Chapter Fourteen
Owen paced the floor, wondering what had happened that had made Cass leave without a word. He realized he’d been caught up in his own drama all week, but it wasn’t every day a man found out he had a son.
He had a son.
He, Owen Parker, had fathered a son, and the woman he’d been married to at the time had hidden that from him for almost two years just to spite him. And for what? he’d asked her that first night as they sat on the back porch of the store, J.J. asleep on his mother’s lap.
“For being you,” she’d said, keeping her voice low so as not to wake the child. “For not being who I wanted you to be.”
“You always knew exactly who I was. How many times had we broken up over the fact that I couldn’t be the guy you wanted?”
“I thought you’d change after we were married.”
“When has that ever worked?”
“Well, it didn’t work well for us, and please keep your voice down. I’m sorry, Owen. It was stupid and petty and I deserve for you to hate me forever for what I’ve done. But please don’t let J.J. know how much you hate me. I don’t want him to feel that, and I never want him to think he was an accident.”
Then she started to cry, deep sobs that Owen thought she must have been holding inside since the day she found out she was pregnant.
“I’m engaged to a guy who is so wonderful,” she said between sobs. “He loves me more than anyone’s ever loved me. And he loves J.J. like he’s his own. When Kevin and I were first dating and he’d ask about the baby’s father, I’d give him some vague answer. When he asked me to marry him, he said he wanted to adopt J.J., so we’d need to get his birth father to sign something agreeing to that. I knew I was in trouble then. I knew there was no way you would ever sign over the rights to your son to another man.”
“Well, thanks for getting that much right.”
“I kept making excuses about why I hadn’t gotten in touch with you. ‘Oh, he’s out of the country right now.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know where he is.’ Finally, Kevin figured out that something was up, and he asked me point-blank what the hell was going on and if I was going to ask you about the adoption. And I had to tell him the truth.” Cyndi swallowed hard. “I didn’t know Kevin had a temper. He was always so calm about things, so reasonable about everything. But not about this. He said either I came clean with you and gave you the opportunity to say yes or no, that he could adopt J.J. or not, or the wedding was off. I knew you’d never give up your parental rights once you found out about J.J. At the same time, Kevin insisted he wasn’t going to steal another man’s son. Well, I was trapped and knew I had to face up to both of you. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what you would do. Kevin looked at me like I was the worst person who’d ever been born.” She started to cry again, then waved Owen off when he started to say something. “Not that I didn’t deserve it. I did. I know I did. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I wish to God I could go back and do things differently. I swear, Owen . . .” More tears. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“I don’t know. You’re asking me now, and right now, I don’t think I can, but maybe someday that will change. In the meantime, where do we go from here? Obviously, I want to get to know my son. And no, you can tell Kevin I’m not giving permission for him to adopt J.J. I admire him for being willing to do that, but I won’t permit it, even though I’m grateful to him for his pushing you. If not for him, would I ever know I had a son?”
Cyndi averted her eyes.
“That’s what I thought. So how are we going to handle this? How can I spend time with J.J. if you’re living in . . . ? Where are you going to be living?”
“We just moved to Hartford, Connecticut.”
“That’s a long way to drive for weekend visits.”
She was silent.
“I’ll tell you up front, weekends alone are not good enough. You’ve had him for almost two years. It’s my turn.”
“Uh-uh. If you think I’m going to hand him over to you, you are crazy. He doesn’t even know you.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“You could have called once in a while, Owen. If you had, I probably would have told you.”
“I’m thinking probably not.”
Cyndi went silent again. Then she picked up her bag and J.J. “This isn’t going to be resolved in one night, or two. I don’t know what the solution will be. But I’m not here to give him to you.”
“No, you’re here because you were shamed into it, and you’re here because I bumped into you by accident. How long were you going to be in Ballard before you finally came to see me? Or were you going to tell your fiancé that I wasn’t around and no one knew where I was so he could go ahead and petition the court for the adoption, and I would never have known because I didn’t know J.J. existed?” Owen looked at the sweet child in her arms. “I didn’t even get to throw my two cents in when it came time to name him.”
“I can’t do this anymore tonight, Owen. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She’d left Owen standing on the back porch at the store, watching as she drove away with his son in the backseat of her car.
The whole thing had made Owen feel like the world’s biggest loser. He had a son he hadn’t even known about. Cyndi was right. If he’d so much as picked up the phone and called her once in a while to see how she was, maybe she would have told him. But he’d cut off that relationship just as he’d cut off every other one he’d been in. Done? Over? Move on, then.
Only this time, moving on had cost him.
He wanted his son, but he wasn’t sure how to make that work. Cyndi and Kevin were going to be living three states away. Was he supposed to pick up and move?
Where did that leave his relationship with Cass? He might move on from the island, from the work he loved, but he was not willing to move on from Cass. He’d fallen in love with her, but could he ask her to accept another woman’s child? What must she think of him now? And how could he get J.J. to understand that he, Owen, was his father, not Kevin?
He’d posed that to Ruby two nights after Cyndi and J.J. had left. They’d had dinner together and he’d made attempts to have his son warm up to him, but he had to acknowledge that was going to be slow going. For the most part, J.J. seemed a bit suspicious of Owen, which was compounded by the child’s apparently being somewhat shy by nature.
“He acts like he’s afraid of me,” Owen had complained to Ruby.
“He doesn’t know you. Give him time. Don’t be expecting a baby to know you’re his daddy when you never been around.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“Not be talking fault, Owen. That kind of talk be folly. You want to be angry at Cyndi, you have every right to be. But don’t let that show to your boy. He be picking that up, by and by, and all he be knowing is his mama and this man of hers.”
“It’s not fair,” Owen grumbled.
“Oh, we be talkin’ like a five-year-old now?” Ruby harrumphed. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”
“I want to know my son, Gigi.”
Her tone softened. “I know you do, boy. And you be right in that.”
“I don’t want him to ever think I didn’t want him.”
“You work this out the right way, he’ll know who you are and what he is to you. Just don’t be trying to steamroll over that ex-wife of yours.”
“Seems I’m the one who got steamrolled,” Owen mumbled.
“Yes, you did, but what did you expect from a girl like Cyndi? But would I be one to remind you that you were told way back when to stop messin’ with her, that it was going to lead to a heap of trouble for you one day?”
“Yes, you would be one to remind me. You like to say, ‘I told you so,’ as much as the next guy.”
“True enough, that.”
Owen sighed. “I just want a chance to be his father, Gigi. He barely looks at me, and when I try to talk to him, he buries his face in his mother.”
“He be a shy boy, that’s all. Lots of young ones go through shy times.”
“He didn’t seem so shy when Kevin showed up.”
“Don’t you think that be natural? He be around that man all the time, and from where I’m sitting, Cyndi’s man be good to that boy. And to her, not that she be deserving.”
Owen could feel Ruby’s eyes on him. He was waiting for her to say whatever else was on her mind. He knew she wouldn’t keep to herself something she wanted him to hear.
Finally she said, “And don’t be resenting that man for being as good as he is. You be a stranger to the child, son. Not of your doing, but that be the fact. Give him time to know you. He’ll know who his real daddy is, by and by.”
“Not if I don’t get to spend time with him.”
“That’ll work out.” She sat back in her chair. “What is Cass thinking about all this?”
“I’m not sure.”
Ruby smacked him with her newspaper. “That be the business you best be taking care of. You lose that woman, you lose your heart, boy. You lose yourself.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Knowing and doing be two different things. Best you get that done.”
“She left, Gigi.”
Ruby harrumphed again. Twice in one conversation, Owen realized. Things were worse than he’d thought.
“That be on you. Why would she be staying, with you not talking, not telling her where her place be in all this?”
Owen looked at his great-grandmother. “You knew all along, didn’t you? About J.J.? About Cyndi not telling me. About Cass coming into my life, and about Cass leaving me. You knew it all.”
“What I know or don’t know, when or if—some things not be mine to tell. But of all those things, only one you have control over. The rest of all that, none be in your hands. They be decisions you had no hand in. But that one thing . . . you can control what happens.”
“You’re not talking about J.J. You’re talking about Cass.”
“Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look after all.” Ruby left the newspaper on the chair and went inside. “Then again . . .”
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Owen and Cyndi spent the entire afternoon hashing out a plan to move forward. It hadn’t been easy, but eventually, with Kevin’s help, they’d managed to get on the same page. Owen drove back to Lincoln Road, rehearsing what he’d say to Cass when—if—she came back. He stopped at the local supermarket on the way and made a few purchases because he knew there was no food and nothing to drink at home. He went into the one liquor store in town and picked up a bottle of wine for her, a six-pack of beer for himself. He was almost out of the store when he spotted a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The only thing he knew about the whiskey is that his father drank it when he was feeling particularly mean and wanted to get rip-roaring drunk. Rip-roaring drunk sounded pretty good right about then. Owen picked up the bottle and returned to the cashier and paid for it. He refused to examine the reasons why.
Less than three minutes later he pulled into the driveway, hoping against hope that Cass’s car would be there. It wasn’t. He gathered his purchases and went into the dark, empty house. The air was still and his footsteps echoed on the old pine floors as he found his way into the kitchen. He hated the silence that hung in the room where he and Cass had laughed and talked every day they’d spent in this house together.
He put the groceries away, then popped open a bottle of beer. Sitting at the kitchen table, he tried to make sense of his life. For years, all he’d wanted was the freedom to come and go as he liked. He remembered all too well the feeling his father had given his children when he’d made it clear he’d rather be somewhere else, that he would be somewhere else if it weren’t for them. As a child, Owen had felt guilty that he’d been responsible for having tied his father down. Wouldn’t he have been happier if Owen had never been born? Wouldn’t he have been free to leave, to go wherever he wanted?
Owen was never, ever going to make anyone feel responsible for his unhappiness. So for years he’d kept moving. The closest thing he’d ever come to settling in one place was his marriage to Cyndi. They all knew how that had worked out.
He finished off the beer and opened another.
Funny, but he hadn’t felt tied down to Cass. He’d been happier than he’d ever been in his life. He’d not spent a minute with her when he wished he were somewhere else. With her, he’d felt more like himself than he ever had before. He’d felt loved. He’d felt anchored but not in a bad way. Right now he felt hollow. He wanted her to come back but didn’t know how to make that happen. He’d been so focused on his son over the past week, he’d almost forgotten about the woman he loved.
Not true, he told himself. He hadn’t forgotten her. He’d just . . . neglected her. Failed her. Had he even told her he loved her? He wasn’t sure. How could he not know that?
He tossed the glass bottle into the recycling bin across the room, and it smashed into the side of the container with a crack. He threw the second one in for good measure. He opened another beer and went out onto the back porch and sat on the top step. It was a beautiful night, and he should be sitting here with Cass. They should be looking up at the stars together. Owen remembered the night before they found out about J.J. He had looked down into Cass’s face and felt immense gratitude that she’d chosen him, that he was her guy.
“You’re my guy,” she’d told him.
Where was she now?
He brought out the rest of the six-pack and drank until they were gone. He sat for a while longer and listened to an owl in one of the pine trees at the back at the yard. From somewhere off to the left another owl answered the call, and he heard the chatter as the two birds flew closer to each other. It was almost mating season, he thought.
“Hope your luck’s better than mine is,” he muttered as he went back inside.
The whiskey was on the counter where he’d left it. Owen stared at it for a long time before he took the bottle from the bag and opened it.
IF SHE’D HAD any sense, she would probably have called first, but Cass was having trouble getting her thoughts organized and figured she’d use the time in the car on her way back to St. Dennis to rehearse what she was going to say to Owen. She’d been unable to sleep and decided she’d just as well get up and start driving. It wasn’t something that could—or should—be done by phone. She cared too much about the outcome of the conversation for anything but a face-to-face talk.
It seemed Linda’s little warrior girl wasn’t gone at all. Cass was ready to fight if there was any chance she could keep Owen in her life. If he was already lost to her, she’d leave with her head held high, but this time, she’d say good-bye.
It was still dark—half-past five in the morning—when she pulled up in front of the house. Owen’s Jeep was at the end of the driveway, so she had to park on the street. She unlocked the front door and went inside the quiet house. She left her bag on the desk inside the door and noticed the kitchen light was still on. She went in and found the empty beer carrier on the table. On the counter was an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“Oh, Owen.” She sighed. “What have you done?”
She looked in the living room, half expecting to find him passed out on the sofa, but he wasn’t there. She started up the steps, wondering how he’d managed to make it to the second floor after drinking a six-pack of beer and an entire bottle of whiskey.
She stood in the doorway of the bedroom she’d shared with him and looked down at the sleeping man. He was on her side of the bed, her pillow in his arms, and she almost wept. She sat down on the edge of the bed next to him and he stirred. She wanted to lie down beside him, but he hadn’t left much room.
Owen turned over and opened his eyes.
“I knew you were here,” he murmured. “I felt you here.” He sounded amazingly lucid for someone who must have a horrendous hangover. “I’m sorry things got so screwed up this week.”
“It’s not your fault. I know you were blindsided and you were trying to make things work with Cyndi. I don’t blame you for that.”
“I think we’ve finally figured things out. She’s going to move to Ballard to stay with her folks until the wedding. I’ll be able to spend time with J.J., and maybe after a while he won’t look at me as if I’m the bogeyman.”
Cass’s stomach turned into one big knot, her worst fears confirmed. So he and Cyndi were going to remarry and be a family after all. The truth took the fight out of her.
“I should have told you. I should have let you know what we were thinking. It just took a while for us to get on the same page, you know? Decisions like that shouldn’t be made quickly.”
“No, I understand. It’s the right thing to do. I was thinking that when I saw you together with J.J., you looked like the perfect family. I’m not surprised that you decided to try again. I wish you all the luck this time around.”
Owen sat up and scratched his head, consternation on his face. “You wish who luck? What are you talking about?”
“You and Cyndi. It’s the right thing to do.”
“What’s the right thing to do?”
“Marrying Cyndi and being a family for J.J.” The words burned her tongue as she spoke them.
“You think Cyndi and I . . .”
She nodded, and as difficult as it was for her, she remained calm. She’d known this was a possibility.
“Cassie, I’m not marrying Cyndi.”
“You just said she’s staying with her parents until the wedding—”
“Her wedding to Kevin. He’s an accountant, and he’s applying for a job with a firm in Chesapeake City. He’s quite a guy, Cass. He’s giving up his job to move down here so that I can be a father to my son. I told Cyndi she should thank God that she found a man like that.” Owen took Cass’s hand. “You didn’t really think I was going to get back together with her, did you?”
“You looked so happy together, laughing and playing with J.J.”
“We were happy. Kevin told us about the job right before you got to the store, and everyone was relieved, believe me. I didn’t get the chance to have that conversation with you because you left without telling me you were going. Kevin has saved us a nasty custody battle, and we all recognized the biggest loser would have been J.J. Cyndi and I had decided we’d both do all we could to make this as painless as possible for him. I want to be a good dad, Cass.” Owen seemed to think about that for a moment. “Actually, I want to be a great dad.”
“You will be.” Cass studied his face. “You’re not in love with her?”
“I haven’t been in love with her for years. Maybe I never was. But I am in love with you.”
“I love you, too, Owen. I came back here to tell you that. I came back to fight for you if I had to, but then you were talking about doing the right thing for J.J., and it made me stop and think that maybe what was best for me wasn’t right for you and for him.”
“Whatever you were thinking, you were obviously wrong.”
“I’ve never been this happy to be wrong.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him, long and hard. Then she remembered what she’d seen in the kitchen. “Owen, was someone here with you last night?”
“No, why?”
“I saw the empty beer bottles and the empty whiskey bottle, and I thought maybe you had company.” She hesitated. “I never saw you drink more than a few beers, or some champagne at the wedding, so it didn’t seem possible that you drank all that stuff by yourself.”
Owen groaned. “Do you know who I’d be if I drank a six-pack and an entire bottle of whiskey?”
“The man on a gurney in the ER with his head in a trash can?”
Owen laughed. “I’d have been my father. Actually, I was starting to feel like my father for reasons I can’t explain. So when I stopped to pick up the six-pack, I saw the Jack Daniel’s there, and something made me buy it. I was feeling sorry for myself because I thought I’d lost you. But I sat outside and thought things over, and after a while I started thinking I didn’t have to be my dad, I could be myself. I could be a good husband to you and a good father to J.J. and whatever children we have someday. I had a choice to make. I opened the bottle and poured the whiskey down the drain.”
“You thought you’d lost me?”
He nodded.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“That makes us both idiots.” He gathered her close. “Look, this thing with J.J. is going to work out. I’m still angry with Cyndi for doing what she did, but at least when she learned she was pregnant and I was gone, she decided to go ahead and have the baby, and she kept him, so I’m giving her credit for that much. Not telling me still rankles, but I’m going to have to get over that. So I think it’s time we decided what we want for ourselves, for each other.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held a finger to her lips and smiled. “I’ll go first. I want to marry you. I want the next baby in the family to be ours. I want to live happily ever after with you on Cannonball Island in that little house you’re planning on building.” Owen sat back. “Now it’s your turn. Go.”
“What you said.” She kicked off her shoes and pushed him over on the bed to make room. “I do want to marry you. I do want to live happily ever after with you on Cannonball Island. But that little house isn’t going to have room for the two of us, J.J. when you have him, and another baby or two someday. I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board and see if there’s any way I can expand that little house to accommodate that family you’re talking about having someday. I may have to look at a different lot,” she said thoughtfully. “The one I had in mind isn’t going to be big enough to expand.”
“There are more to choose from, right?” He pulled her down to lie beside him and turned on his side to face her. “You’ll make the right choice.”
“Hmmm. Funny you should say that.” Cass rested both arms on Owen’s chest and leaned against him. “Ruby was talking about choices not so long ago.”
“Of course she was,” Owen muttered. “What did she say?”
“Something like, there were going to be choices made but not by me, and I had to wait and see. I told her I wasn’t a patient person, and she said maybe one of those choices would be mine after all.”
“There were plenty of choices made these past few days. Cyndi chose to come clean about J.J., though it was a choice made under duress. Kevin has chosen to look for a job down here. I chose not to be my father. And I decided I was going to ask you to marry me, if you’ll have me.” He pulled her closer. “Will you, Cassie? Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will. I definitely will.” She stroked the side of his face because she knew it comforted him.
“Ruby said you were my heart.” Owen looked into the eyes of the woman he loved. “That if I lost you, I’d lose myself, and she was absolutely right. You’re everything to me. My everything and my always. Somehow Ruby knew.”
Cass smiled. “Doesn’t she always?”