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“How are you?” He adds, “How is it, being a mother and everything?”
“It’s, I don’t know, everything. It’s the best thing in the world, the hardest thing in the world, it’s rewarding, it’s nerve-wracking, you name it.” I stop at the water’s edge and look Wes in the eye. “No one from home knows.” I breathe in deep and add, “Simon doesn’t know.”
He looks down at the water, shakes his head and lets out a cheerless laugh. “Good.”
“Huh?”
“If he knew and then left you to do this on his own, I’d want to kill him…same as Christian.”
“He’s a good person, Wes.”
“Then you should probably tell him.”
“It’s complicated...I can’t.”
“Are you ever going to tell him?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you’re just taking this all on by yourself? Doesn’t seem right…or fair.”
“He’s not a burden. I’ll never see Ethan as anything but a gift.”
He tussles my hair like he used to when we were kids. “You were always good, Charlotte. I bet you’re a great mom.”
At that I tear up and my lip trembles. “I hope I am.”
He sits on the grass and pats the space beside him. “It’s really beautiful here. How could our parents ever settle in a landlocked shithole like our town when places like this exist?”
I laugh through the emotion clogging my throat. “I know, right?”
He nudges my shoulder with his. “Hey, your secret is safe with me.”
“That’s the worst part. I don’t like thinking of my situation as a secret. Ethan is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“You’re right.” He turns to me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you afraid to tell him? Afraid he won’t want to be a part of Ethan’s life?”
The question breaks something that I’ve kept buried deep inside of me. All I can do is lower my head and nod as a few hot tears fall. I wipe them away and breathe deep for a few minutes to steady myself.
“Do you know why I really drove out here?”
Before he gets a chance to tell me, Janelle calls out for us and rings the freaking dinner bell. I know for a fact that bell hangs in her kitchen for decoration only.
I stand and reach down to give him my hand. “You heard her, it’s dinner time.”
Over dinner, with Janelle in investigative reporter mode, I learn several interesting tidbits. Wes has quit the police force. He tells Janelle and Lawrence he’s realized it’s not what he wants to do with his life, so he’s going back to school and getting his degree. He shoots me a look, telling me what I already know: there’s more to that story. He’s also leaving town. He’s moving east for school come September, and he’ll be working part-time for his uncle, a contractor in Yardsley.
“It’s not Philly,” he says, looking to me, “but Yardsley is downright cosmopolitan compared to where we come from.”
I’m reeling, feeling the effects of this time warp, so I haven’t added much to the conversation. Ethan, on the other hand, is hamming it up for our dinner guest. At the moment he’s putting his finger into his mashed potatoes and placing a blob of it onto his nose.
Janelle reaches over with a napkin and wipes his nose. “Are you wasting my good food, young man?”
Ethan is busy entertaining Wes, who is laughing at his antics, and also knows he has Janelle wrapped around his little finger, so he doesn’t let up. I lift him out of his chair when he ups the ante and pretends he’s farting, complete with the lifting butt cheek gesture and sound effects. “That’s enough, my little comedian. It’s time for your bath.”
