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Warmth covers my side as he sits beside me and wraps me in his arms. I sob harder because I don’t deserve the comfort he’s offering.
“Ryder is my five-year-old son,” I tell him, clearing up the lie I told him days ago. “Travis is my ex.”
“I gathered that much,” he says, his arms still tight around me despite my confession.
“Travis never paid much attention to Ryder. I mean, he did in the beginning, but parenting never came as easy to him as the drinking did. As much as I hated it, I had to put Ryder in daycare right after my maternity leave because I knew even then that Travis wouldn’t watch him the way a newborn needed to be tended to.
“I listed Travis as his father on the paperwork, and never really thought about it again. I was always the one to pick Ryder up. Travis never wanted that responsibility. He got a wild hair a couple months ago and went to the daycare. The woman didn’t even ask for his ID even though she’d never seen him before. She just handed my son over to him.”
“You had full custody?”
God, how I wish I did.
I clear my throat before speaking again. “I was still with him. I mean, technically we were together, but not really. I gave up on Travis long ago, but I never packed my things and left. He wasn’t around very often. He didn’t expect much from me, and it was just easier to stay, you know?”
He doesn’t answer in the affirmative because honestly, people on the outside looking in never understand that sort of thing. But when you’re bone-weary, just exhausted to the bone, doing anything other than what’s required of you daily seems unsurmountable.
“He drank all the time but was never violent. He didn’t contribute to the household, but he also didn’t show up drunk and crawl into the bed, expecting things from me.”
He stiffens at my side, but I choose not to attempt to decipher it. I’ll lose my nerve to keep going.
“What happened the day he picked him up?” he prompts.
“He was pulled over not long after. One of the other parents at the daycare smelled alcohol on his breath. They didn’t step up and try to stop him, but they called the police and followed him until the police arrived. He was arrested for a DUI and cited for having a child in the car with him. Social services got involved. I left him, had to move in with my mom. He had supervised visitations, but he hasn’t shown up for many of them.”
“They’ve kept Ryder in foster care since then?”
More tears pool, more tears fall, as I shake my head.
“I was given temporary full custody. I was allowed to pick him up from the police station. He never spent any time in foster care.”
“I’m confused.”
I take a deep, fortifying breath.
“Travis didn’t contact me once from the time he was arrested and released. The only real difference in his life was that I was no longer at his house paying the bills. The other night, when I had to leave because of an emergency, I got a call from the gas station clerk. It’s a guy I went to school with. Travis used to party with him, but the clerk grew up like everyone else, while Travis still acted like a teen with no responsibilities. He smelled alcohol… shit, I’m jumping ahead.”
My hands tremble as I lift them, swiping at my eyes.
I shift a little, moving away from Brent. I’d rather be the one to pull back than feel him move away from me as the story continues.
“My mom had a million opinions about Travis before I left him, but true to her nature, those opinions changed once I did. Deep down I think she just likes her opinions to be the opposite of whatever I choose. She has never been a very happy woman. When Travis showed up at her doorstep the other night, she had no problem letting Ryder leave with him. I don’t know if she could tell he’d already been drinking. I’d like to think she wouldn’t let her grandson leave with his drunk father. Travis drove him to the gas station and left him in the truck with it running so he could go inside and buy more beer.”
Every muscle tenses in his body.
I go on to tell him how Ryder locked his dad out of the truck and how Travis threw a fit until the police were called. I sob the whole time, and by the time I’m done, I don’t know if he could even understand some parts of the story.
“Why would you lie to me?”
God, I wish I could look him in the eyes, but I just can’t.
“Shame, guilt, every other emotion that comes along with not protecting my child. For fucking up so badly that Travis was able to drive drunk with him twice.”
