have any of his prior medical records?”
Regret shook my head. NO. THE ONLY THING SHE LEFT ME WITH WAS A DIAPER BAG.
That and a car seat she’d left sitting outside the door.
“All right . . . we’ll just . . . go about this the best that we can. Hopefully the attorney can track her down quickly. Get the judge to order temporary custody so you can sign to obtain his records.”
That was a worry, too.
If the state would come in and snatch him up and place him in foster care.
Deem the situation too chaotic.
My care unfit.
I’d already given a blood sample this morning so I could at least prove paternity before we got the law involved.
The attorney said that was the first step.
Then getting me on his birth certificate.
The rest of it would have to go from there.
“He needs us to do the best that we can for him, Evan.”
“I’ll do absolutely anything. I just . . .” Misery twisted my brow in a plea. “How am I supposed to be a father when I have no fucking idea if I’m gonna be around?”
Grief streaked through Dad’s expression. “None of us gets the luxury of knowing that, Evan. Not one of us. And I know your situation is different, but being a father is giving your child every single one of your days. However many of them there are. That’s what matters.”
“I just . . . want to be enough.”
And that was the problem.
Wasn’t ever sure that I could be.
Emotion welled in his eyes. “You’ve always been, Evan . . . more than enough for all of us. I don’t think you ever really realized what a blessing that you are. How you made us all better people for being you. How you changed our worlds and in a better way.”
My gaze drifted to my son who’d slid off my lap and was standing between my knees.
“You want to tell me about his mother?” Dad hedged.
Last night we’d tiptoed.
Only the barest facts given.
Not that I had a whole lot of information to contribute, anyway.
HER NAME IS ASHLEY. Decided to sign it, not sure I could get it out if I attempted to say it aloud.
“And who is she?”
In discomfort, I roughed a hand through my hair. “Girl from my complex.”
Speculation and confusion lifted his brow. “And . . . you were in a relationship with her?”
Didn’t matter that I couldn’t hear him. Could feel the degree of hesitation his questions were coming with.
Didn’t know what it was that shook my head—shame or remorse or just plain surrender. “More like I was drunk and lonely.”
Just trying to fill up that vacancy.
I touched Everett’s hand, still unable to comprehend that something so magical could come from something that had been so superficial.
“We hooked up a couple times. She moved a few weeks later. We weren’t even close enough that she felt the need to say goodbye. Hadn’t seen her until she showed up at my door in the middle of the night a few days ago.”
Dad’s head shook, and he bounced his knee, like he was trying to come to grips with this. “I get it, Evan, trying to fill a void when you know something is missing. What I don’t understand is if you were so lonely, why didn’t you come home? Why did you think you needed to separate yourself from us? We love you. You really think we considered you a burden?”
I huffed out a sigh, hesitated, lifted my hands, dropped them before I was speaking aloud again, “I know that I was.”
Everything quavered with the memory, and my tongue darted out to wet my dried lips. “You think I couldn’t see it, Dad? See it in all of your eyes that day when you came rushing into the emergency room? The fear? The agony? I didn’t want to be the person who brought that on anymore.”
When I’d finally felt I’d reached a peak in my life, finally accepting what I’d always wanted, I’d collapsed. Heart function dropping and sending my blood pressure into the danger zone. They were able to adjust my meds.
But there had been something that had changed that night.
A realization that had come on when I’d seen their faces.
I’d known it immediately. It was what they had been waiting on all those years. For the day when they would get the news that I was gone.
I figured I was nothing but selfish if I stayed and continued to put them through that.
“Yeah, Evan? Well