Finding Family

Faye: Telling Mick

As 1 year old boys go, Benjamin is lovely. He's relatively well behaved and, where the natural baby developments were concerned, was progressing at a normal pace. Since his birth I'd been largely distracted from my life by looking after him, and doing all those motherly things - like toddler-proofing my house. His day-to-day life felt a million times more important than mine, I guess because everything to him was a discovery. I did feel guilty that I'd not thought of Evalynn so often since that first month of Benjamin's life, but he was progressing so quickly I wanted to remember and treasure every second of it; something I couldn't do with Evalynn and couldn't have done even if I had of kept her. "You did what was best for her." I told myself as I welled up with tears again at the thought of her. She'd possibly never know how much I wished she could meet her baby brother, but I'd make sure that he knew about her.
In fact I'd been so wrapped up with all things Benjamin that I'd almost forgotten to send her Birthday gift, something that made me even more guilty about the whole thing. I'd never forgotten her birthday before, I'd promised me and her I never would, that I'd always use it to think about her just for a while (admittedly last year had been tricky to do, but I'd managed late in the night). Today is her birthday, wherever she is, meaning its been almost nine years since I'd last seen her. Nine years since I'd been able to hold or kiss my little baby girl. Despair set in as I realised I wouldn't even recognise her now, last time I'd seen her she'd been so young, so cute and innocent, she was probably completely different now. She would even be different by now from those toddler pictures I'd been sent before her foster parents had cut communication with me. It'd been so long and I'd scarcely contacted her besides her birthday and Christmas presents; she might hate me for giving up on her by now.

I'd concluded that tonight was the night, that once Benjamin was in bed I was going to do the one thing I'd been too scared to do. I couldn't live the lie any longer. I couldn't keep the truth from Mick forever, especially not if I one day wanted to find her, so as my annual birthday promise to her I was going to tell him about Evalynn. Of course I was scared, I'd never told anyone who didn't know me at the time about the baby and, outside the rest of Steps who would have found out anyway, my parents and sister were the only other people to know what happened to Evalynn. But I wasn't comfortable lying to my husband about her any longer. I couldn't go on, in a way, half pretending that she was dead like I was pretty sure Mick thought. It wasn't fair on me, and it certainly wasn't fair on her (even if at this point I had to face the fact that we didn't know each other). I tried not to shudder as I considered the thought about her dieing, I couldn't even imagine the idea of never being able to see Evalynn again. When I did I felt so insanely guilty, even though it wouldn't really be my fault. I pushed my nerves away, now wasn't the time for thinking about Evalynn like that (as if there ever was). For now I had to just focus on Benjamin and figure out how best to tell Mick.

I wasn't going to go back on my latest promise to Evalynn. She deserved for the man who would technically be her step-father to know about her. Them and Benjamin all deserved that much, the honesty most of all.

#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*

I worked through mine and Benjamin's normal routine that evening, trying to distract myself from imagining every way this conversation might go. No matter which of us delt with Benjamin of an evening we always followed virtually the same routine. First the endless battle of trying to get Benjamin to actually eat his food, despite being mundane and taking forever it's more fun than it sounds. Then comes bath time. It's the hardest of all the evening tasks because he doesn't seem to like the idea of getting in the water. Then again, once he's in he doesn't want to get back out. Next up, once he's in his pjs, we play with his toy cars or bears for a while before he goes to bed. It's only to make sure his hair dries off a bit before I take him up to bed, but he loves it anyway. Sometimes, when one of us is feeling down or sleepy, we would just have cuddles instead, which we did tonight, him snuggled against me all warm and sleepy. Now I was sat beside him on his little bed reading him a bedtime story. Tonight's choice of book was "Fox makes Friends", which is probably my favourite of all the little kiddie books in the house and is about a fox cub who thinks he can literally make a friend out of things like pumpkins and sticks.
When I finished the book I placed it back onto the book shelf, and turned back to Benjamin, tucking him tightly into the bed covers.
"Good night my baby." I whispered, and kissed his forehead. He was already asleep, so I left it at that and snuck back down stairs to avoid waking him.