“Did you have a good day today, Ev?” I asked her.
“It was the best, Mum! The best!”
And in the end, that’s what matters, right?
Chapter 21
We’d collapsed down onto the couch to have a quiet afternoon after having a lunch of sandwiches. I’d ostensibly been doing some book ordering on my tablet as Evie watched cartoons and meticulously coloured in some mindfulness patterns I’d printed off for her. There was something about filling in all the little pockets of the complex composition that seemed to settle her right down.
But all the while, my mind was racing. Ben, Jasper, Logan and Thing 1 and Thing 2 (temporary names for the mysterious other brothers). Sophie might’ve joked about it, them becoming my mates, bringing me into their pack but…
It was all too little, too late, wasn’t it? I admit, in the early days of my pregnancy I’d fantasised about just that, about seeing this wall of men who were ready to tear the world down to protect me and my baby.
But they hadn’t appeared, they hadn’t been there.
When I was having to sit by the door of the lecture theatre so I could get out the door and down the hall to the loos in time to vomit. When I had to prop my eyes up with toothpicks to keep them open and finish my assignments, but mostly, when I went to antenatal appointments and was surrounded by mums and dads, or two mums. All those times I’d wanted, needed, someone to hold my hand, to feel like they were there with me through the whole process, just as lost by it all, but by my side.
Sophie had tried. God, how she’d tried. It got to the point where Carmen and I discussed the way her daughter was fusing her life with mine because of the pregnancy. Taylor was seeing her less and less and she was having to sit up late at night to complete work she put off for me. We’d both agreed that I needed to put up some healthy boundaries if our friendship was to continue.
Which had left me to stand on my own two feet.
Even when I’d lived with Sophie and Carmen at their house, I’d forced myself to become independent. If I was going to be a single mother, I needed to learn how to operate as one and so, I had. I’d found reserves of strength I’d never imagined I had and, contrary to my parents’ proclamations, having Evie didn’t ruin my life, she made it. I became more decisive, more resilient and one hundred times tougher, because I had to be, for her. But as I watched her colouring-in diligently beside me right now, it was hard not to see Ben and his pack as a threat to that.
Then Evie turned to me and asked me the question I’d been dreading.
“Mum…”
I looked up from my tablet.
“Yes, darling.”
“Why doesn’t Dad live with us?”
This was coming, this was always coming, I told myself.
“Dad lives in a town called Campbelltown. It’s on the way to—”
“But why does he live there and we live here?” Her brows creased as she considered the issue. “Why wasn’t he…?”
God, no. Not this question, I thought furiously, having always thanked my lucky stars I’d avoided it until now.
“Why aren’t you married like all the other mums and dads at school? Like, not all of them. Patricia, my friend, her dad left her mum for another lady, but…” She blinked, then stared up at me owlishly. “Is that what happened? Did Dad like someone else?”
Her voice tapered off at that, getting smaller and smaller, and I set my device down.
“No, but I think what happened was Patricia’s mum and dad met first, fell in love and then had her. They were together and raised Patricia as a family until something broke that up. Your dad and I… We were never a family. You remember how I told you about how babies are made?”
Carmen had pushed for a basic, medical understanding of the process, abhorring the whole stork thing. Nothing about sex per se, but Evie knew the correct terms for the reproductive parts of a woman’s body.
Evie nodded.
“Well, usually that’s something that happens when two betas or an omega and a pack of alphas are ready to have a child, but sometimes…” My fingers dug into the plush pile of the couch. “Sometimes people have a baby by accident. They weren’t meaning to become mums or dads. I didn’t know your dad very well and when I worked out I was pregnant with you, I had no way to tell him.”
Lies, freaking lies, but the truth was no good to a nine year old.
“Oh.” She frowned for a second, staring at the carpet, before a broad smile spread across her face. “But now you’ve found him, he can come and live here! It was so lucky that we went to the Crowe Corp that day. You might never have found Dad!”
Wasn’t it just? Which reminded me, I had a missed call from Crowe Corp I needed to follow up on.