The Cowboy's Secret Son

She’d anticipated this question, considered so many different ways to answer it. Finally, she’d settled on the truth.

“I was scared.”

“Of me?”

“No, and yes.”

Nathan slipped his foot off the fence and turned toward her. “I wasn’t that bad, Grace.”

She wanted to say, “Yes, you really hurt me,” but that wasn’t what was important anymore. She didn’t shift to face him, not sure if she could get through the next few minutes if she had to look him in the eye and see anger and accusations there.

“I was hurt, yes, but that’s not why I made the choices I did.” She picked at a splinter on the fence, gathering her courage to delve into a part of her life steeped in a lot of pain. “I had lost Evan once, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it happening again.”

“Lost him?”

“When I told my parents I was pregnant, well, I’ve never seen them so mad. They were ashamed I was their daughter, and I know if I’d been of legal age, they would have kicked me out then. Instead, they packed us up in the middle of the night and left town.”

“You knew before you left Blue Falls? And you didn’t tell me then? God, Grace. What were you thinking?”

“That the father of my child didn’t want me, so he wouldn’t want a baby, either.” This time she didn’t bother keeping the bite out of her words.

Nathan didn’t respond, instead shifting his attention out across the pasture again. She didn’t say anything either, and the silence stretched for tense seconds.

“Everyone wondered where you went,” he finally said.

“I doubt everyone did.” She couldn’t help the bitter edge to her words, bits of the old hurt slipping out.

“I did.”

Those simple words were so unexpected that she looked at him before thinking. And for a moment, she was that young girl again looking into the striking green eyes of the boy she loved with all her heart. The one she’d thought might love her back when he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her.

It took more effort than it should, but she pulled her gaze away and refocused on the glint off a pond in the distance.

“We went to Maryland, where my grandparents lived, lots of other people who were as devout as my parents.” She hadn’t planned to tell him everything, especially not at first, but she found herself spilling the details of those days. “I…I basically became a prisoner in my own home. I was forced to finish school homebound. My mother had nothing to do with it though. My sister Sarah had to bring my lessons home from school, and I was on my own. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. My parents did not talk to me, but they constantly used me as an example to my younger brothers and sisters of what happens when one ‘descends into a life of sin.’”

Nathan made a sound of disgust, but Grace didn’t acknowledge it. She had to get through this story so she could file it away forever and never have to tell it again.

“I think after a while, I began to believe everything they said. I was sick, miserable…lonely.” And heartbroken.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“You’d made it clear you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“But Grace, a baby would have made a difference.”

She turned toward him. “Would it? Would you have ‘done the right thing’ and married me?”

“Yes.”

A sadness crept over Grace’s heart. “How would it have helped me to go from one home where I wasn’t wanted, just a duty to fulfill, to another?”

“Damn it, it wouldn’t have been like that.”

“Did you love me?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“I didn’t think so. Plus, my parents had done a pretty good brainwashing job on me. You were nothing more than a rutting bull in their eyes.”

“And you believed them?”

“You hadn’t given me any reason not to. And when you’re cut off from the world, you begin to believe whatever you’re told.”

“God, Grace.” He paced a couple of steps away, ran his hand over his face.

She tried not to remember what that hand had felt like on her body, how her entire being had lit up like a million stars. She forced herself to remember how all those stars had gone black and cold the day after when he’d walked right by her as though she was a complete stranger. No expression, no eye contact, no recognition. She remembered stopping in the middle of the hallway, wondering if she’d simply dreamed it all. But a positive result on a home pregnancy test a few weeks later had convinced her their night together had been all too real.

“When it came time to have Evan, I had to deliver him at home just like my mother always had.” All twelve times. “It was a hard birth. I probably should have been in a hospital. By the time it was over, I was only about half conscious. My mother said it was best to give him up for adoption. I had no strength to fight her, and she made it sound like he would have a good home, a family who loved him. At the time, it sounded like the right thing to do. I didn’t want him growing up with my family.”

“You gave him away?”

Grace hated the horrified disbelief in his voice, how it echoed the feelings she’d had herself after she’d recovered from the birth.

“My parents had damaged enough of us. I thought it would give him a chance. But…” Grace’s voice broke, and it took her a few moments to bring her emotions back under control. “I thought I’d have the opportunity to say goodbye, but by the time I woke up he was gone. I never even got to hold him.”

“What? How is that possible?”

Grace squeezed her hands into fists at the memory, the betrayal. “There’s a law where newborns can be dropped off at hospitals or police stations, no questions asked. You just sign away the rights to the child, and my mother misrepresented him as hers. She just handed him over, turned her back and walked away from her first grandchild.”

She ventured a glance at Nathan, and he looked stunned to the point of numbness—a feeling with which she was intimately acquainted.

“I was so messed up, Nathan. They’d twisted my mind, and I had bad postpartum. There were points when I just wanted to die. And then on my eighteenth birthday, my parents told me to leave, that I was no longer their responsibility. I was basically dead to them. They forced me out the front door with literally nothing other than the clothes I was wearing. They kept the rest to give to my sisters.”

She hazarded a glance at Nathan. He looked like he wanted to punch something. “What did you do?”

“The first thing I did was walk to the nearest police station and told them my mother had stolen my baby. It was like the moment I was free of that house, all the brain fuzziness went away. I can’t explain it. While the police checked out my story, I engaged in what I like to call creative living.” She smiled a little at that, felt a well of pride at the memory of how she’d taken over her life. “I slept and ate at shelters, got a job at a restaurant, added some more clothes from a church clothing bank. And I applied for college. Being as poor as a person can be, I got a full ride.”

“So you had food and a place to live.”

She gripped the top of the fence. “And I got Evan back.”

Nathan exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath, afraid of where her story was heading. “He hadn’t been adopted? I thought newborns went quickly.”

“There’s a lot of paperwork in that. It takes time. A child has to thrive in a potential adoptive home for at least six months before they’ll allow an adoption to go through. It was so close, Nathan.” She fought tears at the memory. “The first six months were almost up when the potential mom was diagnosed with MS. I mean, I’m so sorry it happened to her, it’s horrible, but they canceled the adoption, and the six months had to start over. I got him back two months into that. I’d missed the first eight months of his life, but I had him back. I was able to finally hold my son.”

“Our son.”

She met Nathan’s eyes, wondering how he was processing all this information, this crazy story that was her life after him. “Yes, our son.”