He scrunched up his nose at me and gave a small shake of his head before stuffing his hands into his pockets and pulling out a piece of crumpled up paper.
"I'm not trying to sell anything, trust me I wouldn’t be this nervous if that was the case. I, um...I knew your mother, Marie, and she sent me this letter awhile back. It took me a little bit of time to track you down, but she had said in her letter that she had left one for you too."
A light bulb went off in my head and I remembered exactly what letter he was talking about. The guy that my mom had ditched Caleb and me for, Tank Harvey, had given me a letter that my mom had written before she had selfishly killed herself. When I had gone to the police station to sign the paperwork before I could make any kind of arrangements, Tank had been waiting for me.
The guy had intimidated me a little with his overbearing size and stereotypical biker look. I mean, his name fit him to the T. Luckily, once he handed over the letter, I had never seen him again. I had tucked the letter away and figured I would read it someday, but I had been a little busy. I had assumed nothing too important had been in it, except for how sorry she was about being such a horrible mother and blah, blah, blah. Like I would believe that.
"Well, judging by your silence and that you didn't recognize my name, I'm guessing you never read it. I guess I could understand why, judging by the circumstances of your relationship with Marie.”
"You sir, are a mind reader. Care to share the important details that my fabulous mother left behind for me? I could only guess the wealth of knowledge she wrote in a letter before she decided to selfishly off herself.” I guess I had a little more anger built up about that whole situation than I thought. I had gotten one good cry out after I had found out she died and closed the lid on it tightly. To say I was a little bitter about my mother was putting it mildly.
"Well," he drawled out, shuffling his feet around a bit more and kicking around a few stray rocks that had found their way onto the porch. "This will probably be a little bit of a shock, just to warn you. Your mother wrote me a letter in which she said that she had left one for you too, explaining the situation as well, so you wouldn’t be taken by surprise. I met her awhile back at some little bar she was working at, I don't even remember the name of it. I was just passing through on business and, well, one thing led to another."
I rolled my eyes at him, okay buddy, tell me something I don't know; I knew my mother had serviced her customers very well. I had to listen to it almost every night growing up with her and had learned early on how to drown it out. Her promiscuity was one of the many reasons I had never wanted to date. I really didn’t want to be labeled a whore and I most certainly didn’t want to end up with a kid, not having any idea who the baby’s daddy was.
But this guy didn't look like her usual customer, they tended to drive a motorcycle, have bad hygiene, and drink. A lot.
"Marie seemed to believe that the little boy you are raising, which let me just say is a great accomplishment for a young woman like yourself, is mine. Now, obviously we'll need to do a paternity test to confirm her suspicions but…"
I don’t think I heard much after that. My heart was pounding in my ears and I felt a cold sweat break out all over my body. I just knew one thing, this man was going to try to steal my Caleb from me. The boy that I had taken care of, on my own, for practically his whole life. I had been the one to change almost every one of his diapers, make sure he had clean clothes to wear, and fix endless amounts of bottles in the middle of the night. All while trying to keep up at school and keep myself slightly sane. I think I had done a pretty good job at that. For the most part.
Of course, dear old Mom just had to go and mess everything up, even from beyond the grave. Figures, seemed like something she would do. How did she even know how to contact this guy? She normally hadn’t exchanged contact information and I didn’t see very many repeats. She had always said that she had no clue who my father was and I was sure that was the truth. But those big brown eyes looked so familiar…
“Of course, I know this might come as a little bit of a shock to you and I just want to reassure you I’m not trying to take him away from you or anything. I just want to make sure that is absolutely clear to you before we go any further.”