“You okay, Mom?”Liam asked, watching me and shovelingpancakes into his mouth.
I tried to hide it, I really did.
I knew with how closely he was watching me, I’d failed athiding it.
“Can we talk about something important?”I asked.
He swallowed.“Sure.”
Was this right, what I was going to do?
Or was this about me and finding my way back to Darius,using my son as an excuse to do it?
No, it wasn’t about me.
This was right.
He should know.
“You’ve never asked…about your dad.”
He squirmed in his seat and looked out the window, plate ofpancakes forgotten.
He was a growing boy.I’d given him three large, fluffybuttermilk pancakes and four strips of bacon.Grown men would have troubleputting away that much food.He’d score through all that, no problem.
“Liam?”
He looked back at me.
“No,” he confirmed he’d never asked.
“Do you want to know?”
“Not if it hurts you.”
Oh God.
My son.
I felt tears hit my eyes.“I loved him very much.I stilllove him very much.”
“Mom—”
“You need to know that.He loved me very much too.”
And he loves you very much too, I could not say,because he’d ask a question to which he was entitled to an answer, that beingif he did, why he wasn’t around.
And I didn’t have that answer.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” Liam told me.
“I need you to know that.”
“Okay,” he said hurriedly.“I know.”
“He lost his dad.”
Liam straightened, his attention perking up.“He did?Like,his dad died?”
