“We might,” she said, “but I have no idea because I don’t really know how he feels about me now. I don’t know if we have that same bond.”
“Maybe. Have you discussed me with him?” he asked with that same studied indifference that she recognized and that he was trying rather hard to ignore.
“Outside of the fact that you are his son and having to explain how and why—which I did explain all that to him—we talked a little bit about you,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean that we discussed anything in the past right now. I think I gave him an awful lot to think about. He’d also been shot. He’s dealing with a pretty rough scenario here presently, and I don’t think he’s terribly impressed with anything in life right now.”
“I guess it’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?” he said. “Finding that you’ve got a son?”
“He was upset that he had missed so much of your life, how he didn’t get to be there for the time you were born or your first birthday or your fifth birthday,” she said with her hands out, palms up. “And, of course, that just made me feel worse.”
“Well, it shouldn’t,” he said fiercely. “You did everything you could.”
“And I agree I did,” she said, “but I didn’t let him in the process.”
Jeremy nodded slowly. “It’s one thing to make his own decision to have nothing to do with me. It’s another thing when that choice was taken away from him.”
She slowly nodded. “Yes,” she said, “that’s about it.”
“Well,” he murmured, “the troubled webs we weave.” Then he looked at her and asked, “Is dinner ready yet?”
She rolled her eyes and said, “No, not yet, it’s early.”
“I’m hungry,” he complained, and he returned to the fridge, pulled out more pepperoni sticks, and said, “I’ll go back to Frank’s.”
“Fine,” she said quietly, knowing that it was his way of going off to deal with his own problems. “Dinner will be ready in an hour and a half.”
“Make it an hour,” he said. “Like, I’m really hungry.” And he waggled his eyebrows and left.
She stood in the doorway and watched him race down the road. Tears were in her eyes, but they were good tears. Kurt might not have been there for all the milestones with Jeremy, but she had been. And she had done a damn good job as a mom. And Jeremy was a hell of a good son. She was so grateful to have him in her life.
Later that evening, Kurt picked up the phone and called her personal cell phone number.
“How did you get this number?” she asked sleepily.
“Sorry. I didn’t think that you might be in bed this early.”
“It’s been a pretty tough day. How is the shoulder?” She bolted awake at the thought.
“It’s fine,” he said, reassuring her. “And I don’t know why I called. Guess I needed to hear your voice.”
“Well, that’s an interesting thought,” she said. “After thirteen years of not hearing my voice, now you need to hear it?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I did. I had so many questions and so many thoughts all day long. They just kept running around in circles in my head.”
“You and me both. I told him.”
“You told Jeremy?”
“Yes,” she said. “I told him. He actually guessed.”
“Really?”
“He’s not stupid. He put two and two together.”
“So not too many people in your life since then, huh?”
“No,” she said with a laugh, “and that’s pretty well how he figured it out.”
“Was he upset?” he asked cautiously.
“Only when I said that you were feeling a bit betrayed.”
“And he was upset?”
“He was upset that you would judge me for it.”
“Good,” he said, “because nobody should judge you for that. Nobody was there to hold your hand or to help you out. You made the best decisions you could at the time under those circumstances, and nobody can fault you for that.”
She snorted. “Plenty of people have,” she said. “Starting with those who judged me for even dating you or getting pregnant in the first place. Although I didn’t tell anybody, everybody assumed it was the no-good lazy bum who had already taken off on me.”
“Well, that was partly correct,” he said. “I was always a hard worker but not necessarily one who stuck around, was I?” he said.
“How are you feeling about the whole thing now?” she asked cautiously.
“I’m feeling better,” he said. “I’ll head out to the truck stop early in the morning. Will you be at the coffee shop?”
“I often stop there in the morning, yes. Why?”
“I just thought I could meet you there,” he said, “have a morning coffee with you.”
“That would be nice,” she said warmly. “I’ll be there somewhere around seven-thirty.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll be there quite a bit earlier because I want to see if I can catch the dog early.”
“Got it.”
“See you in the morning.” And he hung up. As he sat here on the edge of his motel room bed, he took off his shirt. His sore and bandaged shoulder kept throbbing. Still, a smile was on his face. She’d always done that to him. He forgot how much he missed it, missed her. Back then they were a twosome—a special twosome—but always knowing that their time apart was rapidly approaching.
It was hard to look back on those years, but he needed to move forward because moving backward wasn’t possible. All he could hope was that he had a chance to rekindle a relationship with her and a chance to get to know the son he didn’t know he had. And, with that, he rolled over, stretched out on top of the bedding, and turned out the light. He had already checked in with Badger and updated him on everything, including Kurt’s new family.
For the moment everybody was quite content. All he could hope was that Sabine was somewhere safe and that she would hold on until he got there. He didn’t want to get sidetracked by the rest of this personal stuff; it was too important to make sure that Sabine was taken care of and had a safe place to go. But, at the same time, he also needed to make it all work together, not just one or the other.
He’d lost enough already.
He didn’t dare lose any more.
Chapter 5
Laurie Ann woke up the next morning, showered, dressed, and was in the kitchen, staring out the glass doors, when, behind her, she heard the sleepy voice of Jeremy.
“Are you meeting him?”
She turned slowly to look at him. “Yes,” she said, “we’ll meet for coffee.”
He nodded slowly, as if contemplating it. “I thought about it a lot last night.”
“And?”
She really didn’t know what kind of relationship she and Kurt had at the moment, but she was willing to keep the lines of communication open. She also refused to accept any blame. Life happened, and this was just one more example where it happened the way people hadn’t expected it to. She’d never regretted her decision and wouldn’t start now.