The Fall Bride (TSBS-3) ON HOLD

Chapter Nineteen

They say that abandonment is a wound that never heals. I say only that an abandoned child never forgets.

― Mario Balotelli 

Ivan Dwayne

It was hard to let her go.

But knowing Janet these past few days, I knew if I bothered to come with her, she would call on her defiance streak and let me have it, right on my face.

So, I let her go, although my protective instinct screamed to follow her.

Over the days, my relationship with my son went far deeper than the one I had tried to establish with my wife. Physically, yeah, we rocked each other, although not doing the deed yet. But to go second base with her, I felt like whooping up my hands like a horny teenager.

"Daddy?"

Looking down, I shook off my sexual and worried thoughts regarding Janet and peered into the book Caden was showing off. As if I hadn't got that for him.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"Do you know animals and plants are in danger because of us?"

I bought him one of the thickest encyclopedias for him, and he managed to get that out of it. "Even if I don't, you're going to tell me about it."

Nodding profoundly, he proceeded to list all the reasons human beings were bad for the nature and ocean, boosting off his newfound knowledge and chiding me as if he wasn't a human himself. Did an almost five-year-old need to worry about Global warming? Damn, he could just see Caden growing up to be an environmentalist. If this kid had no interest in business, then I better get another one from Janet.

She would kick my ass if she figured the thoughts in my head.

Since the day I realized Caden was in my life, the possibility of a family was growing more and more. And, I was man enough to admit, I could see myself with many more children in the future. Being the only child, I knew it wasn't at all something I should repeat with Caden's childhood.

But to make that vision of a family a reality, I had to persuade my wife to stay as my wife and make her believe that we could be something together. How could I do that when she's miles away, dealing with her own pain, all alone?

That question was enough to get me off my ass, call Mark, and head off to the new nursing facility in Philadelphia. By the time the afternoon rolled in, I stalked into the building, trying to think of what I would do if I saw Janet in there, crying her heart out to her grandma.

That thought came to a sudden stop. Because Joyce was alone in the room in a wheelchair, overlooking the wide garden at the back of the building.

Coming beside her, she was the one who spoke first. "I figured when you would be here."

"She didn't want me here." I looked down at her weary face, the slight hunch of her shoulders. "Where is she?"

"She's always been so stubborn." Joyce had a faraway look and cautioned me. "Like my son, she would rather suffer alone than share with someone else."

Slowly, I squatted down before her and laid my hand on her knee. "Joyce, where is she?"

Her eyes met mine, and the tears in them stilled my blood. "I tried to be enough for her, but with how every one of them kept on leaving one by one, it's hard on her."

"She loves you more than you know." I squeezed her knee in assurance before pointedly staring. "But Joyce, I'm going to ask you one last time, where is my wife?"

Her hand trembled as she laid it upon my hand, and smiled with a wobble. "You promise you'll be there for her? Always?" Without hesitance, I nodded. "She went to see my daughter, the one who had abandoned us both."