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I exhaled a long sigh as I stabbed a piece of broccoli with my fork. “Yes, I do.”
“Now that I’m older, my mom and I get along really well. Things got a lot easier once she didn’t have to parent me anymore.”
“What about your dad?” I’d noticed Erin hadn’t mentioned him at all.
A wrinkle formed between her brows as she pushed her cucumber salad around. “We don’t talk as often since he moved to Florida ten years ago. He’s not really a phone person, so it’s hard to stay close.”
Perhaps it was unfair of me, but I couldn’t help judging him. I’d been doing everything I could to stay connected with my kids since the divorce. It wasn’t always easy—especially with Maddy—but that didn’t stop me from trying. She might resent me and every minute of time she was forced to spend with me, but at least she knew I wanted to be part of her life. If I’d had the chance to be a father to Erin, I liked to think I wouldn’t have let her drift away from me.
“Was it hard for you when your parents split?” I asked.
“It’s always hard, isn’t it? I can always tell when one of my students is going through a divorce at home. It upends everything you thought would stay the same, and for a little while it feels like the ground will never feel solid again. But then you get used to it, and it becomes your new status quo.” She lifted one of her shoulders as she glanced up at me. “Tess mentioned you were divorced.”
I nodded as I swallowed the bite of salmon in my mouth. “My wife and I only split a year ago, so it’s still pretty new.”
“How are your kids adjusting?”
“Jack—he’s the younger one—seems to be rolling with it okay. Maddy’s another matter. The two of us used to be really close, but more recently we’ve been…” I hesitated, reaching for my water glass. “Things have been difficult between us. I think she blames me for the divorce.”
Erin didn’t say anything. She was too polite to pry, but I could see the question in her eyes.
I cleared my throat, trying to decide how honest I wanted to be. “I let my job turn me into a workaholic, and I wasn’t around for my family as much as I should have been. So Maddy’s got good reason to blame me.”
It had been a real wake-up call when Wendy asked me for a divorce. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been taking her for granted. I’d let her carry too much of the load on her own while I buried myself in work, and I wasn’t around for her or the kids nearly as much as I should have been.
It was unsettling to think Tess had been right about me. I hadn’t made a very good husband or father after all.
I reached for my water again to wash away the bitter taste in my mouth. I could feel the weight of Erin’s gaze on me, but I avoided meeting it, afraid of what I’d see in her eyes. “Anyway, I’ve been making an effort to be more present for Jack and Maddy since the divorce. It’s harder now that I don’t see as much of them, but I want to show them they’re my number-one priority even if we don’t live together anymore.”
“I think that’s great,” Erin said softly. “It sounds like you’re doing the right things to help them through it.”
I glanced at her and winced at the sympathy in her expression. “I’m sorry. It’s probably hard to hear about this, considering I was never there for you at all.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s actually…” When she hesitated, I leaned forward, curious to hear how she’d finish the sentence. “This probably sounds bad, but it’s sort of reassuring.”
“You mean knowing that I would have been a crappy father?”
“No.” She frowned at me. “I don’t think you are—and as a teacher I’ve gotten good at spotting the bad ones. But it’s a useful reminder that no one’s perfect.”
I huffed out a wry breath and rubbed my forehead. “I’m definitely not that.”
“It’s just that when I was younger, sometimes I’d get upset with my parents and fantasize about my biological mom and dad, imagining that I would have been better off with them.” Her cheeks pinked with embarrassment as she lowered her eyes.
“That sounds like a pretty normal thing for a kid in your position to think about.”
She nodded absently and brushed at a crumb on the table. “I almost didn’t message Tess because I was afraid of finding out something bad about my birth parents—but I think I might also have been afraid of finding out something too good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes I’d watch movies likeThe Princess DiariesorWhat a Girl Wants—you know, where the main character finds out the parent she never knew was royalty or rich and famous?”
“I’m familiar.” I’d watched both movies with Maddy when she was younger.
“It’s supposed to be some kind of wonderful revelation, but I always thought I’d be upset if I ever found out something like that. Like, I could have had this incredible alternate life, and instead I missed out on all that awesomeness and had to settle for my boring, ho-hum life in the suburbs.”
I couldn’t help laughing a little. “Well I’m definitely not a prince—or Colin Firth—so you didn’t miss out on anything that incredible.”
“Exactly. I traded one ordinary life for another. My adoptive parents might not have been perfect—or royalty,” she added with a grin, “but I was lucky to have them.”
