My chest tightens.
“The only one what?”
“The only one in class who doesn’t know.” His voice wobbles. “Everybody has a dad. Or they know about him. Or they have pictures. Some kids have two dads. But everybody knows.”
My heart shatters into a million pieces. “Oh, baby.”
“And Jack’s dad is dead, but he still knows who he was, and he has pictures, and his mom told him everything, so why am I the only one who can’t know?” His face crumples. “Why am I the only one?”
That does it.
He starts crying.
Guilt stabs between my ribs, hard.
My chair scrapes against the floor as I get up and go to him. “Oh, Noah.”
I crouch beside him and pull him into my arms. He comes immediately, all warm little limbs and heartbreak. He buries his face against my shoulder like he did when he was three and convinced thunder was personally out to get him.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, rubbing his back. “I’m so sorry.”
He cries harder for a minute, and I let him. There are moments in parenthood where the job is to explain, and moments where the job is simply to absorb impact. This is one of the second kind.
When his breathing starts to settle a little, I lean back enough to look at him.
“You are not the only one,” I say softly.
“It feels like I am.”
“I know.”
He sniffs miserably.
I wipe under his eyes with my thumbs. “Listen to me. There is a reason I haven’t told you everything yet. Not because I don’t want to. Not because I think you don’t deserve to know. You do. You absolutely do.”
“Then why?”
Because I was nineteen and stupid enough to believe one impossible night could stay in its box forever.
Because your father belongs to a world that should never touch yours.
Because if I say his name out loud, nothing in our life stays simple again.
Because you have his eyes.
Because you are all I have.
Those were all the words I could have said, but how would Noah understand any of it? Instead, I say, “Because some things are complicated, and I need you to trust me when I say I’m trying to do this the right way.”
He looks at me with those big dark eyes that wreck me every single time.
“When?”
“One day,” I say. “I promise you. One day I’ll tell you everything.”
He is quiet for a moment.
Then he asks, small and shaky, “Really?”
