“I can’t change the past,” she stated, feeling sick to her stomach.
“He would have come to get me,” Tyler told her, his voice fierce with emotion. “He would have wanted me with him.” He turned to glare at her. “I want to live with him. I want to live with my dad and not you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HELL CAME IN THE FORM OF A pain that wouldn’t go away. Ethan’s rejection was nothing when compared with her only child telling her that he didn’t want to live with her anymore. It was as if Tyler reached into her chest and pulled out her still-beating heart and threw it in the trash. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. All she knew was that she couldn’t cry in front of him because it might upset him. An irrational, maternal response that came from instinct.
She stood, amazed that her legs still worked, then walked into the kitchen.
“Did you hear me?” he yelled, following her. “I don’t want to live with you. I want to live with my dad.”
Each breath sliced through her like a knife. She half expected to see blood pouring out of her body, pooling at her feet. It felt like she was dying. Truly no death could be worse.
After finding Denise’s phone number, she turned to Tyler.
“I heard you,” she said quietly. “I need to make a call, then we’re leaving.”
“I don’t want to go back to camp.”
“Good, because you’re not.” Liz couldn’t imagine making the drive. She was in no shape to negotiate the mountain road and surely shouldn’t be behind the wheel of anything dangerous.
She punched in the phone number, then waited until Ethan’s mother answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Denise. It’s Liz.”
“Oh, hi. How are you?”
Talk about a question she couldn’t answer. “I know it’s really short notice, but could you please take Tyler for a couple hours? He’s not sick or anything.”
“Of course. He’s not at camp?”
“Not right now. May I bring him over now?”
“Sure. Is everything all right?”
No. Nothing was all right. Nothing would ever be all right again. “May I bring him now?”
There was a pause. “I’ll be here.”
“Good.”
Liz grabbed her cell phone and her house keys.
“Let’s go,” she told Tyler and walked out of the house.
It took less than fifteen minutes to get to Denise’s place. Tyler didn’t speak and Liz was grateful. When they reached the welcoming home, she stopped on the sidewalk.
“Go on in,” she said. “I’ll wait here. I’ll be by to pick you up later.”
Her son, the child she had given birth to, worried over and loved with her whole heart, looked at her with angry eyes. “I want to live with my dad.”
“I got that.”
“I’ll run away if you don’t let me.”
More wounds, she thought sadly. More pain. A few short weeks ago she and Tyler had been so close. She would never have believed he could speak to her like this. That he would want to drive her out of his life. He was only eleven. How could he not love her?
The front door opened and Denise stood there. The other woman probably wanted to ask what was wrong, but instead she gave Liz an encouraging smile, then turned to Tyler.
“Hi. Have you had lunch?”
“I’m not hungry,” Tyler groused.
“Then we’ve got a problem because I just ordered a pizza.”
Tyler smiled slowly. “With pepperoni?”
“It’s not pizza if there’s no pepperoni.”
“Sweet!” He hurried up the walkway and entered the house.
Liz watched him go, waiting for him to turn around, and say something to her. To run to her, wrap his arms around her and tell her that he was sorry. He didn’t. He didn’t look back at all.
“Are you all right?” Denise asked.
Liz shook her head. “I have to go,” she said, struggling not to cry. “I’ll be back later.”
She hurried away.
Her arms folded, her shoulders hunched, she made her way to Ethan’s office. Now that Tyler was with Denise, Liz could allow herself to think about the man responsible for all this. The man who had turned her child from her.
It had been his plan from the beginning. She realized that now. He’d been angry and hurt and desperate to get what he wanted. She was in the way, and he’d been determined to make her irrelevant.
Why hadn’t she seen it? The truth was here—clearly visible in everything he did. Could reality be any bigger than the injunction? He’d played her from the beginning and she’d let him. She’d thought she was in love with him. Talk about stupid. Following her heart, letting herself trust and love again had cost her the only thing that had ever mattered.
Her son.
She pushed through the door into Ethan’s construction company. The receptionist at the front desk looked up and smiled.
“May I help you?”
“No,” Liz said and headed for Ethan’s private office.
The young woman got up and followed her. They reached Ethan’s door at about the same time.