“It was frightening, but I wasn’t hurt. Aris arrived just in time. He took care of me.”
Tia’s eyes narrowed. “When did this happen?”
“In June,” Dede answered. “Sweetheart, by the time I came to the estate in August, I’d been in Greece for several weeks. After Aris helped me, we began a… relationship.”
“She’s the woman you were spending time with last summer,” my son stated.
“Yes, this is correct,” I confirmed.
“Mom, you followed me to Greece, even after I told you not to!”
“I couldn’t stay home while you were there without a passport or money. Trust me, I’ve learned my lesson.” She gestured to her stomach.
“I knew something was off at that breakfast,” Chrysanthos said, snapping his fingers. “The way you two looked at each other. It was obvious there was history.”
Dede nodded. “And as soon as we found out who you were to each other, we ended our relationship, but when I came home, I discovered I was pregnant.” Dede squeezed my hand before addressing her daughter. “I’m very sorry, Tia. I never meant to hurt you.”
Chrysanthos snorted. “All those lectures about safe sex were for show? Or did those rules not apply to you, Father?”
Before I could respond, Tia muttered, “You didn’t learn anything from them either.” Then, realizing what she’d revealed, she clapped her hand over her mouth.
I bit back a smirk.
“When are you marrying her?” Chrysanthos demanded, suddenly serious. “I expect you to do right by Mom.”
“We will marry as soon as Dede agrees to this, yes.”
Tia abruptly stood. “I’m going to bed,” she announced quietly.
“Tia, sit down.” Dede’s voice was quiet but carried authority. “I need to address something you said earlier.”
“Mom, I don’t want to—”
“Sit. Down.”
Tia sat. Reluctantly, arms still crossed, her posture rigid.
Chrysanthos’s arm came around Tia’s shoulders as he shifted closer on the sofa.
“You know about my childhood. About how I was bounced around foster care after my father left and how I didn’t have any family until your grandmother took me in.”
Tia nodded.
“When I was sixteen, I saw my father at a store.”
My hands, which had been resting on my knees, went still. She had never told me this.
“I followed him,” Dede said. Her gaze stayed fixed on Tia. “I followed him to a house in the suburbs. Through a window, I watched him playing with his new children. His wife was setting the table for dinner. They were laughing.” Her voice dropped. “He looked happy. I realized that day that I’d been replaceable to him. He’d found better children and didn’t love me anymore. He hadn’t failed at being a parent. He’d just failed at being mine.”
Tia’s hand moved to cover her mouth.
The image of Dede at sixteen—already carrying the accumulated weight of eight years in the system—standing outside a window and watching her father love other children presented itself with excruciating clarity.
She hadn’t been raised to fear love. She’d been trained, systematically and repeatedly, to expect its withdrawal.
Dede continued, quieter now. “I left. Went back to my foster placement and got into a fight that night bad enough to land me in juvenile detention for a month.” She looked down at her hands. “I was so angry. Not at the other kid. At every year I’d spent waiting for a man who never planned on coming back.”
“Mom…”
