“I chose Daddy and now I’ve chosen a mommy. When will she wake up? I’m hungry.”
“Come here, sweetheart. Grandma will take you to get something to eat.”
“No, you won’t,” Dylan snapped. “Do you really think I’ll let you anywhere near my son, give you a chance to corrupt him with your cold miserable heart?”
His son was three years old. Hope never even saw her first birthday. “Little man, Daddy will get you something to eat in a minute. Jessie won’t wake up for a long time. She’s hurt real bad and the doctors are making her sleep.”
His mother clasped her hands against her heart. “Dylan, you can’t mean to keep me from my grandson. You know how much I love him. You’re upset. This will all be straightened out when Jessie admits she lied. The baby wasn’t yours.”
“Hope was mine. I made love to Jessie without even thinking about protecting her. I couldn’t look past having her in my arms. If I didn’t make love to her, I didn’t want to take my next breath. I love her that much, Mother. I loved her then. I love her now. I will love her, and only her, the rest of my life. I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done, and everything you’ve taken from me.” Which probably included Jessie, because she’d never forgive him after what his mother did.
He took a breath and tried to remember this was his mother. He tried to find the love he’d felt for her just hours ago, but he couldn’t find it in his heart. Would he ever feel that way about her again?
“Jessie saved Will today. How do I thank her for saving my son when I wasn’t there for her and our daughter? How do I say thank you for keeping my son safe when our daughter is dead?” He growled the last word, unable to contain his fury.
His mother tried desperately to explain herself again. “How could God be so cruel as to keep my grandson safe only to turn you against me? Don’t you see, it can’t be changed? It’s in the past. That’s why when you adopted Will I never said anything. The baby was already gone. You have to understand why I did it. The baby wasn’t yours.”
The more times she said that last part, the angrier he got. Hope was his, he had no doubt.
“Wait, you knew the baby died. Did Jessie call and tell you?”
“No. I checked with the hospital on her condition. I got a nurse to tell me about the baby.”
“How did you find her? How did you know she went into labor?” Greg asked.
“I hired a private investigator to find her. He paid a man at the construction company to tell him when Jessie went into labor. If there was a chance the baby was yours, I wanted to know how she was doing.”
“If there was a chance, you wanted to know? Did you ever plan to tell me?”
“It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t want to hurt you when nothing could be done.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Dylan gasped. “Does it look like it doesn’t matter to me?” He yelled at his own mother, but for the life of him she didn’t look like the woman who raised him and cared for him all these years. Where was the mother that loved him?
“I expected your surprise when I adopted Will, but when I told you, there was something about the way you looked at me that I didn’t quite understand. Now, it makes sense. The story so closely relates to the situation with Jessie and me. Doesn’t it?”
He turned to Greg, desperate to have someone understand. “You see, I adopted Will in Georgia. I worked for the Atlanta Police Department. On one of my shifts, I found a teenage girl hiding behind some Dumpsters in an alley. She’d been mugged. Eighteen, more than eight months pregnant, she didn’t have anything. She hid the pregnancy at home for as long as she could and ran away to have the baby. Her boyfriend didn’t want to keep the baby. The girl wanted to give it up for adoption. She just wanted to go home and go to college in the fall like she planned and give the baby a chance to have a real family and a good life.
“I could have taken her to a shelter, or sent her back to her family, but she called to something inside of me. I had sworn to protect people like her.”
“Because you thought Jessie was murdered,” Greg guessed.
“Yes. I took her home and fed her. Her due date only weeks away, I told her I’d help her make the final decisions and get her back to her family. She lived with me until she delivered the baby. Then, she asked me to keep him. She said it was fate I’d found her and helped her. I took one look at that little man and knew he was mine. That girl loved him enough to give him a good life, but she wasn’t ready to be a mother to him.”