Chapter 358

[ 1,293 words ]

Katia’s POV

Grandma Celeste and Gail were in the front room when I arrived, both of them looking like two women who had spent the past week sitting with a conversation they knew wasn’t finished yet and had been waiting for me to come back and finish it.

Good.

“I want to take Aiden with me,” I said, before either of them could speak first.

Grandma Celeste looked up at me. Gail’s hands stilled in her lap.

“I think it’s best he gets his mother and his father’s love at the same time,” I said. “In the same house. Under the same roof. He’s old enough to feel the difference between being passed between two separate lives and actually having one p>

Neither of them argued with that. I hadn’t expected them to.

“I want you both to know,” I said, looking at Grandma Celeste first, “that none of this changes what Aiden is to you. He is your great-grandson. He will always be your great-grandson. Whatever happens between me and Julian, that doesn’t move p>

Grandma Celeste’s chin lifted slightly, something that was not quite relief but was close to it moving behind her eyes.

“And you,” I said, turning to Gail.

Gail looked up at me, and I let her look, let her sit with whatever she was feeling for a moment before I said the next part.

“I am angry with you,” I said. “I want you to know that clearly, because I think you already know it and I think pretending otherwise would be an insult to both of us. You are my best friend, and you had information that belonged to me, and you chose to keep it, and I am going to be angry about that for a while p>

Gail nodded, her jaw tight, her eyes glistening.

“But Aiden is still your godson,” I said. “He is still your nephew. That does not change either. I am not going to punish him for what the adults in his life have done, and I am not going to take him away from people he loves because I am angry. I just need you to understand that you and I have some distance to cover before we get back to where we were p>

“I understand,” Gail said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Good,” I said.

I looked at Grandma Celeste one more time, this woman who had held the ring, held the secret, and held the entire shape of who I was to this family in her hands for years, and felt something complicated move through me that wasn’t quite forgiveness yet but wasn’t entirely anger either.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“His room,” Grandma Celeste said. “I’ll send Gail p>

Gail was already standing.

She came back ten minutes later with Aiden beside her, his school bag on his back and his favorite jacket half zipped, the one with the small patch on the elbow that he had refused to let anyone replace because he said the patch made it look like an explorer’s jacket and he intended to be an explorer. He looked between me and Grandma Celeste and Gail with the calm, assessing expression he sometimes wore when he sensed the adults around him had been having a conversation he wasn’t allowed to hear.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Come on p>

He crossed the room and took my hand without another question, the way he always did when he trusted that I had it handled, and I felt something tighten in my throat that I swallowed back down before it could become anything else.

I looked at Grandma Celeste one last time from the doorway.

She looked back at me, and in her eyes was everything she couldn’t say in front of Aiden, the apology, the relief, the complicated love of a woman who had spent years watching two people she cared about move through the same life in opposite directions and had not known how to turn them toward each other without losing something in the process.

I nodded once.

She nodded back.

And then Aiden and I walked out.

The mansion was lit up when we arrived, warm light bleeding through the tall windows onto the front steps, and Aiden let go of my hand the moment we were through the door, the way he always did when he came here, that immediate loosening of a child who knew exactly where he was and felt entirely at home in it.

He looked up at me, his eyes bright, his face carrying the expression he wore when he was about to say something he had been saving for the right moment.

“Mom,” he said. “Are we staying in Dad’s house now p>

I froze.

The word landed somewhere in my chest and just sat there, warm and heavy and entirely unexpected, and for a moment I could not find a single thing to say back to him.

“Dad?” I said finally. “Since when do you call Julian ’Dad p>

Aiden looked at me like this was the least complicated question anyone had ever asked him.

“Since last year,” he said, and then he turned and wandered off down the hallway toward the kitchen the way he always did when he arrived here, like a boy who knew exactly which cupboard had his favorite biscuits and saw no reason to stand in a hallway talking when he could be finding them.

I stood alone in the entrance hall and stared at the space where my son had just been standing.

Since last year.

He had been calling Julian ’Dad’ since last year, quietly and naturally, the way children adopted things that felt true to them without asking anyone’s permission, without making an announcement, without needing it to be official or explained or blessed by any of the adults who had spent the last two years making an absolute mess of everything around him. He had simply looked at Julian and decided, at some point between one visit and the next, that this was what that man was to him.

And nobody had told me.

I thought about every moment I had watched the two of them together and told myself it was simply a man who was good with children. Every time Aiden had reached for Julian without asking. Every time Julian’s head had turned before anyone else’s when Aiden called out across a room. Every sign I had filed away under something easier because looking at it directly would have meant asking a question I wasn’t ready to answer.

My son had known the truth before I did.

He hadn’t needed results or certificates or any of the documents that had turned my world over in the past few weeks. He had simply felt the truth of it and given it a name, the way children gave names to things that mattered, without ceremony, without waiting for anyone’s permission.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or wonder how many signs I had been standing in front of all this time without once letting myself actually see them.

I heard his voice from the kitchen, something about biscuits, the completely ordinary sound of a child at home in a place he loved, and I pressed one hand flat against the wall and stood there for a moment, breathing.

Then I followed him down the hall.

“Aiden,” I called. “Two biscuits. Not the whole tin p>

“Three,” he called back.

“Two p>

There was a pause. “Two and a half,” he said.

I stopped in the middle of the hallway and laughed, really laughed, for the first time in longer than I could remember, and the sound of it surprised me almost as much as the word ’Dad’ had.

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