When We Go Back Again (Mason Brothers Book #1)

Chapter 11

EDEN

“Now fall into the chair pose and hold for a second. Back up and down one final time.”

Carly called me this morning and asked if I wanted to join her at the park for yoga. I didn’t realize yoga was my thing, but after a half hour, I’m feeling great. I called Toni and asked her if she wanted to join us. She grumbled for a bit but then agreed to show up. The instructor is this sweet lady who is probably in her fifties. She could probably record bedtime stories for small children because her voice is so soothing and is part of the reason why I can feel my body relax even though I’m getting a good workout.

“Now stand up and bend down into downward facing dog. Don’t forget to breathe ladies!”

I close my eyes and focus on my posing, but Toni’s giggling next to me distracts me and I glare over at her. “Sorry! I’m way too immature for this.”

Carly starts laughing too and before I know it all three of us are laughing while trying to finish up our workout. We managed to contain our composure just enough to finish up. The other women that were in the class said their goodbyes, but we grab our water bottles and towel and sit back down on our mats in a circle.

“So how’s it going now that Nathan is back to school?” I ask Carly.

“Well, for the next month we will spend every day at the park and then I will cry when it gets too cold.” We look over at the three kids playing not far from us. Abram, Joseph, and Delilah were playing on the small playground that was perfect for little Delilah and the boys didn’t seem to mind her tagging along.

“Ugh,” I scrunch up my face, “what is there to do with kids once it gets cold?”

“Mostly listen to them fight while you cry in the corner with a glass of wine.”

“Oh, sounds great,” I replied dripping with sarcasm.

Toni does a little shimmy dance, “I’m just over here like woohoo childless for the win!”

Carly laughs, “Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mom and I hope to have at least one more, if not two, but they drive me nuts sometimes.”

“I always tried to remember that Joseph and I were lucky to have such a large home that had access to a lot of things that other people didn’t, but man when we couldn’t go anywhere, it got tiring real quickly.”

“Have you always stayed home with him?”

“For the most part. Every once in a while if there was a high-profile event at one of the hotels, my dad would tell Caleb that I needed to be put on the planning team. During those times we’d hire a temporary nanny or have one of our other house staff members watch him. Caleb didn’t trust a lot of people, so even when we did have nannies, they were never allowed to leave the house with Joseph. They had to stay at our place where they could be monitored on cameras.

Carly cringes, “That seems a bit controlling.”

“Caleb liked to have everything in a certain order.” I picked at my nails, nervous to share more about my past life. “He wasn’t really like that at first. The longer we were together he just changed. It progressively got worse, especially once I had Joseph. It was just easier to go along with it than try and push his boundaries.”

‘Is that why the two of you split?”

“Part of it.” I let out a long exhale. “I just had an epiphany after I learned everything about my mom and how she was forced out of my life. I realized I didn’t want that to happen to me. He had already pushed any friends out of our lives and it scared me that I could wake up one day and no longer have my son.”