Justin’s POV
I spent a large amount of Saturday evening in my office thinking. I tried to write, and I did do a little bit of that, but for the most part I was just trying to gather my thoughts about everything. Scooter had infuriated me, but he had also made me think.
He made me think about my last months with Selena. I sat in my office staring at a picture of Selena and I that had been taken shortly after we had found out we would be having a daughter; we looked so happy, so innocent. Neither of us were aware that the baby we had been looking forward to would end up changing everything, but in ways we could have never expected.
Though my mom and everyone else close to me continually reminded me that Carson was not Selena, I couldn’t help myself from allowing to ponder the what-ifs that haunted me. What if Carson died during childbirth? Or right after? How would I ever recover from losing the second love of my life? How would I raise this son? Or Sophie? Had I made the wrong decision?
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“Justin, I know this must be scary for you,” Carson whispered the night after she had finally told me the baby was mine. We had been together for less than twenty-four hours and I was already feeling withdrawn and disconnected as I thought about what could happen.
“I want you to know,” Carson sighed as she laid her hand on my chest, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can make it all go away and we can pretend like it never happened. It was a mistake, it wasn’t like we were trying to have a baby. We both said years ago that we didn’t want anymore kids. Sophie is enough for me.”
Since I had found out about Carson’s pregnancy a few weeks ago, I had this unrelenting fear that she was going to die. I knew it wasn’t a normal thing to associate pregnancy with death, but that’s how my mind correlated the two. Pregnancy was a death sentence.
As much as I wanted to express my fears to Carson, and let her know how I really wanted to handle the situation, I couldn’t.
“What do you want to do, babe? If you want this, I want this.”
“I want this.” She nodded. “I want to have this baby.”
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I was deep in a fantasy about how life would’ve been if Carson had ended the pregnancy months ago when I heard Carson yelling.
“Justin?” She yelled. She had been respecting my space all day long, but now it sounded like something was actually going on. “Justin, come out here please!”
I quickly dried the tears in my eyes and on my face before I walked down the hallway and into the living room off of the kitchen.
“You aren’t my mommy, are you?!” I heard Sophie ask Carson and I felt my steps speed up. When I finally saw them, Carson was standing in front of Sophie, who was sitting on the couch.
Carson’s POV
“Hey, what is going on?” Justin asked calmly as he sat down next to Sophie, who was getting ready to have some sort of panic attack as she slowly figured out a huge part of her life was based on a lie.
“I was watching TV and this guy was talking about your baby. He said that this was Carson’s first baby. He said I was from your marriage with Selena. Who is Selena? Who is my real mommy?”
“I’m going to let you two talk,” I tried to excuse myself from this conversation.
“Cee, stay.” Justin caught me. “Sit down.”
I did as he said and sat down next to Sophie, though she scooted closer to Justin.
“That news guy was right, Sophie,” Justin sighed. “I was married to a beautiful woman, Selena,”
“Is she my mommy?”
“Sophie, your life is super complicated and I don’t expect you to understand everything I tell you. You were in Selena’s stomach, just like that baby is in Carson. But, Selena died right after you were born. She is the mommy who brought you into this world, but Carson is the mommy who has been here to raise you.”
“Carson isn’t my mommy.” Sophie cried as she got up and ran out of the room.
Justin’s POV
“You should probably go talk to her,” Carson sighed as she tried to hide the tears in her own eyes.
“I’ll give her a little bit of time to cool down. I think we should talk about how we are going to handle this.”
“I don’t know what’s left to talk about. You just told her everything, and I’m glad you did. I think she deserved to know.”
“But she also deserves to know how you have been here for her. Just because she knows about Selena doesn’t mean she should stop calling you Mommy. You’ve been here for her since the day you met her. You are more of a mommy to her than Selena ever got to be, okay? So even if Sophie is super dramatic about this whole thing, don’t forget that you are her mommy.”
“What are you going to say to her?”
“I don’t know yet, but I think I’m going to let someone else be the first one to attempt to calm her down.” I said as I reached for my phone.
Mandy’s POV
I drove to Justin’s house as soon as I got the phone call. The moment we had all been dreading for years had finally come. Sophie had heard about Selena, and now she was upset.
I bypassed Justin and Carson as I went straight up the entryway stairs to Sophie’s room. I knocked and opened her door.
“Grandma? Why are you here?” She sat up on her bed as I joined her.
“I know you probably haven’t ever thought about this, but do you know who my kids are? Do you know how you and I are related?”
“Aunt Gracie is your daughter.”
“And Selena; she was my first daughter.”
“How did you let them lie to me? Why did you let me think that Carson was my mommy? Why didn’t you want me to know about my real mommy?”
“Sweetheart,” I sighed as I moved a couple of stray hairs out of her face, “You were only two hours old when Selena died, and by the time you were two years old, you were already calling Carson mommy. We couldn’t explain everything to a two-year-old. Or a three-year-old or even a four-year-old, right? You wouldn’t have understood.”
“I guess.” She shrugged. I knew she didn’t want me to be right, but she was realizing what a complicated situation this had become.
“Sophie, you are so lucky. Most people only get one mommy, but you got two awesome mommies. It’s pretty cool that you have two mommies, right? One who brought you into this world, and one who is raising you now.”
“I know this is a lot of information to take in right now, but you know where to find me. Even if you are in Australia and it’s two in the morning here, you can call me if you need to ask anything about Selena.”
Sophie nodded, and I handed her the picture I had been saving for her. It had been taken when Sophie was barely an hour old. Justin had taken the picture, capturing the intimate moment between the new mother and daughter as Selena laid a kiss on Sophie’s tiny forehead.
“She only knew you for a very short time, but she loved you very, very much. Don’t forget that.”
