“And you agreed?”
He flashed her a look as if searching for condemnation, but she purposely kept her features as bland as her voice.
She wasn’t naive or stupid. She knew about extenuating circumstances, about one-night stands and relationships that didn’t work out.
At the same time, she had been a child of a single mother, never given the chance to know anything about her own father. A little corner of her heart would always ache from the loss.
“I didn’t want to. I refused the first and second time. We could wait until a DNA test to make any decisions, I said.”
“You didn’t wait?”
He sighed. “It felt like an impossible situation. I was twenty-one years old and deployed in Iraq. All the communication between us was via email when I could manage it and a few hurried satellite phone conversations. She happened to be a few weeks away from marrying a man who thought the baby was his. Apparently they were engaged when we were...together, which I swear I didn’t know. She thought the baby was his, too, but if there was a chance, even a slim one, she wanted me to sign away any future rights before they were married. She wanted everything neat and clean. That’s just how she was.”
If the woman wanted neat and clean, maybe she shouldn’t have slept with one man when she was engaged to another, Andie thought caustically.
“She didn’t come out and say it, but I knew she didn’t want me showing up one day after I got back to the States and messing up her happy little family.”
What kind of woman would pressure a man serving his country in dangerous conditions to give up rights to a child he might have helped create?
“She and I, uh, didn’t really have a relationship. Just a quick fling. I was stationed in San Diego and a couple buddies and I went out one night. In one of those weird coincidences, I happened to bump into her at a bar. She was from Lake Haven, though several years older than me. I’ll admit, I was a little homesick and nervous about shipping out and we just...hooked up for a crazy long weekend. It wasn’t anything serious and we both knew it. Hell, it obviously wasn’t serious, since she never got around to telling me about her rich, important fiancé until six months later.”
Andie was beginning to seriously dislike the woman.
“I figured I’d never see her again, you know? Unless we happened to bump into each other at Lake Haven Days, anyway.”
“And then she found out she was pregnant.”
“Right. Her fiancé apparently was thrilled because he and his first wife had infertility issues. He’d been told, uh, that he didn’t have very strong swimmers.”
“And that’s why the woman felt she needed to have you sign away rights.”
“Right. Just in case. It was a tough decision. Tougher than I might have expected.” The lines around his mouth seemed to deepen. “But what did I have to offer a kid right then? I still felt like a kid myself, in a lot of ways. I was twenty-one, single and halfway across the world. The guy she was marrying had money and lots of it. He was older and had already raised a couple of adopted kids. I figured my son—she knew it was a boy by then—needed parents who were married and stable, not some military police officer living paycheck to paycheck. He was probably much better at being a dad than I could be anyway.”
She had to disagree on that point. She had seen his patience with her children and thought he had the potential to be an excellent father, given the chance.
“I still refused the first few times. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. She kept after me and I finally decided I didn’t have much choice. The chance that the baby could be mine anyway didn’t seem very compelling, so I figured, why not.”
He watched the Canada geese take flight in a rush, their wings brushing the water with their takeoff. “Worst decision of my life.”
His voice was thick, raw, and the pain in it made her chest ache.
“Why do you say that?”
“Three years later, the two of them were divorced. I didn’t know until recently that she spent the last decade hopping from guy to guy, neglecting the child I threw away, until she died earlier this year.”
“Oh no.”
“Right. Meanwhile, the man my son thinks was his father basically abandoned him after the divorce. I don’t know, maybe the guy suspected the kid wasn’t his, but as a result, my son is now left with no one.”
She frowned as the story seemed to ring oddly familiar. Her mind tried to sort through the bits and pieces, but she couldn’t figure out quite why.
“The poor boy. Can you step up now and be a father to him?”
“How? I have no legal rights and the only proof I have that we were together is the document she had me sign. He has no idea I even exist and I can’t figure out how to approach his gra—guardians.”