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She smiled tightly at me and walked awkwardly past us to put Noah in his car seat. I looked at my mother, who was still giving my father and me the stink eye.
“All right,” I said, knowing full well that there was no way to avoid her anger or appease her while I was here. “I’ll call you both later.”
“Right,” my dad said. “Get home safe, son.”
“Yeah,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder and shaking him slightly. “Good luck.”
I left without much more pomp or circumstance, getting into the car and driving off with my little family. Marley was tense, naturally, and we were limited in what we could talk about with Noah there. It was quiet for a while in the car before Marley finally spoke.
“Um, is your mom well?” she asked.
“She’s a little frustrated with me for making a mistake while I was away,” I said.
“What mistake did you make, Daddy?” Noah asked.
“Just a little miscommunication,” I said. “Nanny got mad at me, but I’m gonna make it up to her, kiddo.”
“It’s important to say sorry when you make a mistake,” Noah said sagely.
“You are absolutely right,” I said. “But it’s also important to make the changes in your behavior first so people know you mean it.”
Noah’s attention wandered as he gazed out the window and kicked his feet—a typical wind-down for a conversation with a five-year-old. I looked over at Marley and saw that her expression was crinkled with worry.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Just wondering if we did something...wrong,” she said.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “We just did something a little antiquated. And...there was a factor I didn’t really think about, so we need to talk about that.”
“And what is that?”
I looked back at Noah and then at her again. “Could we talk about it later?”
“No,” she said, anxiety coming into her tone. “No, we cannot talk about it later. I feel like I’m about to freak out.”
“Easy, baby,” I said. “I’ll talk about it now, but I have to be careful of little ears, all right?”
She was silent, but I saw her almost imperceptible nod from the corner of my eye.
“Give me just a second,” I said.
I reached toward her feet and handed Noah his souvenir—a set of plastic trains. It seemed to take his interest pretty immediately, giving me a chance to talk through things with Marley.
“So, the thing we did that made you smell like me?” I began.
“Yes?” she said tensely.
“I didn’t think to disclose that it would be a permanent thing,” I said. “It was an enormous oversight on my part, and I should have told you. That’s what my mom was upset about, aside from the whole antiquated aspect of it.”
“The thing we did is permanent?” she asked.
I braced myself for the fallout of this conversation, not because I thought I was about to be nagged, but because it was a huge oversight, and a really violating one at that. Especially to Marley, who had already had her autonomy challenged and pushed in so many ways by so many people.
Shame started coiling through me, followed by guilt and self-loathing. It’d been a long time since I’d done something so impulsive and selfish. It was a regular problem when I was a teenager and the reason Travis and I became such good friends back then. I was reckless, impulsive, and sometimes violent. I’d gotten so laser-focused on my abiding love for Marley that I hadn’t thought through the implications of claiming her. I was only thinking about how euphoric I was to have a woman in my life who accepted me completely, in a way no other woman ever had.
“Yes,” I finally said.
I left room for silence, allowing her to process before I said anything or tried to make it okay. The delay was killing me, but I had no right to do anything but wait. I’d made a mistake, and there was no excusing it.
