Chapter Thirty
Lina awoke with a knot in her stomach. It was New Year’s Day. Liam was going home. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The days of not thinking about him when he wasn’t in their home were forever gone. She loved him as if he were her own son.
The realization had hit her two nights prior. He’d woken in the middle of the night. Instead of waking Phil, she’d gone to him. As she’d held him in her arms, feeding him his bottle, they’d stared into each other’s eyes and she’d felt as if there were an invisible string connecting them and he was reeling her in. It was in that moment that she realized she loved him unconditionally, not because he was Phil’s or because she was supposed to but because she could feel a oneness with him.
***
Phil watched Lina zip up Liam’s coat and put a black beanie—a miniature replica of the one he normally wore—onto his head. “You know the car’s in the garage, right? He’s going to be outside for less than thirty seconds, if that.”
“The windchill today is in the teens again.” She carefully pulled the hat down over his ears. She was fussing over him just like she used to fuss over their children. “Perfect.” She kissed him for what seemed to Phil like the tenth time in the past minute.
“I thought you were coming with me.”
“I am.”
Katie came into the room and took Liam from Lina. “Are you going to miss me?” She kissed his neck. “I’m going to miss you. Give me a kiss.” She turned her cheek to him, and he put his open mouth against her cheek. “Do you want to say goodbye to Megan?” Katie asked before carrying him into the family room, where Megan was stretched out on the couch watching television.
Megan kissed him goodbye. She wasn’t as effusive as Katie with her attention, but over the past few days she seemed to be warming to him, reading him a couple of books the day before and helping Phil give him a bath that morning after he’d wiped applesauce all over his hair.
As Phil watched Katie walk toward them, Liam smiling adoringly at her, he felt a stab of unease at the thought of returning him to Kim. “Come on, Liam,” he said. “We have to go.”
“You’re not going to get angry,” Lina said for the third time that day as he pulled out of their driveway.
“Are you telling me or asking me?” Despite the promises he’d been making to himself and Lina, he could feel the adrenaline in his system picking up as he drove toward Kim’s.
“Think of Liam. You don’t want to scare him.” She was leaning into the back seat as she talked, pulling Liam’s hat, which had crept up, down around his ears.
“I know.” His grip tightened and untightened on the steering wheel. He needed to keep it together.
“Tell her to never leave him with strangers again. We’ll watch him. And tell her you’re going to start taking him two nights a week, just like the custody agreement says.”
They hadn’t discussed it, but her words didn’t surprise him. Her bond with Liam seemed to expand more each day. He shifted one of his hands from the steering wheel to her thigh, and she immediately covered it with hers. They made the rest of the drive in silence.
“There he is!” Kim, looking healthy and tan, greeted Liam with a smile. “How’s my favorite man?” Her eyes lifted to Phil’s.
Phil returned her gaze with a cold stare.
“Mama!” Liam smiled, and then buried his face against Phil’s neck, suddenly shy.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d kept him?” She stepped back so Phil could come into the foyer. “I felt ridiculous showing up to pick him up.”
“You didn’t call to check on him?” Anger bloomed within him. “I had him for five days.”
“Mama,” Liam said, peeking out at her before once again burying his face against his father’s neck.
“She had my number. It wasn’t like he would know if I was calling.”
Phil bent down to a knee. “Let’s take your coat off.”
“How was he? You kept him at your house?”
“Mama!” Liam waved at her, something Katie had taught him to do over the course of the past few days.
“Hi, handsome.” She crouched down beside Phil. “Are those clothes new?”
“Do you care about him?” he asked coolly, not looking away from Liam as he removed his hat and jacket.
“Of course I care about him. What kind of question is that?”
“A serious one. Wait a second, buddy.” Phil balanced him against his thigh as he pulled his pants down and undid his onesie.
“You’re going to change him right here?”
Phil lifted his shirt and then the onesie over his head. “My wife would never have let this happen to one of our children.” He shifted Liam so she could see the teeth imprints clearly visible on his back. “What kind of woman leaves her son with a complete stranger over Christmas so she can go on a vacation?”
Her face paled beneath her tan. “Who did that?”
“Suddenly you care?”
“Of course I care.” She narrowed her eyes as she looked at his back. “That woman was a licensed day-care provider. She watches children every day. And he doesn’t even know what Christmas is. How much do you remember from when you were one?”
“Next time you plan to go away overnight without him, you tell me,” he bit out.
“Dadda.” Liam’s brows were pulled together in a frown, and his lower lip began to tremble.
“It’s okay.” He smiled at Liam, his anger diffusing in response to his son’s reaction. “Daddy is just telling Mommy not to be so selfish.” He ran the back of his knuckles down Liam’s cheek. “Okay?”
“Mama,” Liam said, turning to Kim as if to make sure she was okay.
“Hi, baby.” She pulled him into her arms.
“I’ll see him tomorrow.” Phil came to his feet.
“What do you mean ‘tomorrow’?”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays. Starting now.”
“So, do you think this is permanent? Dad bringing Liam here?” Megan asked later that evening as she sat at the kitchen island watching Lina clean up the remnants of dinner.
“Yes. Where else would he take him? He’s part of our family now.”
“But he’s not yours.”
“No, but he’s your father’s. He’s also my children’s brother.”
“He’s not the same as a real brother or sister, though. Or a real son to Dad. He doesn’t live with him. Dad doesn’t even like his mother. He regrets ever knowing her.”
Megan was jealous of him, Lina realized. She hadn’t expected it. But it made sense. He was competition for her father, whom she adored.
“He’s his son, Megan. Your father will love him as much as he loves the rest of you. It’s just how it is when you have children. You love them all.”
“I don’t believe that.” Megan looked into the family room, where Phil, Katie, and Logan were watching television. “It’s going to be a little annoying having him around if everyone always has to act so goo-goo over him. It was all about him. Everyone just wanted to make him laugh or smile.”
“He’s a baby, a baby who has had a pretty traumatic few days. Have a heart.”
“What happens if something happens to Dad?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. With his money,” she whispered. “Would Liam get any of it?”
“If something happened to your father, I would get all the money.”
“All of it?” Megan frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair. We’re his kids. You’re not even a blood relation.”
“I’m his wife, Megan,” Lina said, narrowing her eyes at her oldest child, whose ability to say insensitive things seemed boundless. “Everything he has is mine and vice versa.”
“But you don’t have anything,” Megan said. “You’ve barely worked.”
“I maintained the home and raised our children so he could make a living and support all of us. It’s a partnership.”
“I get that, but it doesn’t seem fair that it would be fifty-fifty. The mothering part is so much easier than the working part. It’s not like you have to go to school to be a mom. I could see ninety-ten or something like that.”
“Well, lucky for me the law isn’t on my daughter’s side.” Lina continued to wipe the counter.
“What if something happens to both of you?” Megan continued. “Would Liam get anything then?”
“Nothing is going to happen to us,” Lina said.
“But in the unlikely scenario it does, I just want to know.”
“Well, considering he is a blood relation, don’t you think he should?” Lina asked.
“No.” Megan shook her head. “Because then his mom would get it, and she doesn’t deserve anything.”
“I see.” Lina slowly nodded. “So, you deserve it because you’re my daughter.”
“Right,” Megan agreed.
“But I don’t deserve anything.”
Megan sighed. “You know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t. But if something happened to me and your father, your uncle Mike would have all the answers to your questions.” The truth was the estate would be put into a trust and ultimately split equally between Megan, Logan, and Katie, and Liam would be the beneficiary of a generous life insurance policy, but Lina had no desire to share that information with Megan.
Lina watched Phil swipe through the pictures she’d taken with her phone during the birthday party. There were at least fifty, and a dozen were of Liam smiling as he sat on Phil’s lap in front of his birthday cake. Unlike Logan and Katie, who hadn’t liked the attention a party garnered during their younger years, Liam, like Megan, seemed to draw energy from them. He had been “on” the entire afternoon, charming every adult in the room with his contagious smile and sparkling blue eyes.
“I wish we had more, you know, from the last year, but it’s a good start.”
“I have a lot.”
“You do?” Lina was surprised. He was never the picture-taking type of parent. She couldn’t remember him ever taking pictures of the kids.
“From Kim. She used to send me one every couple of days. It stopped after the yoga studio incident.”
“You texted with her every day?”
“No. I rarely texted her.” He shifted to the side as he took his cell phone from his pocket. He tapped on the display a couple of times before passing her the phone. “She just sent me pictures.”
Lina tapped away from the pictures and began to scan through old text messages. Most of the messages were from Kim to Phil, with very few going the other way. She’d sent him random updates about Liam, telling him about words he said or whether or not he’d slept through the night, mostly just general information. She sent him a new picture of Liam almost daily. Phil rarely responded unless it was a direct question and then only if it pertained to Liam. There was one text asking him if he’d gotten caught on the backup going into Baltimore after a tractor trailer capsized, spilling its contents all over 95N. There was no reply from Phil. On another couple of occasions, she’d asked him specific questions about his work, whether or not he was working on a particular case she’d heard his firm won. Again, there was no response from Phil. On a few occasions she asked him how his day had been. He handled every occurrence of a non-Liam-related text the same. He hadn’t responded. Even without a response Kim continued to ask questions, not quite daily but at least a few per week. It was as if she was having a one-way conversation, and Lina had no doubt she had been doing it to stay connected to him.
“She is so manipulative.”
“What? What happened?” Phil reached for the phone.
“I was just reading all the messages she sent you.”
“What did she say?”
“They’re your messages. It’s what she said over the past year.”
“Oh.” He relaxed back into the couch. “I didn’t pay attention unless it was about Liam.”
“She was trying to have a relationship with you. That’s what all this communication is.”
“It doesn’t matter what she was trying to do. I wasn’t interested.”
“It’s still wrong. She’s a terrible, terrible person.” A vision of Liam on the dirty linoleum floor flashed in her mind. “Poor Liam.”
“I gave you my phone so you could look at his pictures. Not to upset you. Let me see it.” He took the phone and tapped on the display, bringing up a picture of Liam sitting in front of a birthday cake with one burning candle. “Here.” He placed the phone back in her hand and curved his arm around her. “Flip back through them.”
Lina’s heart constricted as she stared at the photo of Liam with his hair neatly parted on the side. He looked so much like Phil. It had been only a few hours and she already missed him. She began to swipe back through the pictures. There were well over one hundred. There were pictures of him as a newborn, crawling, and standing, smiling, even crying and taking a bath. It was an amazing catalog of Liam’s first year of life.
Lina blinked back tears when she came to the end. “How come you never showed me any of those? It’s his whole life.”
“I don’t know. You never asked.”
“I’m sorry,” Lina whispered later that night. She was lying in bed beside Phil in their darkened bedroom, trying without success to fall asleep.
“Why? What did you do this time?” he teased.
“I haven’t been letting you share him with me.”
“Lina, you don’t have—”
“No. Let me just say this. It makes me sad that you didn’t have anyone to share him with. His first step, his first tooth, his first word.”
“We shared his first ‘no’ together.”
“Stop. I’m being serious.”
“I am, too. He’s a year old. We have the rest of our lives to watch him grow. You’ve been the selfless one in this relationship, Lina. You’re not going to apologize to me. I don’t accept it. Now, come here and kiss me.”