Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 48061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“I wish you had stopped me. Or really, I wish I’d stopped myself. I did need you, Benny. I do need you.”
“You have me. For better or worse.” “I made a lot of mistakes,” I admit.
“So have I. Now we can get to know each other for real.”
“I’d like that. Because more than anything else I’ve ever been, I’m Liam’s mom,” I say, my voice breaking.
“I can’t wait to see the two of you together, learn what that’s like. I always thought you’d be an amazing mom, fun and creative, and adventurous.”
I shake my head. “Maybe I could l have been, but I’ve played it so safe, and I’ve been bound up in the idea that if I take any chances I could be found out and lose him.”
“Who was this guy you were running from, Daze? Cause it sure as hell wasn’t me. Is there a story you imagined where I’d find out about all this and just steal our kid from you?”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I was so scared, and I felt backed into a corner and like I had to hide out. I was convinced you would snatch him from me to get me back for keeping him from you.”
“Even if you believed that of me, did you really think so little of yourself? To think that you would’ve been with any guy who’d do something like that? Give yourself some credit even if you didn’t give me any,” he says ruefully.
“I misjudged everything so badly, especially you. Liam has a right to know you, and you should know him. I want that more than –I have these—” I hold out the plastic grocery sack I brought with me. “I kept a notebook. I wrote in it like a diary and then I printed some pictures and stuck them in too. I did this one here while I was pregnant—the ultrasound is in it—you can see that he’s a boy. The next one, after he was born, that one has some cute pictures of him when he was all tiny and red and mad all the time. He was a screamer. He was not an angel baby,” I smirk. “He was so curious and so alert—when he started crawling, he was into everything. He never slowed down. From the second he started talking---look, in this one I tried to keep a list of every question he asked in a day—I filled both sides of the page and it says, 8:10AM I give up.”
I show him the battered composition books. “So, you kept a record of your lives out in Washington,” he says, taking them carefully like they are something holy to him.
“I think I was writing to you. For you. It wasn’t sweet and hopeful enough to be a baby book I’d ever pass down to Liam—it’s very personal and raw. If you don’t want to read them—in fact, you’d probably think I was crazy if you read them and you might rethink wanting to be with me,” I try to take the notebooks back on second thought.
“No way. I’m going to read every word of these. How did you have time to write in them at all? You had your hands full.”
“Around seven months he started sleeping four hours at a clip. That was like being reborn. I could think. I could wash my hair and get the dishes done every night. Liam was still a screamer, but he liked being outside, so I’d put him in the stroller and go to the park or the library most days after work, even when I was wiped out from being on my feet.”
“I wish I’d been there to take on some of that. You wouldn’t have had to work, or if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have been the one taking a long walk after you got home. This won’t be that way. We’re in this together.”
I want to bury my face in my hands and cry. Instead, I clear my throat, blink back tears and reach for him. “I want that more than anything. I want you more than anything, Benny.”
28
BENNY
She says she wants this more than anything. I can see she’s torn up about keeping Liam from me, that she can feel how much time we’ve lost and what it has cost me. What it has cost her. What it cost our son, not having his father in his life. I want to get to know him—the urgency I feel is foreign to me. I didn’t know he existed. Now that I know, I want to rush to him, watch him play, listen to him talk, learn everything I can about him. But I won’t push him or force a relationship. To him, I’m a stranger. It guts me, but I’ll wait.
My dad said it was action that makes you a man. From what I’ve learned on my own, it’s patience, and that there is a strength and integrity in waiting, keeping faith. I’ve kept faith with Daisy all these years. Not that I’ve been a monk or anything, but I’ve never loved anyone else, never even considered it.