The line went silent. Almost a minute passed before he spoke. I knew this was a sore subject for him. It hurt me too. But I needed answers. Speaking to my mother wouldn’t be the best idea…she might even encourage me to go my own direction, since it had worked out so well for her.
“Dad?”
“No, son.” He sounded somber, an emotion he seldom revealed. My stomach still fell to my gut. How the hell did none of us know where she was? How had she not called? Had she forgotten our phone numbers—the ones she promised to recite before leaving? Had she forgotten us?
“Oh,” was my only reply. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I knew he didn’t have the answers. I knew he couldn’t tell me why she left and why she wasn’t coming back. Anxiety started to crawl up my chest without my consent.
Dad let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know, boy. She’s probably off in the jungle, saving some monkeys or something. Leah’s a wild child. I’m glad I could reel you in before you went that far.”
Shit.Now the guilt washed over me like a bucket of cold, sticky liquid that I couldn’t brush off my skin no matter how hard I tried. “Could you?”
“Could I, what, reel you in?”
“Yes. How do you know I’m not like her?”
I could almost hear my dad shaking his head from a few thousand miles away.
“I know it sounds bizarre, but–”
“Jack, let me lay a few things out for you. Okay?” I had no idea how he kept himself in check during these conversations. I could only hope I would obtain the trait for my own kids.
I breathed deeply. No anxiety here. “Okay.”
“You got Maggie, your neighbor slash employee, pregnant while having no romantic relationship with her. Correct?”
Hesitating to answer, I let the memory run through my head. Of course, there were romantic feelings. Whether or not Maggie reciprocated those feelings for the majority of our fake relationship, I would never know. But there was no doubt I had felt things for her since the beginning.
“Correct.”
“And you invited her to move across the country with you and pretended to marry her to keep your family together. Correct?”
I sighed. “Yes.”
“Do you love her?”
I choked on my breath. Way to be straight to the point, Lenz. His mischievous grin from the other end of the line emanated through the silence on the phone speaker. “So, you do.”
I only managed a strangled, “Uh-huh.”
“So, what are you so worried about?”
I leaped. “Didn’t Mom love us?”
It was a heartbreaking question to ask. Someone who marries you and claims to love you and promises you forever should mean something. It shouldn’t constitute worry or fear of abandonment. It shouldn’t initiate trust issues. So why was I having trust issues with the woman I swore I wouldn’t leave? Why didn’t I trust that Maggie would stay right where she was with me?
“Of course, she did. She loved us both, Jack. But only loving someone isn’t enough. Does it really count when you don’t make an effort to show it?”
He had a point.
“Loving someone is one thing, but giving that person the love you have for them is entirely different. I love you, boy, and I’ve worked my ass off to give it to you, to show you, to never let you doubt that I did. Did I do a good job of that?”
God damn. This was some next-level philosophy I never heard growing up. “Without a doubt.”
“Did your mother?”
My mouth dried. The right answer was,Well, she did until she decided that going on some African safari was more fun than watching your kid look up to you for everything and smile whenever he saw you.
But I couldn’t bash his wife in front of him. That was my business with her, not his. “I don’t think she did.”
