“You decided his comfort mattered more than my consent.”
“Yes.”
His voice cracked.
“I was wrong.”
I wanted him to defend himself.
Inside were two bundles of letters.
It would have been easier to hate him if he had.
Eric opened the box.
Inside were two bundles of letters.
One carried my name.
The other carried his.
“Who are you to Nathan?”
Beneath them were documents leaving us joint ownership of Millie’s Diner.
I looked at him.
“Who are you to Nathan?”
Eric’s jaw tightened.
“His son.”
That hurt in a different place.
Nathan had panicked when she became pregnant.
Eric explained that Nathan had married years after leaving my mother.
Nathan had panicked when she became pregnant, left town, and returned months later claiming he wanted to help. By then, my mother wanted nothing from him.
He sent letters for years.
She returned them unopened.
Eric grew up in Nathan’s house but rarely saw tenderness from him.
His later attempts did not erase the first choice he made.
He had still left.
Eric grew up in Nathan’s house but rarely saw tenderness from him.
“He paid bills,” Eric said. “He attended school meetings. He never asked how I felt unless the answer affected my grades.”
“And you still protected him.”
Eric looked toward the window.
“Then you arrived with coffee, and he became someone I had wanted my entire life.”
“He had never trusted me with anything emotional before. When he told me about you, I thought he was finally treating me like his son.”
