“I can’t take it without paying.” He reached in his pocket and withdrew a bill and placed it on the counter.
Louisa looked ready to argue, but suddenly her eyes moved past him, and focused on something behind him.
“Hey, Mom, I’m done with my homework. Can I take a Mud Pie home, do you think?”
Joe turned around and found himself face-to-face with a boy…a boy who had his black hair and his green eyes.
“Aaron, you know better than to interrupt when I have a customer. Go into the back, and I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
“Geez, I just want one stupid Mud Pie,” the boy mumbled as he left the room.
Joe stood, unable to move or say anything, as he tried to process what he’d just seen.
No, who he’d just seen.
“Louisa?” he said as he slowly turned around and faced her.
She didn’t need to answer his unasked question. It was there in her face.
Guilt. “Why?” he asked.
Why had she hidden the fact he had a son—he had a son!
The boy had to be sevenish, he thought, quickly doing the math in his head.
“Why?” he repeated.
Louisa was white as a sheet. “I didn’t mean for you to ever know.”
“That’s obvious,” he said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He didn’t want to.
Even after she’d left him without a word, Joe would have sworn that Louisa would never do anything so despicable.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you didn’t want kids—”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough. And I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry we rocked your nice, neat little world. You can be sure that wasn’t my intention. You never wanted kids—you made that clear. I didn’t plan on Aaron, but I don’t regret him. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Just walk away and forget that you saw me, forget that you saw him. Go back to the life your parents planned and plotted for you.”
When they were young and talked of a future, he’d said no children. He looked at the mess his parents and Louisa’s parents had made raising children and had decided he wouldn’t take the chance of following in their footsteps.
He was so young then, and all he’d wanted was the woman standing in front of him. He thought she’d known him inside and out, but if she thought he would turn away from her because she was pregnant, she’d never really known him at all.
But she was about to.
Joe needed to think. Needed to somehow find a way to breathe again. He felt as if he’d been sucker punched and there was no oxygen left in the room.
He turned to leave. Not to walk away, but to get his feet planted firmly beneath him before he tried to decide what to do next.
He just had one more question before he left. “What’s his name?”
For a moment he didn’t think Louisa was going to answer.
She sighed and said, “Aaron. Aaron Joseph Clancy.”
She hadn’t even given the boy his last name. The thought added to the pain.
He turned and walked toward the door, chocolates forgotten.
“Joe,” she called. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out.”
But figuring it out was harder than Joe could have imagined. Hours later Joe still didn’t have a clue. His mind couldn’t seem to focus on anything except the fact that he had a son.
Aaron.
The boy’s name was Aaron.
He’d lost the first seven years of the boy’s life…of Aaron’s life. He felt a sense of awe and wonder every time he thought his son’s name.
He made his way to the dock, though if asked he couldn’t have said how he got there.
“Aaron Joseph,” he whispered out loud. He didn’t say Clancy. The boy should be a Delacamp.
Louisa had given the boy his name for a middle name, but that’s the only thing Aaron had of his. He’d walked into the room, looked Joe straight in the eye, and there hadn’t been the slightest trace of recognition.
But Joe had known. Aaron looked just the way he had at that age. All gangly, not quite grown into his body. Dark hair. And his eyes.
Aaron had his eyes.
Joe had given him physical attributes, but nothing else. Not by choice, but that didn’t matter.
Joe had missed so much, so many things he should have done for and with his son.
He’d never gotten to change a diaper, never cradled him when he fussed. He hadn’t seen Aaron take his first step, never kissed a boo-boo. He’d never sat up with him all night when he was sick or afraid. He’d never sung him a lullaby.
Of course, with his lack of singing ability, Aaron probably wouldn’t miss that part, but Joe did. He resented the hell out of it.
The list of nevers kept growing as he sat on a bench at the end of the dock, mindlessly watching the sun sink behind the peninsula.
He hadn’t taken Aaron to his first day of school, hadn’t helped him with his homework. He’d never gotten to teach his son how to stand up to bullies, or how to stick up for the underdogs.
There were just too many “nevers.” The endlessness of them weighed so heavily on Joe he was afraid he couldn’t move under it.
Joe couldn’t change the “nevers.” His heart ached at the thought, but he was sensible enough to acknowledge one fact.
Joseph Anthony Delacamp had a son, and he didn’t plan to miss any more of his life.
That was a promise, to himself and to his son.
“Mamma, you’re sad today,” Aaron said that night.
Louisa had tried to keep up the appearance of normalcy for Aaron’s sake. Oh, rather than cooking dinner, she’d treated him to fast food, but that was a treat. She’d even managed to focus enough to scold him after he showered and missed a dirt smudge on his right arm.
“Soap. It’s not a real shower if you don’t soap all over,” she’d told him.
His grumbling had felt good. It had felt normal.
But nothing else did.
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
The thought kept intruding, inserting itself between showers and scoldings, making her stomach clench and her head ache.
“Mom?” Aaron repeated.
She’d finished reading a chapter of the newest Harry Potter book to Aaron. It was their evening tradition. She enjoyed sitting next to him, feeling his warmth and sharing the quiet time with her son.
Her son.
Not Joe’s. Joe had made it clear he didn’t want children all those years ago, and today, when he’d turned and seen Aaron…
“Mom? What’s up?”
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
Louisa pulled herself together and kissed Aaron’s forehead. “Nothing. I’m just tired. See you in the morning, bud.”
She walked woodenly toward the door.
“Hey,