Another stab of guilt.
“What about him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You don’t need to know him, buddy. You’re safe with me.”
“The man on the floor is my daddy? You said I don’t have a daddy.”
“I-I,” I stutter, unable to think fast and come up with a genius explanation as to why I lied to my kid about his father. Two-year-olds don’t understand terms like ex-manwhore. They only understand what’s being presented in front of them.
I sit Otis up on my lap and hold him in place. “Let me tell you a little story, baby. Some people are bad and do things that aremean. But not everybody is like that.” I force him a smile for the sake of the story. “Your daddy was that man with the bad leg. He’s good.”
“If he’s good, where is he?”
“He’s…recovering. He has a bad leg. But he’s okay. And so are his friends.”
Another lie, Carmen.
“Why did you put that knife in the man’s belly, Mommy? Is that bad?”
I pout, in agreement with my son. Yes, bad. Very bad.
So bad that the O’Neills could snap a photo and get me arrested if they wanted to.
They wouldn’t want to—it would risk them being involved in police drama.
“Yes, it is bad. You should never do that to a person.”
“But why did you?”
Because Mommy was pissed.
Because Mommy was so angry that she allowed the emotion to take control of her.
Because Mommy is a hypocrite and does the exact opposite of what she teaches her son to not do.
“Mommy would not do that unless she really needed to,” I explain. “The bad man was going to hurt you, the same way he hurt Daddy. And because Mommy loves you very much, she had no other choice.”
He looks straight through me. This is way too complicated for him to understand, but in time, when his brain is more developed, he will begin to.
And that’s why I need to make sure I keep repeating myself, to get through to him. He needs to make sense of this. He needs to know that he will never be going through the same thing again.
He cuddles up into my lap. Endorphins rush through me as I comb a hand through his locks of blond hair, but the fuzzy feeling disappears as soon as I return my attention to that damned box of toy soldiers.
A cushion is still on the floor from when he and Carter were play-fighting. It terrified me then, to see him bonding with my son.
For a few minutes, I got a glimpse into what it might’ve been like to have Carter take up the role as daddy.
He would be a nice addition to the family.
All three of them would be.
But there comes a point where I must stop myself.
Nobody else deserves to get hurt.
Careful not to wake Otis, I drag myself up from the couch and head back into the kitchen. I pour the two mugs of lemon tea down the sink before I do something stupid and gulp the fly-invested concoction down, just to feel close to Carter again.
