Telling Alice {ManxMan} | MPreg

Chapter 05

Chapter Five:

At one point he was pretty sure he'd been searching for a simple maroon colored piece to fit into the side of the jigsaw puzzle sitting before him but now it felt like he was searching it for the missing piece of his life puzzle. The puzzle on the table was just an awkwardly well timed metaphor for his current problem as he sat across from his mother in the living room of the house he'd grown up in. The house were he remembered so many wonderful things from growing up, even if his blood was still permanently soaked into the floor of an upstairs room now used for storage.

"Eshe?" He lifted his eyes to his mother's, smiling at the how there eyes were the exact same shade of sandstone. His mother, Olivia Akins, arched an eyebrow at him a familiar look of concern and what some may consider smugness in her eyes.. It was her silent way of telling him she knew something was bothering him, it was a look that usually made him spill his guts to her but it only made him more unsure this time. "Tell me what's eating you dear."

"How do you do it? I know they all say it's hard and that there's no way to be the perfect parent right out the gates but Alice is nine now, she'll be ten next month." Eshe huffed turning his head to look around the living room his eyes landing on his high school graduation picture displayed proudly on a coffee table under the window in the corner. In it his mother arms were looped around his neck as he bent down slightly to hug her back. "I just feel like I should know better by now, I should be making the right decisions by now, I should be-"

"Eshe." His mother's stern voice cut through his rant, drawing his gaze back to her, she shook her head at him letting out a little laugh as she sat back in her chair. "There is no mother out there who doesn't think 'I should have' at least three times a week, if not more. But being a mother is about the 'I am so I do' moments not the what if nonsense."

"Yeah, okay, 'I am so I do' what? What am I supposed to do, mom?"

"That depends on the situation to be honest with you Eshe, but the simpliest answer is support, I am a mother so I do support my child, as simple as it sounds and as easy as its not that's the bottom line of being a mother." She smiled at him for a moment before sitting forward and reaching a hand out to him causing Eshe to lean forward so she could reach him more easily. He sighed as his mother detangled a curl that had wrapped itself around another and placed both back neatly behind his ear before patting him on the head. "Tell me what happened Eshe."

"I, ugh, I guess I just lied. I lied to basically everyone, especially you and Alice." He paused and looked his mother in the eyes, searching for any signs that she would be angry but found none. "Her father, he was, well, I knew him. I knew him more than I said I did, he was more than just some random encounter."

Eshe sighed propping his elbows on his knees, dropping his face into his hands as he thought of what to say next. It was the first time he'd really come clean to anyone about this. He'd known it wouldn't be easy to unearth a ten year lie, to bring it to everyone and ask for forgiveness, but it was something he had to do. It had been three days since he'd talked to Lauren and the guilt was eating him alive. He'd tried to ignore it, telling himself that he'd been just fine for ten years and that it should make no difference now. But it did.

"Her father, he was everything to me and I reduced him to something so meaningless as a one night stand because I was scared. I tried, I thought, I wanted to make myself believe that I was just, just doing it to protect myself and everyone else, ya know?" Eshe stuttered through his thoughts pausing momentarily to let his mother insert any comments but she said nothing and he couldn't bring himself to look up from his hands so he simply continued. "But I was just scared, he kept every promise he ever made and I guess I always just figured one day it would turn out to be to good to be true cause, I mean no ones really like that, but he was and that's just terrifying."

Olivia shifted on the couch, finally drawing Eshe to bring his face out of his hands to look at her. She smiled at him as he searched her eyes for any signs of distress or annoyance, anything to tell him how mad she was with him at that very moment, but still there was nothing but concern. She nodded at him to continue, this time he was able to without looking away from her.

"He had made me this promise, one that I had made sure he didn't keep but when I found out I was pregnant, I knew there was no way I could convince him not to keep his promise so I just left. Told him things were over and left, I didn't even give him a real reason, I just told him I was done with him. Now Alice wants to know more about him and I don't know what to do."

"Can you find him?" Eshe nodded, he had half expected her to say this, however he had hoped she wouldn't. She leveled a knowing look at him before finally returning her gaze to the puzzle on the coffee table before them. "Eshe, I am your mother so I do support you. I will support you through everything and I mean everything. You've got to do the same for Alice."

"What if he doesn't want her, or more likely what if wants to meet her? I don't know what I would do if he got involved in her life, I was so awful to just leave him like that and to hide her from him. What if he hates me now? What if he wants nothing to do with me? What if he tries to take her from me? What if he-"

"Eshe!" His mother's hand grasped his shoulder, shaking him as he forced himself to take deep breaths fighting the incoming panic attack as the what-ifs slowly left his mind. "No one said this would be easy, but you have to be strong for Alice, okay? I'll be strong for you, you be strong for Alice."

He nodded at his mothers words, getting up from his seat to sit next to her. She wrapped an arm around him patting his head as she continued with her puzzle. Eshe watched his mother's hand picking up pieces putting them in there place, some without hesitation others needing to be turned about before they would fit. She picked up a few pieces that just didn't go where she tried to put them but she never got irritated, she simply set the piece aside until she could find where it belonged.

He watched her, never once making a move to help with the puzzle just analyzing in the back of his mind, and she let him.