“She kept my kid from me. I swore, Charlie, I swore that I would never be the absent parent to my own children that my parents were to me. She never let me get the chance to be his dad. What was I supposed to do?”
“Niall, this is insane. Nobody is going to think you are a deadbeat if you never even knew that you had a kid.” I heard a voice in the background and Charlie answering it. It was Brenna. He said that he was putting me on speaker. Since I was telling him, the news was going to get to her eventually, so I didn't care about her knowing.
“What's going on Niall?” she asked.
“I just found out that the woman I'm seeing hid the fact that I'm the father of her child for five years.”
“Oh my God, what?” I told the story again from the beginning, this time a lot calmer. Maybe that was just the effect that Brenna had on me or maybe I was actually calming down. I couldn't be as angry as I was yesterday for the rest of my life, even though yesterday it felt like I would be.
“That's awful Niall, I can't imagine going through something like that.”
“You're lucky you never have to. You're a woman, nobody can hide your own child from you.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Do you love her?”
“What?”
“Do you love her?” Charles repeated his wife’s question.
“What does that have to do with anything? She betrayed me in the worst way that a woman can betray a man.”
“If you love her then you have to forgive her.”
“Brenna, what the hell are you talking about?”
“If she's anything like I think she is, she isn't a vindictive woman. She didn't hide the child from you in order to punish you. She did what she thought she had to do. She was desperate. I know what it's like to be desperate. You cannot fault a woman for doing everything in her power to protect her child.”
I bit my lip thinking about it. “That was one way of looking at it.” Brenna and Charles had gone through their own share of drama. Besides his mother being firmly against the two of them getting together, Brenna had signed herself up for surrogacy services because she was running low on money and her mother was going through chemo. She knew desperate. Sometimes, it made you do things that other people had trouble empathizing with.
“I agree, Niall,” Charlie said. “I don't think it's fair for you to take this personally when she was doing what she thought she had to do to secure her child's future. I think your best course of action is talking to her.”
“I don't know,” I said.
“Think about it,” Brenna said. “If you are sure that you can go the rest of your life never seeing her or the boy again, then don't go to her. If you know that you're going to regret it, then go and see her.”
I got off the phone and drank some water. I had a lot to think about. I knew that I was angry at the phone for ringing and angry at Charlie for waking me up, but it felt like his phone call had come at just the right time. I went downstairs and shoveled some food down my throat. Going back up, I had a shower and ultimately started to feel human.
I knew my next stop, but I was hesitating. I had to talk to Eddy. I knew that I was going to regret it if I didn't. What happened after that though? Talking to her was one thing but what came after? I wasn't sure that I could forgive her. But live without her though? That answer was a hard no. Maybe understanding what she did would come with time, but I knew that I would miss her for the rest of my life if I walked away now. Once again, I had to go back. I kept going back to her, I didn't know why I thought I could stay away this time. I had to try one more time. This time, not just for her, but for our son.
32
Edwina
I stared at the screen of my laptop, the financial spreadsheets on display. This was it. This was the end. I had learned to budget living with Russell out of necessity. He pissed money away at the speed of light leaving me to fend for myself. Now, the skill was coming in handy for very sad reasons. I was budgeting the money that Niall had given me and trying to see how far I could make it stretch on its own, without any other contributions.
Unsurprisingly, the answer was not very far. I looked at our expenses. The thing that took most of our money was the estate. Money issues earlier on had led to us taking out another mortgage on the place and in hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. Was it better to be homeless but have food or have the roof over our heads but no food? We could save tremendously if we weren't paying for the house. Letting the bank take it and moving to some place more affordable sounded like a no brainer but I was hesitant.
The thought made me feel sick. I had a feeling that eventually, it would come to this but of course, I was dreading it. Anticipating it hadn’t made it hurt less when the time had finally come. As many terrible things that happened to me in the house, this place was my son's home. It was his by rights when he was old enough to receive his inheritance. I wanted him to have it because it was rightfully his but right now, things weren't looking good. If we gave up the estate, we could move into somewhere much cheaper, and our money could last us much longer. That would mean saying goodbye to the place that had been my son's home for his whole life.
I sighed. Riley would just have to forgive me. There was no way to keep the house and stay afloat at the same time. If I sold the place, I could pay off Russell's debts so we could finally be debt-free. That would be a huge weight off our shoulders and would allow us to live in peace for the first time since his death. We would have to move of course, probably finding a small flat somewhere. I would have to get a job but even with work, I doubted that I would be able to keep paying Prue in that state. I had always had help with Riley so that would be an adjustment, but Prue had always been at our side. I couldn't afford her salary but selling the estate, I could pay her a generous severance.
It all sounded so awful. I really wanted to have a fresh start, but I didn't like that it would come at the cost of losing everything that I knew and had become accustomed to. My life wasn't all bad, that was what I was coming to realize now that I was about to kiss it goodbye. Everything could have been far far worse. Belshire wasn't that awful of a place to live. It was remote and small, but it was peaceful and my son loved it here. Prue was likely my only real f
riend outside of Missy. I would miss her, but it couldn’t go on like this.