. I could have visited her in Nashville when her parents weren’t there, sent her money privately somehow…

That actually begged the question over what I was going to do now. How could I explain things to Mark? He wasn’t going to be happy no matter what way you sliced it. It was his daughter, and there was a good twenty-some-odd years of age difference. He was going to feel betrayed, and pissed, and especially since this had been a secret for so many years.