Chapter 22
Dried leaves covered the shaded boardwalk as Ty walked alongside the man she’d worked very hard to forgive over the years. This particular trail circled around the large park before weaving through a wooded area alongside the river.
She and Eric had made it about halfway around the loop, where a fork in the trail would present two choices: stay on the boardwalk path and eventually circle back around to the playground or take the trail leading through the dense woods that would wind back and forth over the river and, eventually, lead bikers to the peaks of Haven Hills.
So far, she and Eric’s conversation had been more of a catching up type of thing. One between long lost friends. Eric had told her about what he’d been doing over the last few years—working with his parents as of late and, before that, doing everything he could toavoidworking for his parents. She gave him a brief update in return, careful not to give too many personal details along the way; in her mind, Eric didn’t deserve to hear them.
“Well,” Eric said, his steps slowing as the fork came into view. “Should we venture into the woods?” He pointed to the trail heading into the brush.
Ty shook her head. “That leads all the way back to the inn. People usually only take it on bike or horseback.”
“Ah,” Eric said. “Horseback would be fun. Has Lucas ever ridden a horse?”
Ty bristled, the wordsit’s none of your businessbalancing on the tip of her tongue. She glanced over, expecting to see an air of judgement on Eric’s face. Was he waiting to critique her parenting depending on the answer? When she sensed that he wasn’t, she gave him an honest reply.
“He took a Little Broncos class at The Homestead a few weeks ago.” A vision of Memphis came to mind. That class sure had bonded the two of them. Ty wasn’t sure she’d have ever gotten him on a horse at his age if it weren’t for Memphis.
“That sounds awesome,” Eric said. “Did he like it? Do you have pictures?”
Ty stopped walking, the idea of sharing photos from her phone causing a bout of nausea to roll through her. Yet for a moment, she also considered how wonderful it would be to share a moment of pride and adoration with Lucas’s actual father. These were thoughts Ty didnotwant to entertain. She gave him a leery look and sighed. “Eric…”
His lips formed a hard line. “What? It’s too soon to ask to see even a photo of him? Good gracious, Ty.” He shook his head and rested a hand on the weathered, wooden rail. “I don’t know what you expect from me right now.”
Ty’s eyes widened in shock.“Expect?”She coughed out a hard laugh. “I don’texpectanything from you. We’ve been doing life without you this whole time. And before you try to make yourself a part of Lucas’s life, I need to have a clear picture of what that looks like.”
“I don’t know what it would look like,” Eric admitted, dropping his hand and rubbing his palm over his khaki slacks. He straightened his posture, lifting his dimpled chin in the process. “I just know that ever since we got married, I felt this pressure to turn into my dad. Carry the same weight, take over the same job, buy a big home and fill it with kids. When I found out you were expecting—only a few months into our marriage, no less—the weight became unbearable.” He shrugged. “I felt like…if I stayed, I’d suffocate.”
Ty walked ahead, her eyes drifting aimlessly over the creaky wood slats as the sun streamed through the near bare branches overhead. This wasn’t exactly new information, but she guessed he was getting to that part.
“I just recently started to think I should go back and take over for my father when he retired, when suddenly he had the heart attack. I was really…shook,” he said, eyes cast down at his palm where he rubbed a hand over it. He glanced at her, his pace slowing. “It just made me think of everything that he’d built in his life. Of all that he had to show for himself if, heaven forbid, hedidn’tpull through.
“I guess it made me realize that pursuing life as I had been—selfishly, mainly,—wasn’t the most admirable thing. And leaving you guys behind like I did…” He shook his head and stared straight in front of them. “I can’t believe I really did that. You’re right that I shouldn’t expect to just sweep into Lucas’s life without a plan. If I meet him, I should commit to keeping up on his life. Calling him, seeing him regularly, that type of thing. Is that what you have in mind?”
Ty nodded as she considered that. “Yes. I guess. I just…can’t risk him meeting you and thinking that you were actually going to be a part of his life after all this time, only to have you decide it’s not what you wanted and go back to ignoring his existence.”
Eric pushed out a heavy sigh and raked a hand through his ashy blond hair. “I deserved that,” he said with a nod. “That’s fair. I can do that. I can come up with a plan. Put it on paper. Whatever it takes. I just want a second shot at life with you guys.”
Ty tripped over a swollen slat of wood at his words.You guys?Surely he wasn’t trying to getherback into his life as well.
Eric reached for her hand. “You okay?”
Ty had already regained her footing. “I’m fine, thanks.” She spotted a bench beyond a break in the trail, and figured it might be a good spot for them to finish up their conversation. She dreaded knowing exactly what Eric had in mind, especially if he was somehow hoping for a second chance with her, but the sooner she knew his intentions, the sooner they could move forward.
“Mind if we head over to that bench for a bit?” she asked with a point in that direction.
“No, that’s a great idea.”
The faint sounds of laughter and squeaking swing sets reminded Ty of the countless times she’d brought Lucas to this park.
“You know,” she said once they were seated on opposite ends of the bench. “Parenting is…it’s probably, in some ways, heavier than the weight that you imagined when we got the due date. But each day, each hour that you put into your child, you develop the strength it takes to carry it. And if your heart is in the right place—if you allow yourself to see the gift of this precious experience—you see it as not a great sacrifice, but a joy. A privilege.”
She turned on the bench to face him. “But you do make sacrifices, of course. When Lucas was born, I was blown away by how much I loved him. It was crazy. I was sad you weren’t there, but I was determined to love him for the both of us if you never came back.
“It wasn’t until I brought him home that I realized what I was in for. Just how…vulnerable I’d become. Lucas was only five or six days old at the time, and he was having a hard time getting comfortable. Normally, I could hold him with a bit of pressure on his tummy until it got better, but this time it didn’t work. He cried and fussed and screamed and I couldn’t get him to stop no matter what I did.”
The memory replayed in her mind. “I remember worrying that something could be horribly wrong. Like, deathly wrong. I’d never been more terrified in my life. I realized that at any moment, anything could happen to this tiny, precious person…and I might not be able to save him. A disease, an accident, whatever.
“He was fine, of course. Just dealing with a bout of colic. But the truth is, if therehadbeen something wrong, and if it took the heart from my very own body to fix him, it would have been all his.”
