I couldn’t have possibly been more screwed if I’d tried.
2
Maggie
Coming back to Cincinnati always made me nervous. I knew it was unlikely, but I couldn’t stop getting squirrely, worried that I would run into Cal. He still lived here, after all, and he and my dad were still best friends. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he would show up at the house.
In fact, I was surprised that he wasn’t here for Thanksgiving. The last few years I’d convinced my parents to come and visit me instead of the other way around but this time they’d put their foot down and insisted I come here. The sigh of relief that I’d given when I’d heard that Cal wouldn’t be joining was… well, it was a big one.
For years now I had been careful, but all it would take would be one meeting, and everything would come crashing down. And my excuse of traveling with a small child wasn’t going to hold up much longer. Sure, when Fern was a baby, and a toddler, my parents had agreed that traveling with her was too much and had come to Nashville to see us instead. But Fern was now four years old, and that excuse was wearing thin.
Yes. Fern. My child.
Cal’s daughter.
I tapped my fingers against the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew. Standing in my childhood kitchen felt surreal, now that I had a child of my own. I had never planned on being a mother so young. I’d loved my parents and had wanted a kid of my own someday, but not… not so soon.
Not that I would give Fern up. God no. I loved her with my whole heart, with everything in me. I loved her more than my own life. I’d been really nervous the entire time I was pregnant, wondering if I should give her up for adoption, if I could truly be the best parent for her, if I even really wanted her.
Then she’d been put into my arms and opened her big eyes and from that moment forward, I had loved her with everything in me. It was like a tidal wave, like drowning, but I never wanted to come up for air. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me, even if how she’d come to me was a little unconventional.
“Mama!”
“In here, my love!”
Fern came in, hand in hand with my mother. Mom smiled at me and I felt a pinch of guilt. Mom and Dad only knew Fern’s father as a fling I’d had in college. He’s a great guy, I’d told them, but he’s not father material. I don’t want him in the picture. I’m not telling him about the baby. They’d respected that. Your body, your choice, they’d said. And they’d preferred I keep the father out of the picture if he didn’t want to be in it rather than try and force him into a role that he didn’t want.
I hated keeping Fern away from them so much. They loved her. They were the perfect doting grandparents. But how could I bring Fern around when doing so would be tempting fate? If only my parents knew that the callous man who didn’t want anything to do with me was their best friend. It would hurt them deeply, and I couldn’t do that.
If Cal saw Fern… well, I didn’t know what he’d do, actually. I was sure that he knew about Fern from my parents. They could never resist talking about her and praising her to anyone who’d listen, discussing Fern’s artistic talent, her imagination, her adorable big green eyes—her father’s eyes. Whether or not Cal had actually put two and two together about Fern, though… that I wasn’t sure about.
Then again, Cal was an artist. He tended to lose focus on the real world when he was busy creating. I could remember a couple of instances when Dad had gone over to Cal’s house to remind him to eat regularly because Cal had been swept up in the hurricane of creation. It could have been that he hadn’t been paying attention.
Or, worse… that he didn’t care about me enough to consider the suspicious timing of my pregnancy.
I didn’t want to think of him as that type of man, but then again, the way that he’d reacted that night… after we’d finished the afterglow…
He’d said it was a mistake. That we never should’ve had sex. He’d said that I was too young, too inexperienced, that the gulf of maturity and years between us was too much and that he should’ve known better. He’d said that he regretted it. That had—that had really hurt. Of course, it had. I had been in love with the man for five years at that point and yes, maybe I was young, and yes, maybe part of it was girlish infatuation. But so the fuck what? Who cared? I had felt a connection between us and I had wanted to see where that would go. He hadn’t. Just because I was young didn’t make my feelings any less valid. It wasn’t like I’d been sixteen, and it wasn’t like he’d taken advantage of me. I’d known what I was doing.