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He nodded. “But he had to learn how to walk all over again and needed help with dressing, eating, bathing...everything.”
“That had to be hard for you, being so young,” she said emotionally. “What about your mother?”
His gaze hardened. “She walked out.”
“What do you mean?”
Terrence remembered that day clearly as if it had happened yesterday....
* * *
“I can’t do this anymore, Ray.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This...this whole thing. I’m only twenty-seven years old. I’m not cut out to play nurse to an invalid husband.”
“You act like I asked for this. How do you think I feel? I’m a twenty-nine-year-old man who is supposed to be in the prime of his life. I can’t even play with my son. And you know the doctors said I would regain full function of my limbs.”
“Yeah, but that could take months. I don’t know if I want to spend months waiting for something that might not happen.”
“What’s this really about, Dana? You’ve seemed unhappy for a while now.”
“I didn’t bargain for all this when we got married.”
“Then why did you marry me?”
“I fell in love with a musician. I wanted that life.”
“What are you talking about? I never stopped my music.”
“No. But you didn’t pursue it, either. You could have been huge. Instead, you settled for being an engineer.”
“In other words, you wanted fame and glamour. What about your dreams? I’ve tried encouraging you to find your passion.”
“I wanted to travel all over the country, live in a huge mansion and go to parties. That was my dream...my passion.”
“We live in a four-thousand-square-foot house, Dana. This isn’t large enough?”
“I want out, Ray. I’m too young to waste my life like this.”
“Waste your life?” he shouted. “What about your son? You’d just walk out on him?”
“I never wanted children. Besides, he loves you more anyway.”
“Mom?”
“Terrence. What do you need, son?” his father asked.
Terrence ignored his father and kept his gaze fixed on his mother. “Did you mean what you said, Mom?”
“Terrence...I...”
“Did you mean what you said?” he yelled. When she remained silent, he turned and fled, ignoring his father’s plea to come back.
When the next-door neighbor brought Terrence back to his dad, Terrence’s tearstained face was a mask of stone. He rushed into his father’s open arms, held on tightly and cried.
“Everything is going to be all right, Terrence. Everything will be fine, son,” his father whispered over and over.
* * *
Terrence got so lost in his memories he hadn’t realized Janae was crying until he heard her sniffles. “Hey, I didn’t tell you that to make you cry.” He tightened his arms around her.
“I know,” she said. She wrapped her arms around his middle, hugging him tight. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I wish I could do something to take that pain away from you. I can’t understand how a mother could turn her back on her child like that or walk out on a sick husband. I’m getting angry, and I’ve never met her.”
Terrence stared at her for a long minute and saw the earnestness in her eyes. He knew she would never leave her child like that. His chest tightened. The fact that she cried for him opened up spaces inside him he hadn’t know were there. Her sweet and loving spirit drew him even more. It would be harder to keep his distance than he’d thought. “I’m okay now. My grandparents came to stay with us and helped with my father.”
“So he recovered?”
“That time, yes,” he answered softly. “They found another one ten years later, but he didn’t survive.” Terrence took a couple of deep breaths to steady his emotions. He’d had no intention of sharing all of this with her, but somehow, the words tumbled out.
“You were only eighteen. He never saw you go to college. Did he get a chance to see you graduate high school?”
“I was in my second year of college when he died.”
“You graduated high school at sixteen? Not only are you a gifted musician, but a genius as well, huh?”
“No, nothing like that. I studied hard.”
She leaned back and angled her head. “Please. You skipped two grade levels. What was your GPA when you graduated high school?”
“Four point five.”
“I rest my case. You must have taken every advanced placement and honors class they offered at the school.”
He grinned sheepishly and shrugged.
