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Owen was waiting. That was what fueled me. He was going to be so happy to see me so early in the day, since I usually was stuck at the school later after classes ended. Mom would be less happy since she so enjoyed her time alone with Owen.
She had been a Godsend through all this. She was incredible. Ever since the first moments of my knowing I was pregnant and calling her, she never judged me or tried to make me feel bad. She asked one time if I knew who the father was, and when all I gave her was a ‘yes’ and didn’t elaborate, she didn’t push. I knew it had to be hard for her, but she was as supportive and helpful as a person could be.
Mom had done everything she could to make life easier on me, including taking care of Owen while I was at work. She worked from home doing customer support for a sewing machine company and worked the evening shift, so she was more than happy to watch Owen while I was away. It made the transition so much easier, and when I first moved back, she even let me have my old room until I got a place of my own a few blocks away.
With Graham suddenly back in the picture, it was probably the time now to let her know the full story. Plus, I needed someone I could talk to. Someone who wasn’t also going to go on and on about how hot Graham was. Someone I could trust not to let the information leak.
Owen’s little arms wrapped tightly around my neck when I opened the door and surprised him, and he clung to me for a while. But Mom knew something was going on and put on a pot of coffee. By the time it was brewed, Owen had finally let go and was off in the bedroom my mother had converted to a playroom for him, leaving us to sit in the kitchen.
“Mom, I have something I need to tell you,” I said as she poured coffee into my favorite mug.
“I figured as much,” she said. She poured coffee into her own mug, an ancient ceramic thing I had made for her at school when I was in second grade. It was supposed to be Garfield the cat but had come out just looking like a cheetah with a hole in it.
She sat down across from me and poured in several packs of sugar while I took deep breaths.
“I think it’s time you know who Owen’s father is,” I said.
Mom only nodded, stirring the sugar into the coffee and taking a sip. “Only if you want to tell me,” she said. “I never pushed because if you didn’t want to talk about it, then you didn’t have to.”
“And I appreciate that,” I said. “Seriously, it means so much to me that you didn’t judge me.”
“You’re my daughter, Mallory. I love you.”
I could feel the waterworks threatening to spill and looked away. If I kept staring at my mother’s face, I would be a sobbing wreck before I even told her. Instead, I wicked away the one tear that escaped and cleared my throat so my voice wouldn’t be so wobbly.
“Do you remember Graham Miller?”
Mom stopped for a second, the mug halfway to her mouth, then continued on. It was that split second recognition that told me she knew what I was about to say, and she most certainly knew who Graham was.
“Yes,” she said. “Is he Owen’s father?”
I nodded, gripping the mug so tightly that I thought it might break.
“Yes,” I said. “We met up when he was playing in New York while I was living there and then he went back on the road, and we lost touch.”
I was simplifying everything as much as I could. For her part, Mom seemed to be accepting of it and nodded, sipping her coffee again.
“So now that he’s back in town…”
“Exactly,” I said, sighing. “I don’t know what to do. I feel like I should tell him about Owen, but I don’t know how he’s going to take it. I never thought there would be an option for us to be together. I didn’t even think we would ever see each other again. Him moving back to Murdock is just… it’s just…”
“Unexpected,” she finished.
“Yeah,” I said. “We just both worked all the time and were both traveling. I was gone on set and rehearsing and working all those jobs, and he was always training or traveling. It’s why we fell out of touch. Then Tamara said athletes were notorious for having girlfriends in every town, and I didn’t want to be one of those girls. I didn’t want to be some sad girl pining for a ballplayer, carrying his baby and deluding myself into thinking I was in a relationship.
“So I decided not to tell him. Then I wouldn’t want to try and force anything to happen, and I could just take control of my own life without worrying about what he would do or say. I thought it would be better for Owen to grow up without a father than one who he would resent or get to know and then lose because I was just one of his girlfriends.”
“That’s understandable,” Mom said, though I got the impression that she disagreed. “But now that he’s here…”
“Now that he’s here, I don’t know. Over the years, I felt like I might have made the wrong decision. I thought I made it to protect Owen, but the more I think about it, I think I was just protecting myself. And now he’s here, he’s working at my school, he wants to see me and spend time with me again. And eventually he’s going to find out that I have a child and put two and two together.”
“Mallory,” Mom said, her voice calm and light. She was trying not to sound like she was telling me what to do, but she was clearly tapping into a mother voice I recognized. It had come out of my own mouth when I tried to teach Owen something. “How do you feel about Graham?”
“I think he’s going to be upset,” I started.
“No, honey. Not how you think he’s going to feel. How do youfeelabout him?”
“I… He’s a good man,” I stammered. “And I still have feelings for him. I think he might have feelings for me too, but it’s been so long. I wasn’t sure what a relationship would have looked like even if we had been able to keep it up then. I have no idea what it would look like now. Not with us both living here and him being famous and Owen being his kid that he doesn’t even know about.”
