you how many times I’ve wished that I’d done it differently.”
“What about Kayden? He’s my son Charlotte! I deserved to know. I’ve missed so much of his life,” he said.
I preferred the anger to the sadness in his voice. Tears filled my eyes. What did you say to something that was true? “I’m truly sorry.” It sounded so inadequate to say sorry. It wasn’t going to bring back the time Alex had lost with Kayden.
He would never experience the joy of hearing Kayden’s first word or see his first step. So many firsts that he would never experience.
“I didn’t try very hard. After I left the message with your mom, I told myself that you had chosen to ignore me and thus Kayden and I made myself move on.”
“And this time? When we met at the diner? I couldn’t leave Woodfield fast enough as far as you were concerned,” he said, a trace of bitterness in his voice.
I bowed my head. Shame came over me. He was right. I’d wanted him to leave and leave me and Kayden to our lives. All I cared about was maintaining the status quo of my life.
I’d decided to be honest with Alex, even when making some admissions was painful. I raised my gaze to his. His cobalt blue eyes bore into me, questioning, wondering, nursing pain.
I had made so many bad decisions all of which had ended up hurting the person I’d loved the most in the world. I made a decision right there and then. No matter how painful, I was never going to lie to Alex ever again.
We were joined together by Kayden and we would always be in each other’s lives, in one capacity or another.
I cleared my throat. “I was frightened that when you found out about my vision problems, you’d take Kayden away from me.”
His eyes widened. “Oh Chaz. You know me better than that. I would never do that. Not in a million years. You know that?”
I was too choked up to speak. I nodded.
Alex
No matter how much I wanted to be angry at Charlotte for not telling me about Kayden, I couldn’t. She had done it for the right reasons, as misguided as they were. Besides, there was a part of me that would always blame myself.
In the years we had been married, I hadn’t made her feel secure enough to know that I was a permanent feature. I was not only around for the good times but for the bad as well. Especially for the bad. That was what marriage was.
The one lesson that I’d learned from my parents was that marriage was a lifelong commitment. It was easy to heap the blame on Charlotte but I shouldered almost as much blame as she did.
“I should have tried to find you,” I said to her. “I’m sorry that I never had the faith in you like Amy did. I should have known the contents of that letter were bullshit.”
She smiled. “I was pretty convincing.”
“But Amy knew,” I said.
“It’s easier for a friend to see through the lies. It was you whom I’d supposedly betrayed,” she said. “You were angry and hurt as I knew you’d be.”
“Why that?” I said, remembering the nights I’d lain awake consumed by jealousy as I imagined another man making love to Charlotte.
“It was the only way I knew to make you hate me enough to go back to your old life,” she said.
She knew me well, except for one thing. “There’s nothing you can do that would make me hate you.”
“Unless it involves hurting Kayden,” she said.
“Correct but that would never happen.”
“Never,” she said fiercely. “He kept me going when I thought I’d reached the end.”
“He’s an awesome kid,” I said. “And it’s all thanks to you Chaz. You’re an awesome mom and he’s lucky to have you.”
Silence fell between us. The way forward was so hazy and so unclear.
“What happens now?” Chaz said.
“I don’t know. What I do know is that you and Kayden are stuck with me. I don’t know how we’ll make it work but we will.”
“A day at a time, for now,” she said.
“A day at a time.”
I loved her so much. Her and Kayden and to know that we were a real family and no man was going to walk into our lives and claim Kayden as his son. That made me feel as if I could fly. And happy. And home at last.
So much had changed with the knowledge that Kayden was my son.