“My mum organized it. Plus, I wasn’t really in the best frame of mind to be spending hours in IKEA . . .” His sentence peters off, and he leans back again.
The silence returns, only this time the air feels heavier. We’ve veered into territory I’m not familiar with because I left. I don’t know the person Hendricks became after that day. Over the years, I wondered. I thought about him more than I didn’t, likely at some point every day.
I’d think about him with a kid, a girlfriend, as a husband. Maybe another kid, a couple of dogs . . . I’d think about him in the life I always imagined for myself. The one I’d go to in the depths of the night or the height of the day, dreaming about what could be. Lamenting what wasn’t.
He doesn’t live the reality I thought he would. Even with everything he has and all the resources at his disposal, it’s vastly different. Smaller, almost. Calmer.Even without him saying so, I know his world revolves around Max, and I wouldn’t expect anything different.
“What happened?” I ask when the silence becomes too much for my brain to cope. “Max never mentions his mother. He talks about you, Miles, your mum, Clementine,Birgitta—” Even though I made peace with her being the nanny, I still choke over her name.
Hendricks doesn’t notice. Shreds of the beer label pile on the floor where he’s peeled it off and dropped.
“He never sees her. He has no contact with her, and since he was eighteen months old, he’s only met her a handful of times. I doubt he’d recognize her.”
My mouth opens and closes and opens again. His sadness is tangible, wrapping around the two of us like a weighted blanket. It’s truly awful.
“I . . .”
“Yes. It’s hard to imagine a woman deserting her baby like that. But motherhood wasn’t for her, just the payoff from me.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have sole custody of Max, and in return, she receives a very generous monthly stipend—” He lets out one bitter huff.
I gasp. “You pay her for a child she doesn’t look after?”
“There’s no alternative. She knows I can afford it, and I’d pay a thousand times over if it meant I’d keep Max with me.”
“Oh God, Hen, that must have been awful. Who does that?”
There’s so much anguish in his next sentence, I feel my heart break. “I tried, Stor. I tried to make it work, butshe wasn’t interested in anything more than money?—”
I believe every word. It’s one of the reasons I left so abruptly. I know he would have moved heaven and earth to raise his child with two parents.
I think back to what I was doing while he was being a single parent—surfing, traveling around Australia, drinking—all the things someone in their early twenties is supposed to do.
“What was Max like when he was little?” I ask, more to add levity to the mood, though I can’t deny I’m not curious. But missing out on the last six years comes with a heavy amount of guilt.
A smile grows on Hendricks’s face, one I’ve not seen for years. Warm, broad, contagious.
“So cute. Whip smart, and sassy. Walked before he was one, obsessed with horses. When he was teething, the only way to stop him crying was to get him out to the stables. Had everyone wrapped around his finger, still does . . .” He leans back, chuckling.
“I can imagine. He’s the same at school.”
“Yes.” He huffs, amused. “That’s what happens when you grow up with five adults and a nanny who all answer to your beck and call.”
Leaning in, I whisper, “Don’t tell him this, but he’s my favorite.”
Hendricks turns his head. It’s the closest I’ve been to him since the night we almost kissed over a week ago, and then it was dark. I can see every detail in his face—his blue eyes delicately ringed in navy, the slight bump across the bridge of his nose, the dip in his top lip usually hidden by his beard now quivering in amusement.
“I think he knows.”
“Impossible, I’m very discreet.” I laugh. “But either way, he’s amazing. Though every so often he gets a look Iknowcame from Miles.”
“You mean this one?” Hendricks’s brows draw down and his mouth pulls into a pout. It’s uncanny.
I shove him playfully. “Stop. You’re giving me the creeps.”
He laughs loudly before it fades away, and he’s quiet again. “It was so fucking hard sometimes. I don’t know how I got through it.”
