The Good Father (28 page)

“Who knows, maybe with you living separately from us, if you are involved in the baby’s life, you won’t feel so afraid of getting out of control. You’ll have your own place to go to when you’re angry, so maybe you won’t be so paranoid about what you might or might not have in you. All I know is that you’ve taken almost thirteen years of my life, Brett. You can’t have any more.”

Unlocking her car, she flung her bag over to the passenger seat, climbed in and drove away.

But not before Brett had seen the tears in her eyes.

And he knew she meant every word she’d said. If, upon hearing the night before that Ella was having his baby, he’d had even half a hope that they might find some kind of future together, she’d just snuffed it out.

* * *

E
LLA WAS CLIMBING
into bed the next night—Sunday, one day after Brett had met her outside work—when her phone rang.

Recognizing his number, she slid her legs under the covers and sat back against her headboard while she answered.

Best not to deal with Brett lying down.

“Is this too late?”

“No.”

“I’m in a little town in Kansas, getting ready to attend the meeting of a potential new client in the morning, a nonprofit delegation of farmers, and my concentration is not what I need it to be. I want to help you. And it occurs to me that I don’t know how. I know that I can’t give you what you need most, but surely there are ways I can help.”

Oh, God. Her emotions were too vulnerable right now...she couldn’t let herself get soft. But soft was exactly how Brett’s words made her feel.

“I don’t have the answer to that, Brett,” she said, giving him complete sincerity when what would have been better for both of them was more of her stiff upper lip. “You are who you are. It’s not fair to you that you try to be anyone else. None of this is fair.”

“So...I was thinking...I would like updates on the baby. I want to know everything. Every step of the way. I just don’t want to make things more difficult for you.”

He sounded so stilted. So unnatural. Because he was trying to be something he was not?

Was trying too hard?

Biting off the words
this is
difficult for me
, she said instead, “How about if I text or call when I have something to report?” she asked, picturing a relationship similar to the one he shared with his mother.

“That would be good.”

“Good...so...good...”

“I’d like to start now,” he said before she could get the “‘night” part of her salutation out of her mouth.

“You’re two months along. Based on what my memory’s telling me, you’ll soon be hearing the heartbeat and having an ultrasound. At some point, you’ll be able to choose whether or not you want to know the sex. And you need to be thinking about birthing classes...”

Whoa. He’d remembered all that? She started to smile. And then sobered. What was she getting herself into here?

He was the baby’s father. What choice did she have?

“I have my first appointment tomorrow. And when the time comes, I’m thinking of opting not to know the sex...” At least not until she was further along and had more assurance that she was actually going to carry the baby to term. “And I’m thinking about having the baby here, in the apartment, in my garden tub.”

“At home? Is that safe?” She wanted to be able to ignore his concern, not to be warmed by it, but failed. Miserably.

And spent the next ten minutes discussing details of the birthing process as she’d heard it described by the mother of one of her patients a few months before—an option many women were choosing these days.

“Can I be there?”

Heart pounding, she took a deep breath. “If you want to be.” This was his child. He had rights, though not the right to be present at the actual birth if she didn’t want him there.

“I think I do.”

He felt that way now. But she knew him. If he started to get too uptight, he’d change his mind. When Brett’s emotions started to get out of control, Brett got going.

Just as Jeff was learning ways to be accountable to and responsible for his negative emotions, Brett had been learning to avoid his since he was a little boy.

She’d finally started really listening to him.

He couldn’t help how he felt or what he needed. Not any more than she could help loving him. She got that now, too.

And wished him good-night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

H
E STOOD NAKED
and let the water sluice over him. Eyes closed, arms raised with his hands splayed above him on the porcelain tile in his hotel room, Brett dropped his chin to his chest. Monday morning after the longest weekend of his life and he wasn’t ready to face the week ahead. Water pressure that was fine for cleansing, wasn’t strong enough to wash away the tension knotting the muscles along the back of his neck.

He knew how to stay in control. Of himself and of his life. He had his rules clearly established. When emotion threatened to get the better of him, he headed for a hot shower. A completely private and personal relaxation that would allow his emotion to dissipate without hurting anyone else.

The water swirled down the drain. But it didn’t take his emotions with it.

He stood there anyway. Planned to let the hot water run out and then to remain in the cold for as long as he could take it.

Anything to ease the tension.

Maybe if he’d been home, in his own shower, his own space, he would have found some peace. He’d shaped his life, made his choices, so that he had a place he could always return to when he needed to find calm.

His phone rang. Brett wanted to let it ring. To stay right where he was and give every drop of that water a chance to help him feel better.

But Ella was pregnant. And Jeff was in therapy. And they both might need him.

His phone was always ringing. Because he’d given his life to the outside world, rather than creating one in his own space. Another conscious decision.

He stood with droplets running down his body, a towel held to his front side, when he saw the name on his caller ID.

“Hello.”

He prepared himself for a cryptic message. Followed by a hang-up.

An important message. But one he could get from the voice mail she’d leave if he let the phone ring.

“How are you?”

Trembling, Brett almost dropped the phone. Almost fifteen years he’d waited.

And on a normal day, out of the blue...

I’m fine, Ma. How are you?
The millions of words he wanted to say were there, but none of them came.

With the silence hanging on the line, he pulled on his robe. Avoiding looking at himself in the mirror as he left the bathroom part of his suite.

“Ella’s pregnant.” He finally said what mattered most and choked up.

He was ashamed. She’d told him to let Ella go.

“I know. You’re going to see the announcement in this morning’s High Risk report. She sent in a notice by email early this morning. She’ll be taking a leave from the team after the baby is born.”

His mother’s voice. Speaking a full sentence to him. He’d begun to think he’d never hear that sound again. Tears filled his eyes, and he felt like a fool.

“It’s mine.”

“I wondered.”

He stood at the French doors in his room, looking out at the artificially lit garden beyond his balcony. The sun had not yet risen. “It was one night,” he said, his hand squeezing the back of his neck. “Jeff is having anger issues. You know Chloe, the cook at the Stand. She’s his wife. She left him until he gets help.”

She’d have seen all the paperwork regarding Chloe. Approved everything on his behalf.

It was all so damned complicated.

“I didn’t believe Ella at first when she told me how Jeff had been treating Chloe. Ella asked me to look into it. We ended up spending a weekend at a cabin on the lake, all four of us. It seemed like Chloe and Jeff were going to be fine. I drank more than normal. Left the cabin. Was going to spend the night outside by myself. Then Ella came out.”

“You loved her once.”

“Yes.”

“And now?”

“More than ever.”

“How does she feel?”

“I think she loves me. I’m afraid she’s never going to love anyone else. But she doesn’t want a relationship any more than I do. She’s been hurt too much. She knows my limitations.”

“What limitations? Have you done something, Brett?”

“No! Come on, Ma. You know every move I make. You know how I live, what food is in my fridge, what flight I’m on and probably what I order from room service since you do the expense accounts.”

“So what limitations?” She was his mother. And she wasn’t. She was something ethereal. Not real. Like talking to an angel in a dream.

“She calls it my inability to be all in. I call it being accountable to the dangers that lurk within me.”

“So you have them?”

“I’m sure I do.”

“Have you felt the burning rage?”

“I think so.” The night he’d thought Ella was being accosted. “I don’t let myself get that emotionally invested,” he said now. And then he told her about the tension that had built within him during his marriage. A tension that had had him snapping at Ella more often than not after they’d found out she was pregnant. The nightmares that had felt so real to him.

“Did you ever feel like hitting her?”

“No. Unlike Dad, I got out before it got to that point.”

“Burning rage doesn’t listen to reason.”

Which was what made it so frightening.

He had so much to tell her. To ask her. And was afraid that every sentence she uttered might be followed by a click.

“Can I see you?” If they could just sit down. Have a real talk. If he could give her a hug and tell her—

“No. Nothing’s changed, son.”

“You’re talking to me.”

“I just found out you’re going to be a father. I thought you might have issues with that.”

Okay. He got the parameters now. It was a start.

“I do.”

“Can I help?”

Yeah, come into my life. Meet the mother of my child. Be a grandmother.

Thinking of Ella reminded him of that horrible conversation when she’d asked him his true feelings about the first time she’d been pregnant. He’d told her about his father being a wonderful father all those years...

“Were there signs, Ma? Before Livia got sick? Every memory I have of Dad back then is good.”

“He was a good father, Brett.”

“And a good husband.”

“As good as he could be.”

“What does that mean? Are you telling me he hit you when I was little? How could I not have known that?”

“No, son. He didn’t. But he’d fly into rages. Say horrible things. Call me names. Threaten to leave me. He told me once that he understood his father’s need to hit something.”

“I never heard any of it.”

“Because I learned his triggers. Learned how to manage them.”

“Manage them?”

“I’d get you kids out of the house. Or I’d leave a room, and he’d follow me.”

“This was before Livia got sick? Why’d you stay with him, then?”

“A lot of reasons. I loved him, for one. I understood that he was only spewing what had been spewed at him. I knew he didn’t mean any of it. He’d scream obscenities, accusing me of all kinds of horrible things, and I’d hear the translation, you know, it would go something like, ‘Help, I’m feeling in over my head here. I’m afraid I’m not good enough for you. As smart as you. I’m bad and you’re going to leave me. I need to know you love me.’ He also acknowledged afterward that he’d been wrong. He’d beg me to forgive him and promised that he’d learn to keep his mouth closed when he started to feel like he was losing control.”

He’d never known. “How could a kid live in a house with that going on and not know?”

“It didn’t happen often.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“He was just as you remember. A great father. A good provider. And for the most part, my best friend.”

“So what are my chances?” Might as well just put the problem right out on the table.

“They are what you make them, Brett.”

“You told me to let her go.”

“Because you weren’t going to marry her.”

“Do you think I should?”

“Only you can know that.”

“What would make you proud of me?” What the hell? Where had that come from?

“Ah, Brett. You are above and beyond anything I could have ever hoped to produce. It goes way beyond pride, son. You make me a better person just by getting up in the morning and taking the next breath. I can’t tell you what to do because I don’t know the answer. But there’s one thing I do know.”

“What’s that?”

“Whatever choice you make, you’ll make it for the right reasons.”

“I love you, Ma.”

“I love you, too, son.”

“Will you call again?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

He’d known her answer before she gave it.

There were some things that would never change.

* * *

E
LLA WAS AT
work Monday, eating crackers for lunch, when her pager went off.

She’d had her first checkup with the obstetrician. Everything looked perfect. She could expect to give birth to a healthy son or daughter in thirty weeks.

Other than Ella’s medical history, the doctor didn’t know the circumstances of the baby’s conception.

Ella didn’t share them with her. There was no need.

Rounding the corner into the B pod, the area to which she’d been paged, she expected to see a nurse there waiting for her.

Instead, it was Jason. Standing with a charting tablet.

“How are you?” he asked, his glance more intimate than she’d have expected.

“Good.” She smiled. Because she was going to have a baby. She was being given a new life. One she desperately wanted.

“I’ve been...well, thinking...” He looked down at the tablet, dropped his hand, tablet dangling at his side, and said, “Did you speak to the baby’s father?”

A couple of the people at work already knew what was going on with her. Partially because she’d been sick at work. And because a doctor on the ward—Jason—knew. She walked Jason into her office.