Destiny

“I never meant for you to find out this way.” I slid onto the couch where Toby curled up into one corner, knees to chest, chin on his knees. I took the opposite corner, crossed one leg, foot under my knee, and faced him.

“I used to ask about him.”

For years. Until he turned eight. I thought he’d accepted his dad wasn’t in his life and that was it.

What a fool I was.

“To explain what happened, I need to go back to the beginning.” And how did I explain it all to a ten-year-old boy so he understood when I was beginning to doubt I even understood what I’d done? Tillie was wrong all those years. I wasn’t strong. I didn’t have the strength my mom lacked. I was just like her…with fast feet when life got tough.

“You know Grandma Tillie raised me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, my mom was on drugs. Big time. From what I know, from Tillie and people around town, the story goes that Mom buckled me into my car seat when I was six months old, set a pile of diapers next to me, a can of formula, and then…she disappeared. The next morning, when I was screaming my head off and had been for hours, someone finally called the cops.” I continued the story. The taunting. The teasing. Name-calling. White trash. Junkie. Druggie daughter. Some kids even called me trashcan kid because I’d essentially been thrown to the curb. I told Toby everything, crying when it got too hard. Holding him when he cried for me, even though he was still so mad at me. I told him about meeting Jordan. How while Jordan always tried to protect me, things got worse after we were together. “His family is loved in this town, honey. Everyone loved him. And no one, not a single person, even Tillie, although I think she changed her mind at some point, wanted us together.”

I told him about the baseball scholarship. That Carlton practically threw him a parade when he signed his full-ride to KU.

“I was going to follow him. We had it all planned. And then I got pregnant.”

“And what?” Toby asked. “He didn’t want it?” He flinched and swiped his face. “He didn’t want me?”

“No.” I squeezed him in my arms as my boy, my baby but too large for my lap, burrowed into me. “He would have wanted you. I swear it, had I told him…I swear Toby, he would have loved you.”

“You never told him?” His hands swiped his cheeks and those blue eyes were filled with so much pain my entire body ached. “He didn’t know?”

He tried to shove off me, but I held him tighter. He had to understand but how could he? The kid was ten. “He would have given up everything Toby. He wouldn’t have gone to school. He would have given up his dreams and I didn’t want that. We…you and I…if he had stayed for us, we would have been hated in this town. I didn’t want that for you.”

He pushed off me again and I let him go. My boy paced back and forth, crying, hands fisting and flexing and spun to me.

“It was wrong.” I sniffed back more tears. “It was wrong of me, I know that. I knew it then. But I was a teenager and all I saw in my life was being this despised and hated woman who made the golden boy of Carlton give up his dreams and then I kept picturing you and I hadn’t even met you yet, but I loved you with every fiber of my being. I wanted to protect you from the same life I had growing up. I wanted better for you. I swear it. I didn’t do it to lie to Jordan or hide you from him, I did it to protect you.”

I rushed everything out so he heard it all, even if he couldn’t take it all in, but even then the lie was thick on my tongue.

I’d had every intention of hiding him from Jordan, especially once he hit the Majors. I watched him sign for the Rockies on Draft Signing Day, right after his college graduation.

Then I forced myself to never pay attention to his name again. I gave him that. I gave Jordan the ability to follow his dreams without any baggage following behind him. I went to college and made a career for myself. And I gave Toby a really, freaking great life.

I’d just hidden him from his dad, who would have always been as proud of him as I was.

Toby stood in front of me, jaw jutted out, black brows furrowed, his face pinched up in a way I knew in ten years he’d be even more handsome than his dad always was. “I want to meet him. I want to know him.”

“I know.” I nodded fiercely. “You will. I’ll figure out how to set that up as soon as possible.”

By tomorrow. Before Rebecca spilled my secrets all over town.

His chin wobbled again, and that fiery determination turned sour. “What if…will he like me?”

Oh God. My heart. My stupid, selfish, breaking heart. “Yes.” I reached for him and pulled him to my lap. His knees slammed into my thighs and his shoulder lodged into mine. “Yes. I swear it. He will love you. I promise that too.”

“You lied to me.” He cried into my shoulder. My shirt was soaked with tears I had caused.

Never was I more disappointed in myself. “I will never do it again. I promise that, too.”

I held him until his tears dried and his body went lax in my arms and pushed him off me. “I think upstairs, somewhere in my old room is a box I hid. It’s filled with everything I had of Jordan when we were together. Would you like to see it?”

He pressed his lips together, fought another chin quiver and nodded.

* * *

“He played baseball in college? He was that good?”

The contents of that box I’d had was easy to find. It was a shoebox I’d started filling, beginning with a movie stub from our very first date to see Iron Man. I also had the dried flowers from the first homecoming dance he took me to, sealed in a small Ziploc bag. It contained everything from snippets of Jordan playing baseball, every photo of us I’d ever taken. Before I’d taken off, I’d cleaned out my room of every memory of him and shoved everything into the small, but bursting at the seams, box.

Now it was littered all over the coffee table in the living room and Toby was going through each photo, running his finger along the face of his dad.

“Yeah,” I said, doing my best to avoid the onslaught of emotions this trip down memory lane caused. God, I’d loved the boy in the photos so fiercely. Loved him enough to think denying him one of the greatest gifts was actually the best thing for him. For us.

What would have happened had I not run?

It was a question I asked myself a million times over the years.

“You should Google him,” I said. “He played for the Rockies.”

“Seriously?” Toby’s brows shot up in surprise. “My dad hit the big time?”

Dad. That one word. It was the first time he’d said it and he didn’t hesitate. How could I have done this to him? To both of them?

“I know he was drafted to them. I don’t know what happened after that. But I really didn’t expect to see him here.”

Why was he here? What had happened? Seemed I had some googling of my own to do. Like find a way to reach him, for one, but worst-case scenario, and it was definitely the worst, I could call Rebecca in the morning.

“That’s crazy cool.” Toby’s voice went soft along with his gaze and he flipped through more baseball clippings. “Do you think that’s why I’m so good at basketball?”

I sniffed back more tears. “Well, we know you didn’t get your athleticism from me,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.

“Yeah.” He grinned at me. “You can’t dribble for anything.”

My smile died. “I’m sure that he has given you a thousand awesome things that make you, you. Your athletic talent is definitely one of them, but it’s not the best.”

His finger ran gently over the photo and his chin wobbled. “I look like him.”

“And you have his really big, kind heart.” Lord knew he didn’t get that from me either. Not when the last decade of my life had been filled with selfishness. I shook off the thought. “Listen, kiddo. It’s late and this has been one heckuva long day. How about we pack it in and figure out the rest tomorrow?”

He bit his bottom lip and looked back to the photos. “Can I look at this a little bit longer? I can do it in my room.”

“Yeah.” I shoved a stack of photos into a pile and dropped them in the box. “You can look as long as you need to.”

He nodded and slid out a photo that made my heart stutter. Fourth of July Parade. Jordan had been given his own parade float for not only making all-state baseball honors four years in a row but for signing his full-ride. The float was decked out in KU red and blue, their bird mascot at the helm of the float. He’d insisted I ride in it with him, because where we were going, we were doing it together. By then, people in town had gotten used to us, but they never once changed their opinions about hating it.

But I couldn’t say no to Jordan even though I hadn’t wanted to be there. In the photo, Jordan had one arm around me, low on my waist, holding my front to his side. His other arm was lifted into the air, waving and smiling, and I had my head tilted back. I was smiling up at him like he was my hero, knowing I was leaving and walking away. In that moment, during that parade, I let him hold me as much as he wanted, searing that day into my mind because I knew it’d be the last time I saw him. The last time he held me. Later that afternoon we’d gotten into a rip-roaring fight I started, and two days later I was gone.

“You were really pretty too, Mom.”

I winked at Toby. “I was?”

His grin wobbled. “Well, you’re not bad now. Just old.”

I flung a pillow at him and he laughed. Then I helped him pick up the mess we’d made, and we headed upstairs. Once he was in bed and I kissed him goodnight, I went to my own room and crashed into bed, hoping like hell I’d be able to fix the other mess I’d made, too.