TANGLED HEARTS
- VISITORS.
The room goes quiet. She’s waiting for him to say something, to acknowledge that he heard what she just said to him and he’s just sitting there, staring at her and trying to register the words that she just came out of her mouth while wondering if he’s suddenly developed a comprehension problem because there is no way that Gail can show up over two decades later to tell him that when she disappeared, she was carrying his child. Just the thought of it infuriates him, he doesn’t take kindly to people who try to unbalance his emotions and that’s exactly what Gail is attempting to do right now.
“Are you trying to take me for a ride, Gail?” his tone comes out harsher than anticipated and she almost jumps off her seat but she fights to keep it together. She expected this, he obviously wouldn’t welcome the idea at the first try but that doesn’t mean she should throw in the towel.
“I would never,” her voice is shaky but it does nothing to him, he’s not convinced. Every second that she spends in his office only adds to his boiling point.
“What is this, then? You disappear for twenty-five years and then one decide to show up and drop this bomb on me? What is this?”
“I wanted to find you and tell you about our child, Shane. I wanted to but I couldn’t,”
“Why not?”
“My father wanted nothing to do with you, you know this. You know he had no respect for you-”
“I’m well aware that your father despised me and I never asked him to. What I’m not understanding is your part in this, that’s what you should be explaining to me right now and stop going around in circles.”
Gail looks at the now grown Shane and she can’t help but acknowledge that she’s face to face with a stranger. The old Shane is gone and the man before her had no time for half stories, he makes her feel small, she feels like she’s overstepping by just breathing in the same direction as him. What happened to her soft spoken Shane? he never used to be this cold.
She looks at him, nods then starts talking “That same night when he beat you up, he ordered me to pack all my clothes and sent me to Bloemfontein to stay with my aunt, his sister. That’s where I finished high school and gave birth to our son. My father still believed that he could salvage the situation and still marry me off to a well off family when I turned nineteen. So he made sure that there was zero communication between us two. He threatened to harm you if I ever tried to contact you and my aunt helped him by keeping a very close eye on me. I couldn’t move without being watched, Shane. Everything I did was under serious scrutiny because they didn’t want to risk me reaching out to you.
The plan was that I would give birth and the child would be pinned on my aunt, he’d grow to be known as my cousin.
I met my now ex husband when I was close to turning twenty, by then our son was almost three and I couldn’t bring myself to leave him behind, not when I loved him so much and not when he reminded me of you, he was the last thing that I had as a reminder of what we once had. So I risked it and told the man that my father left somethings out, I told him about the baby in hopes that he would view me as damaged goods and cancel the entire arrangement but I was wrong.
As it turned out, he didn’t mind taking me in with a child. He was willing to marry me and take the baby I come with to raise as his own so he could have a complete family, as long as you never showed up. My own plan worked against me… So there was nothing else except to agree to the arrangement and marry him… While letting him raise our child, ”
” And out of nowhere, you decided to come find me so you can tell me all this? “Shane’s asks her, still not convinced because none of this makes sense to him. Yes he remembers the” we need to talk” message but it still doesn’t guarantee that what Gail is saying is the truth. He would hate to think that she’s trying to pin a child on him for financial gain because what else would this be for?
“I tried to move on, to focus on my new reality at the time and honestly, it worked out for a while. David was a good father and a fair husband, I suppose…considering that he never laid a hand on me, all his assaulting came in a form of words only, things I could easily hide from the public by putting on a happily married face. He had his faults but at the end of the day he was a family man, he was a husband and a father, but he couldn’t remain faithful to me, he never was… This went on and our son grew, he’s the main reason I stayed in that marriage. He had already been robbed of his real father, the least I could do was sacrifice my happiness so he could atleast still have a father figure in his life, plus David somehow grew to love him, in his own way. I waited for him to grow and be his own man and then I slowly started detaching myself from David. When my father died, I grew some courage to finally ask for a divorce, not that we still lived like a married couple, he was already shacking up with someone else so he didn’t give me trouble with the divorce proceedings.
Once that was done, I started picking my life up and fixing it from scratch. Over two decades had passed, Shane it wasn’t easy to adapt to the change but I made it work. I was willing to make it work up until I saw you at a distance one day… From there, the guilt crept back in and I couldn’t stop thinking about the time I robbed you and our son from knowing each other and building a bond. I tried to brush it off but the more time that passed, the more the guilt kept eating me up until I started being intentional about finding you and following you and that is how I am now sitting in front of you, ” she finishes narrating her story and her throat feels dry, she wants to ask for a glass of water but she’s scared to ask with how he is looking at her. She knew this wouldn’t be some movie like family reunion, she expected the worst but now that it’s happening, she feels scared and is starting to doubt that this was a good idea.
“For twenty-five years, you hid the fact that I have a son from me?”
“I didn’t plan on-” she starts but he cuts her off.
“You have been wherever you were for all these years and you expect me to just buy into this story that you’re selling me? Just like that?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you like this, Shane,”
“I don’t know that. In fact, I don’t know you. I only know the seventeen year old Gail, not the grown up version that has just dropped an unbelievable bomb on me. I don’t know anything about you and what you have been up to,”
“And I understand that, I really do. I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I don’t even expect you to listen to more stories coming from me. I can prove that he is indeed your son, we can have tests done, by your own doctor and I don’t even have to be involved in it, just… Please, don’t send me back without considering that I might be telling you the truth, he is your son… If the results come back stating otherwise, which I’m very sure they won’t then I will stay away…. And if they come back stating that you are indeed his father, I still won’t force you to be a father to him, it will be your choice but at least this time around, you will make a decision based on the facts that you have, it won’t be my father deciding for us both, please Shane, “she pleads.
Shane is at a loss for words. When he started his day, this isn’t how he imagined it would go. Hell, this isn’t how he imagined his year would go and now in the midst of him planning a proposal for the love of his life, his ex comes and says everything that she has just said? No… Things can’t happen like this.
He gets up and goes to open the door for her “You need to leave,”
Gail has to keep it together and preserve her dignity but she also can’t just go back to living life as she knows it now that she had opened this can of worms. She gets her handbag and gets up then she walks to where he is, her eyes are glassy from the tears that are threatening to escape and make a public appearance.
“It took a lot for me to come here today, Shane. It took a lot for me to reveal myself to you that day at the cemetery. I’m scared, for myself and our son. I’m scared because I don’t know what the future holds. I can’t and I won’t force you to acknowledge him or this situation but I will still plead and beg you to only decide on how to handle this only when you have the results, please. Our son is innocent, I’m the guilty one, rather punish me but don’t punish him, ”
” Does he know? ”
” Yes, I told him everything… He wants to know you but I told him we can’t just come into your life as we please, he is also willing to do the tests. In fact, that’s how he will also be able to acknowledge you as a father, his father.”
Shane doesn’t respond to this” I have to get going too, ”
” Shane…”
” Goodbye, Gail, ” he says with a strict tone and no room to argue so she nods and starts walking. Soon after this, he also gets out of there.
.
.
.
Something has changed, the mood in the house wasn’t like this when they left in the morning and she feels the sudden change as soon as she steps into Shane’s presence. He’s sitting on the couch outside, with a drink that doesn’t appear to have been touched and it looks like he’s a thousand miles away.
“Love?” Amerie gently pulls his attention back to the present and when he looks at her, he gives her a lazy smile.
“Baby, you’re back. How was your your day?”
“It was okay. You look like yours was rough,” she says and he chortles, if only she knew “You have no idea,”
This is enough to get her attention and she goes to sit next to him but he doesn’t allow her to sit, he pulls her to his lap instead and she doesn’t protest. She knows he loves having her this close, she loves it too but she can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong. Could it be his aunt? He hardly talks about her but only she can get him to look the way that he does right now.
“You’re worrying me, Shane. What happened?”
This question sets his mind racing. If the boy turns out to really be his… This isn’t what Amerie signed up for. He told her that he doesn’t have a child and now he tells her that he might possibly have a grown son? How does he even begin to explain and will she even still want to be a part of this?
“Shane?”
“Yes, my love,”
“Talk to me,” there she goes with her soft tone.
“I want to tell you something, I probably should have told you a while back but I didn’t because I decided not to make a big deal out of it. I want you to know that I didn’t plan on hiding anything from you because according to my understanding, there was nothing worth hiding,”
She tries to move from his lap but he doesn’t let her go” I’m going to need you to stay right here until I’m done, can you do that for me? ”
” Okay, I can, “she nods. She just wants to hear what’s going on. Her thoughts are immediately running wild, for the sake of their relationship, she hopes he didn’t cheat on her. That would be a low blow especially when she remembers how they met… She hopes he didn’t… “Please talk,” her patience is visibly starting to run thin.
“On Christmas day, when I visited my mother and brother’s grave. Just as I was about to leave, I saw my ex girlfriend standing there, behind me. She is not a recent ex…” he starts explaining everything as it happened that day and how he chose not to give her any attention. He then goes on to explain what happened today. The closer he gets to the part where Gail told him that he has a son, the harder it gets to speak up but he forces himself to say it all because he doesn’t want to keep this from Amerie, he doesn’t want her to stay with him under false pretense, she has to know this.
She listens attentively without disrupting him. She’s beyond shocked at this revelation but she doesn’t focus on that, instead she focuses on him and the kind of support that he needs right now because it’s clear to see that this whole thing has left him disoriented. She waits for him to finish explaining and then she asks “How do you want to handle this?”
Shane can’t hide that he’s surprised by her approach, he doesn’t know what he was expecting but it’s not the calm aura that she’s giving him. She sees his surprise too and she smiles a little “I’m still here, Shane.”
“I’m sorry love, the whole thing just took me by the surprise, I feel like the word can’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling,”
“I can imagine. Going for so many years thinking you don’t have a child and then one day someone tells you that you do,”
“I can’t just take her word for it, Amerie,”
“I know that and I support that way of thinking but she suggested the DNA, would she do that knowing very well that she’s lying?”
“She kept quiet for over so long, I’m not willing to put that past her. She might be hoping that I still have a soft spot for her and that I will just welcome the boy without being sure,”
Hearing him say these words digs at her heart, she doesn’t even want to imagine him having a soft spot for a woman that isn’t her.
” Then get the tests done, love. First meet him and then lay your expectations out. Get the tests done and we will take it from there,”
She just said ‘we’, this is what gets him to smile “You would still be willing to stay with me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s not like you kept this from me and he wasn’t conceived during the course of our relationship or that would be unforgivable and I’d already be out the door. You didn’t know and I don’t fault you with anything. I also won’t stand in your way if you want to be a father to him. ” that’s the thing about her, perhaps she’s too soft, maybe that’s why Chase played her the way that he did because she believes in seeing how things will play out instead of just avoiding the possible heartache before it hits but she’s still here and her heart won’t allow her to just leave Shane over something he just found out and hasn’t even confirmed.
“If it turns out that he’s mine,”
“Yes, if it turns out that he is yours. I’ll be right here with you, I might be the youngest step-mother but hopefully he won’t mind,” she tries to make light of the situation because she doesn’t like how all of this is stressing him out and she wishes this woman isn’t trying to play with him. She still doesn’t understand why she had to wait until now, why?
” I’ll call her and ask her to come over with him, then we can meet. Will you be here?”
“If you want me to be then yes, I will,”
“I need you to be here,” he tells her. He still has plans to ask her to marry him and if they are going to be a unit then he needs to be transparent and he really just wants someone on his side.
“Call her,” she says and he takes out his phone. He dials the number that Gail gave him that day and he puts the phone on speaker.
“Hello,”
“It’s Shane,” he says and she immediately recognizes the voice.
“Shane, hi,”
He doesn’t bother with the small talk, he doesn’t like her very much right now because no amount of explaining will ever make up for the fact that she possibly robbed him so many years of being a father and chose this exact time to drop the bomb on him. “I’ll need to meet the boy and then we will take it from there,”
“Of course, I can bring him with. Where do you want to meet? Your office?”
“No, my house.” He doesn’t want people knowing what is going on, he wants this far away from his place of business “You already know where I stay. Bring him tomorrow evening, I’ll confirm the time,”
“Okay, and Shane?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you, for giving us a chance” she says and Amerie doesn’t like how this sounds. It sounds like a double entendre because who is she referring to by ‘us’?
“I’m not giving anyone a chance, I’m meeting him and we will get tests done,”
“I understand,”
He hangs up and looks at Amerie whose holding her tongue back, she will first give this lady a chance.
“Tomorrow it is,” he tells her.
“Tomorrow,”
.
.
.
The following day, the hours seem to be partaking on a marathon known only to them. One minute she’s signing in at work and the next she’s signing out. If only all her days could be like this.
Aaron is the one who gets her, today isn’t the day where she continues with her lessons. They have pressing matters and she’s already distracted. She would hate to make a mistake in the road. Aaron also doesn’t question why she’s so quiet today. They normally chat as he drives her home or helps her practice but she seems to be lost in her own thoughts today so he lets her be.
When they arrive, she thanks him for the ride and makes her way inside the house where there is an equally nervous Shane. Anyone who doesn’t know him might overlook this but she has been paying close and special attention to her man, she knows when he’s not okay and right now, he’s anything but okay.
“Do you want me to make something to eat for our visitors?” Amerie asks him after they hug and kiss and he has asked about her day.
“No, I doubt anyone will be able to eat but there already is food and drinks. Don’t stress yourself,”
“Okay, and you? How are you doing?”
“I’ll be fine, love”
She nods at this. It’s not the time to try and get him to talk, she will do that later after the visitors have left. She wants to ask if he’s sure that the past is in the past for him and this Gail woman but she figures that now isn’t the right time for that. They just need to get through this period.
“I’ll go change into something more comfortable, I’ll join you just now,” she says and he pulls her to his embrace, kisses her deeply and long until they both come out for air.
“I love you, Amerie. My feelings have not changed and nothing can or will make them change, never doubt your place in my heart because you occupy all of it, now and forever,”
She relaxes, she needed this assurance and he knew it “I love you too, Shane. We will be okay,”
She goes on to change and he remains downstairs, waiting for a call. When it comes through, he opens the gate and meets them just as they are making their way in. He looks at the boy, or rather young man and he is the male version of Gail, if he’s really his son then the Matthews genes didn’t even put up a fight here.
He leads the way to the lounge for both of them and offers them seats. The young man who hasn’t taken his eyes off him since they came into contact sits next to his nervous looking mother.
“How are you, Shane?” Gail asks.
“I’m well, considering everything and how are you?”
“I’m holding up, uhm this is -” as she’s still talking, Amerie comes in the room while talking.
“Love, are they here yet?” she stops in her tracks when she sees the two guests and her heart nearly stops when her eyes land on the son in question. His face mirrors Amerie’s shock too it feels like the clock has stopped ticking until Amerie finds her voice.
“Chase?”
“Amerie!?”