He left the engine running and jumped out of the car, racing through the downy, ankle-deep snow. “Bret?” he yelled. His cry echoed off the unseen mountains and bounced back at him, thin as a sheet of ice.
He flung the metal doors open. The well-lit barn was cavernous, a row of empty stalls. “Bret?” he yelled.
He ran from stall to stall, peering in each one.
He found Bret in the very last stall—the one Mike had used at last summer’s Last Bend Classic horse show. Shivering and curled into a tiny ball, Bret was sucking his thumb.
Liam had never known a relief this big; it made it hard to move, to speak, to do anything except sweep down and pull his son into his arms. “Oh, Bret,” he whispered brokenly, “you scared me.”
Bret drew back. His cheeks were bright red and streaked with tears, his eyes were bloodshot. “I knew you’d find me, Daddy. I’m—” He burst into chattering, shivering tears again.
“It’s okay, baby,” he said, stroking his son’s hair.
Bret blinked up at him. “D-D-Daddy, she didn’t even h-hug me.”
He touched Bret’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Bret. I should have told you the truth.”
“Sh-She’s n-not my mommy, is she?”
“Yes,” he answered softly. “She’s your mom, but the accident … it broke something in her brain and she can’t remember some really important things.”
“L-Like me?”
“Or me. Or Jacey.”
“She remembered Jacey!”
“No. She’d heard about Jacey, and so she was able to figure out who she was. But she doesn’t really remember.”
Bret wiped his eyes. “So how come no one tole her about me? I’m as important as Jace.”
Liam sighed. “You’re everything to her, Bret. You and Jacey are her whole world, and it hurt her so much to hear about Jacey. She cried and cried. I just … couldn’t tell her about you, too. I was hoping she’d remember on her own and then … everything would be fine.”
Bret drew in a great, shuddering breath. Liam could tell he was trying to be a big boy. “Will her memory get unbroken?”
Liam wanted to say Of course, but in the last weeks, he’d learned a thing or two about his children and himself. They were all strong enough to handle the truth. The only wound that festered was a lie. “The doctors think she’ll remember most things. Not every little thing, but the big things—like us—we think she’ll get those back.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“No. We don’t know. But you know what?”
“What?”
“The love … I believe she’ll remember all of that.”
Bret seemed to think about that for a long time. “Okay, Daddy.”
Liam smiled. Thank God for the resilience of a little boy’s heart.
“Daddy? I love you.”
The simple words sifted through Liam, soft as a summer rain. “I love you, too, Bret.” He held him tightly. “And I’m proud of you. This is a hard thing for a little boy to understand.”
Slowly they got to their feet. Liam picked Bret up and carried him out of the barn. When he flicked off the lights, a crashing darkness descended, and he followed the Explorer’s headlights through the falling snow. As soon as they were in the car, Liam called Rosa and Jacey and gave them the good news. Rosa offered to pick Jacey up from the hospital and meet Liam and Bret at home.
Bret leaned back in his seat. Even with the heat roaring through the vents, he was shivering. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“It’s okay. Sometimes a man has to get away to think.” He glanced at Bret. “But next time, how about if you go into a room and slam the door shut?”
Bret almost smiled. “Okay. But I’m gonna slam it really hard.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Liam couldn’t let go of Bret’s hand. All the way home in the car, he held on to those cold little fingers.
When they pulled into the garage, Liam clicked the engine off and turned to his son. He would have given anything in that moment to say the perfect thing.
If wishes were horses, all beggars would ride.
It was one of Mike’s favorite expressions, and it brought her back to him. He knew what she would say if she were here right now: Come on, piano man, face the music.
It gave him the shot of strength he needed.
“Bret, there’s something else we need to talk about.”
Bret turned to him, his face still red from the biting cold. “Do we hafta?”
Already his son had learned to expect the worst. He’d learned to be afraid. “Come on, I’ll make us some hot chocolate and we’ll sit by the fire and talk.”
“Chocolate and sugar. This is gonna be good.”
Liam smiled. “Move it, Jim Carrey.”
Bret blinked up at him, owl-like. “That’s what Mommy said to me … on the day … you know … just before she fell.”
Liam tousled his son’s still-damp hair. “The memories will be like that, pal-o-mine. They’ll come out of nowhere—for you, and for Mommy. And Bretster, it’s easier if you let them come, along with any emotion they happen to bring with ’em. You can’t be afraid of what you feel. Not ever.”
“Okay, Daddy.” Bret got out of the car and went into the house, flipping on every light switch along the way. Liam followed along behind him, turning off the ones they didn’t need. In the great room, he knelt in front of the fireplace and arranged the wood and paper. When the fire was cracking and popping, he went into the kitchen and made two cups of instant cocoa. He added a generous amount of milk to Bret’s, then carefully carried the two mugs into the living room, where his son was already playing with an action figure, sound effects and all.
Liam stopped, took a deep breath … and went on. That’s what parents did. This was a conversation that had to happen. Tomorrow Bret would go to school and some kid in some class would ask about Julian True. Bret deserved to learn the truth from his dad.
“Hey, pal,” he said, handing Bret a cup.
Bret peered into the mug and scrunched his face. “You put milk in it. It looks like a bunch of floating toilet paper in there.”
“Mom doesn’t add milk—to cool it down?”
“Ice cubes when it’s instant; milk when its the real thing. It’s okay, Dad.” He bravely took a sip. “Yum.”
Liam smiled. “I love you, Bret.”
Bret set down the mug. Liam knew that was it for the cocoa. “I love you, too, Dad.”
“Come here.”
Liam sat down in the huge, overstuffed chair by the sofa, the one they’d picked up at a garage sale outside of LaConner. Mike had spent more money refinishing and re-upholstering it than it would have cost to buy a new one, but as she always said, this chair was as comfortable as fifty years together. It easily held a man and his nine-year-old son.
Bret climbed up onto his lap.
Liam touched his son’s face. Come this summer, there would be a dusting of freckles across this little nose.
“Is this more about Mommy?”
“You remember we told you a long time ago that Mommy had been married before?”
“Yeah. That’s Jacey’s other daddy.”
Liam swallowed hard. “And did you know that Julian True was in town?”
“Lizard Man? Hel-lo, Dad, everyone knows that.”
Liam held back a smile. “Actually, he prefers to be remembered as the Green Menace, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, he’s in town to visit Mom.”
“Lizard Man knows Mommy?”
Liam took a deep breath and jumped into the deep end. “More than that. Mommy used to be married to him.”
Bret made a disbelieving sound—half snort, half giggle. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s true, Bretster.”
Bret frowned. It was a long minute before he asked, “But you’re my daddy—and she’s my mommy, right?”
“That’s right.”
Bret seemed to turn it all over in his mind, this way and that. Sometimes he was frowning; sometimes he wasn’t. At last he said, “Okay.”
“Okay?” Liam had expected tears, anger, something more … traumatic than this quiet okay. Maybe Bret didn’t understand—
“Yeah, okay. Sally Kramer’s mom used to be married to Lonnie Harris down at the feed store, and Billy McAllister’s dad used to be married to Gertrude at Sunny and Shear. My mom’s ex-husband is way cooler than that. Hey, do you think he could get me a Lizard Man poster for my room?”
“You amaze me, Bret,” he answered softly.
The mudroom door crashed open. Jacey and Rosa rushed into the house. Jacey was screaming her brother’s name. She raced over to them and dropped to her knees beside the chair.
“Oh, Bret …” Crying, she ran her hands across Bret’s face like a blind person hoping to memorize every shape. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
Bret shoved his sister’s hand away. “No kisses. Gross. Hey, Jace, did you know that Mommy used to be married to Julian True—and he’s your other dad?”
Jacey wiped her eyes and dropped her mouth open. “No way!”
Bret grinned from ear to ear. He leaned toward Liam and whispered in his ear, “You told me first?”
Liam clamped down on a smile. “You’re a big boy now.”
Bret giggled. “Yeah,” he said to his sister, puffing up his narrow chest, “but we’re still a family.”
Jacey’s arms embraced both of them. She pressed her tear-stained cheek against her brother’s back. “A family,” she said softly. “All we need now is Mom.”
That evening the story broke. Pictures of “Kayla” and Julian were splashed across television, each one scrutinized and commented upon, their life together cut up into bite-sized pieces for mass consumption. At eight o’clock—right after Entertainment Tonight—the phone rang for the first time. Liam made the mistake of answering it. Some woman from the saddle club was screeching about how it couldn’t be true.
After that, the phone began ringing nonstop. Liam yanked the plug out of the wall.
He went through the motions of ordinary life—he ate dinner, washed the dishes, watched a little television with the kids, then he tucked Bret into bed and read him a bedtime story.
When Bret was finally asleep, Liam carefully crawled out of the bed and padded out of the room. He was about to head downstairs when he noticed the slat of light beneath Jacey’s bedroom door. With a sigh, he headed down the hallway toward her room.
After a long pause, he knocked. “Hey, honey, it’s me.”
“Oh. Come in.”
He opened the door and found her exactly as he’d expected: sitting on her bed, wearing headphones, and crying. The television was on.
“Hey, kiddo.”
She pulled off the headphones and tossed them on the pile of sheets and blankets beside her.
He grabbed her pink beanbag chair and dragged it closer to the bed, then plopped down into its cushy center.