“Will I ever have a mom?”
I choke on my inhale. “I’m sorry?”
“Leah and Lauren have two moms now, even though one passed away. I don’t have any.”
My heart starts to pound. I’ve been dreading talking to Finn about his mom for years. I’ve never figured out how much to tell him—or what to tell him—that won’t break his heart completely. It was probably a mistake, but I always ignored the fact that his mom isn’t around. This is the first time he’s ever asked about her. I should have had something prepared to tell him.
“You do have a mom. She just wasn’t able to take care of you after you were born.”
“Why not?”
“Well…” How do I tell my big-hearted boy that his mother was so coked out of her mind, she almost killed him when he was only a few months old? What are the right words to use to make him understand that she was so addicted that she almost managed to take both of their lives in one night? “She got really sick.”
“Will she get better and come back?”
“No, buddy. She’s not going to get better.” She’s been in prison for the past five years for drugs, distribution, and negligence of a minor. She’s got another seven to go before she’ll get out.
I had no idea how deep the depths of Leona’s deception went. We spent two years together, and I never once caught on to the evil inside her. I’m still not sure if it was the drugs, the postpartum hormones, or a combination of the two that caused her to overdose, but that experience will be burned into my memories for the rest of my life.
I was supposed to go out with the guys that night, but I decided to go home early because she’d been struggling after Finn’s birth. I was feeling guilty about leaving her alone, so I went home to help with the bedtime routine and found her passed out on the bathroom floor. Finn was in his baby bathtub, and the water was running, filling the tub todangerous levels. If I had arrived even minutes later, Finn would have drowned because of her negligence.
I found out she’d stolen thousands of dollars from me to pay for her drug habit, and she apparently had been accused of several other similar grifts, though none of them involved children before Finn.
I spend every day grateful that my intuition told me to go home that night. I probably would have died with Finn had I not gotten there in time.
Finn’s next question pulls me out of my memories. “Can we find a second mom like Leah and Lauren found Gia? I think I’d like to have one.”
My mouth opens and closes as I do my best fish impression. Then the timer dings and saves me from having to look my son in the face and lie. “Yeah, maybe.”
Hell will freeze over before I allow some other woman to become a mother to my son.
I pull our dinner out of the oven, setting it on the counter to cool for a bit before we dig in. As I’m grabbing plates, my phone rings in my pocket. My eyebrows fly up my forehead when I see whose name comes across the screen.
“Farrah?”
Her gentle voice comes through the speaker. “Oh, hi. I…didn’t think you’d answer.”
“Well, I did. What do you need?”
“Right, sorry. Um, I think there’s an animal in my attic.”
“What kind of animal?”
“If I knew the answer to that, I’d have said,” she snaps. “Crap. I’m sorry. It’s just that I can hear it scurrying around up there, and it’s driving me crazy. I tried to see what it was, but then it moved and scared the bejeezus out of me, and I panicked and called you.”
I try really hard to tamp down my laughter. But I fail. “Miss Independent is scared of a tiny critter?”
She growls, and I ignore the sensation the sound sends through my body. “I can’t believe I called you. I’ll just figure it out on my own.”
“Wait, wait. Don’t do that. It could have rabies or something. Just give me a second to grab some supplies, and I’ll drive over.”
“Fine.” Farrah hangs up, and I turn back to Finn. He’s put the cards away and is looking at me with a curious expression.
“Looks like Farrah needs some help with an animal that got stuck in her attic,” I tell him.
He lights up. “We should pack up dinner and take it to her house.”
“She may have plans, buddy. Or has already eaten.”
