Chapter 5: Further Than Marcus
I dropped Marcus at school and drove back home with both hands on the wheel and the radio off.
Pamela was in the living room when I walked in.
She had changed out of her robe.
Her keys were on the side table, which meant she had been planning to leave.
She hadn't left.
She was sitting on the couch with her hands in her lap, and she looked like a woman who had spent the last forty minutes rehearsing something and still wasn't ready to say it.
I sat down in the chair across from her.
"He's gone," I said.
"Talk."
She looked at her hands.
"I need you to understand that I was very young.
And I was scared.
And I made choices that I thought were protecting everyone."
"Pamela."
"I'm trying to explain."
"Explain what, exactly."
She looked up.
"Derek is Marcus's biological father."
The room didn't change.
The light was the same.
The furniture was the same.
I was sitting in the same chair I had sat in a thousand times.
"Keep going," I said.
"We were together before you and I met.
It ended badly.
When I found out I was pregnant, he was already gone — he'd moved, I couldn't reach him, and I—" She stopped.
"I met you four months later.
You were so good, Anthony.
You were so steady.
And I told myself it didn't matter because you would never know and Marcus would have a real father and it would all just—"
"You told yourself it didn't matter."
"I was twenty-four years old."
"Marcus is sixteen."
She flinched.
"You've known for sixteen years," I said.
"Every birthday.
Every school play.
Every time I signed his permission slips and drove him to practice and sat in the emergency room when he broke his arm at eleven years old.
You knew the whole time."
"You were his father in every way that counted."
"Don't." My voice came out harder than I intended.
"Don't tell me what counted.
Not right now."
She pressed her hands together.
"Derek reached out six months ago.
He found me online.
He said he'd been looking for a long time and he thought he might have a son." She paused.
"I didn't tell him anything at first.
But he kept asking.
And last week I—"
"Last week you what?"
"I confirmed it."
I stood up.
"You confirmed to a stranger that my son is his biological child.
Before you said a single word to me."
"He's not a stranger, Anthony, he's—"
"He is a stranger.
He is a man I have never met who now knows something about my son that I didn't know twenty-four hours ago." I walked to the window.
Turned back.
"Does Marcus know?"
"No."
"Does Derek want to meet him?"
She hesitated one second too long.
"Pamela.
Does Derek want to meet Marcus?"
"He's asked about it, yes."
"And what did you tell him?"
She looked at her hands again.
"I told him I needed more time."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"More time," I said.
"You needed more time.
Meanwhile Marcus is upstairs last night asking me if there's something I'm not telling him about who he is."
Her head came up.
"He asked you that?"
"After you told him he was never really my son.
Yes.
He asked me that."
The color left her face.
"I didn't mean for him to—"
"What did you mean, Pamela?
Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've been slowly pushing Marcus out of this house for years, and now I'm wondering if that was guilt or if it was something worse."
She stood up.
"That is not fair."
"Then help me understand it."
"I love Marcus."
"Then why," I said, "has he spent twelve years feeling like a problem you have to manage?"
She had no answer for that.
I picked up my keys from the table.
"I'm going to need some time to think," I said.
"And when Marcus gets home from school today, you are not going to say a single word about any of this to him.
Not until we figure out how to do this right."
"Anthony—"
May you like
"That's not a request."
I walked out and closed the door behind me.
