“Yeah. Her birth. How was it?”
“It . . . it . . .” She pauses. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to ask me that question.”
“I want to know everything, Winter. Every little detail.”
“Okay.” Her face scrunches up a little. “Well, not every little detail.”
“My mom is a midwife. You can’t shock me after years of listening to her tell birth stories.”
My mom. Another rock lands in my stomach. This will gut her. She’ll be excited but heartbroken all at once. I know because that’s how I’m feeling right now.
“Honestly, it was incredible. Powerful. And exhausting. But so rewarding. She was healthy and so was I.”
I swallow the words I should have been there over the lump in my throat.
“Theo?” Her knee nudges mine. “If I wasn’t talking to you, who was I talking to? I got your number from the Hamilton Athletics member list.”
“It was probably Geoff at Hamilton Elite.”
“Wait.” She holds a hand up. “At my dad’s work?”
I nod, staring at my hands, pressing on the calloused pads. “I refocused after that Christmas and cut out all the noise. All the social media, all the . . .” I tip my head back and groan as I look up at the ceiling.
“Women?” Winter provides with no inflection in her voice.
“Yeah. A new phone seemed like the easiest way to disconnect. I handed that one over so Geoff could manage my social media accounts. I told him to tell me if anything important came through.”
“Hmm.” She nods, long and slow, almost rocking her body with the weight of it.
“Do you still have the messages?”
“Not the voicemails.” She sniffs as she fishes her phone out of her pocket. After a few swipes, she hands it to me. Theo Silva is the contact at the top, and I double-check the number. I know she sees me do it, because I feel her tense. But I need to know for sure she contacted the correct person.
The number is right, and part of me wishes it wasn’t so I could be angry at her for not trying harder to get in touch with me. I want someone other than myself to blame for this colossal fucking mess.
But when I read the messages in the chat, all those feelings evaporate, and in their place comes an oppressive dread. Grief. A sick twisting in my stomach. Because no woman in her right mind would continue trying to track me down after getting messages back like this.
I’m not interested in talking.
Thanks for letting me know.
I’m going to kill Geoff with my bare hands. He might be the only person in the world who would deem these messages “not important.”
Anxiety unfurls in my chest. I’m overwhelmed by the instinct to take this jumbled clusterfuck and untangle it. Make things as right as I can.
When I glance back at Winter, she’s curled in on herself, her gaze fixated on her fingernails again.
“Winter. Look at me.”
Her tongue darts out to take a nervous swipe at her lips, but she doesn’t turn her gaze my way.
I reach over, ignoring the sharp bite in my collarbone, and guide her chin gently with my fingers. When she finally gives me her eyes, I let my gaze trace them, wanting to know I have her full attention.
“If I had known, I’d have been here every step of the way. Supporting you in whatever way you needed. And Winter?”
“Yeah?” For the first time tonight, her voice sounds weak.
I catch a stray tear that slides down over the apple of her cheek and brush it away, tamping down the rage in my chest over how this entire thing played out. “Now that I’m here? I’m here. Okay? No expectations, but I want you to let me help you. I want to get to know her if that’s okay with you.”
She nods, and more tears fall. I bring my other hand up and try to catch them all, but I fail. They come too fast, so I pull her head against my chest and opt to let her soak my already damp shirt.
Seems like the least I can do for this woman after how thoroughly I’ve let her down.
I don’t sleep. Even though we’ve moved all my furniture into this brand-new house, it doesn’t feel like mine. I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling. I’ve got Peter wedged into my armpit, snoring softly on one side of me, and regret on the other side with one hand on my throat.
Winter has always drawn me to her in some inexplicable way, and knowing she’s just a few steps away with our daughter? It’s shifted something in me.
I didn’t want to be disruptive, or overstep my bounds, but I wanted to sit on the floor of that nursery and stare at Vivienne for the entire night.
Knowing you want to have children one day is a lot different from facing one that already exists. I don’t know how to wrap my feelings around it.
But I know who will.
Wincing as I shift in bed, I swipe my phone off the bedside table and call my mom.
“What’s wrong?” is how she answers the phone. Her instincts are wild.
“Why would something have to be wrong for me to call you? You’re my mom.”
“Right, but I know you. It’s currently six o’clock on a Sunday morning where you are, which means it’s five here.”
“Shit. Sorry, Mom.”
“It’s okay. I was just getting set up to do some restorative yoga. I can fix your problems while I make myself some green tea.”
I snort. I don’t think anyone can fix this problem in the time it takes to make a cup of tea.
“Why don’t you just sleep in? It’s the weekend.”
She scoffs at me, and I hear a cupboard thud shut on the other end of the line. “I’ll be sure to tell that to the next mother that goes into labor on a weekend. Sorry, doll. You’re going to have to wait until Monday.”
I chuckle because I remember having to take care of my sister at odd hours now and then when my mom would have to rush out to a birth. Or when we were younger, getting woken up so that she could drop us off at a friend’s house.
She did the best she could after our dad’s death. A single mom to two kids wasn’t an easy gig. Though when she got a job teaching midwifery at the college, things slowed down a bit.
“Fair enough.”
Peter lets out a loud snore beside me, not at all bothered by the phone call.
“Oh, is that little Peter?”
Leave it to Rhett to ruin my dog’s name. Little Peter does distinctly sound like a penis. But I’m not about to tell my mom th—
“God. Every time I say that dog’s name, I think of a dick.”
I bark out a laugh and the way it jostles my body is enough to wake Little Peter. He gives me a dirty look, like I’m the world’s worst pillow, and nuzzles back in. When I picked him up off the street in Mexico, I thought he’d think I was his hero, but the attitude on this dog is insurmountable.
“It’s true. I hope you didn’t name him after your—”
“Mom.” I close my eyes and rub my fingers against my eyebrows.
“Right. We’re getting off track.” The low rumble of water boiling in the background filters in through the receiver. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
I sigh. “I don’t know if wrong is the word I would use.”
“Stop beating around the bush, Theo.”
“I have a daughter.” I feel like I’ve shouted the words. Somehow, saying them out loud is very different from being told them or just repeating them in my head.
The line is silent.
“I just found out last night.”
I wait a few beats. Still silent. I flip the phone to check the screen and make sure I’m still connected.
“Mom?”
“Oh, Theo.” She almost sighs it, like I exhaust her. And I’m sure that on some level I do. Choosing to pursue the career that killed my dad might be one of the most thoroughly exhausting things I’ve ever done to my mother, but she still supports me. She always has. I’m hoping I haven’t pushed her too far with this little tidbit though.
“Are you okay?”
A heavy breath I’d been holding leaves me in a whoosh. “I’m . . . yeah. I think I’m just in shock.”
“How did this happen?”
“Well, Mom, when two people—”
“Theodore Silva. Don’t turn this into a joke to cope with your feelings. Talk to me.”
I hear her pouring water into a cup, taking things in her stride like she always has with us kids. The universe blessed her with two handfuls. Julia is just as bad as me.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything! How old is she? What’s her name? Does she look like me? When can I meet her? And how the hell did this happen?”
No one but Loretta Silva would take this so easily. “And you were on my case for covering with jokes.”
She blows a raspberry, and I can envision her flipping a hand across herself like she’s swatting a fly as if we were in the same room.
So, I fill her in on everything I know, noting the happy little sigh she makes when I tell her about Vivienne. I don’t miss the strangled sound that catches in her throat when I explain how it all got lost in translation.
“I could kill that Geoff asshole,” she mutters.
“No, he’s mine to kill.”
“Theo! You can’t threaten shit like that. You’re a father now.”
Fuck. I’m a father now.
“Okay, so I need to compose myself before I cross that bridge. And tell Winter’s dad since he’s Geoff’s boss, and that is all its own massive clusterfuck.”