Page 1 of Falling for You

Prologue

Chloe

“I needyou to listen to me, Chloe girl, and don’t interrupt.”

I fluff my mom’s pillow behind her head. At least the beds at the Hospice House are nicer than they were at the hospital. She’s more comfortable here, despite what the underlying meaning behind it is. “Mom, you need your rest. Whatever you have to say, you can tell me later.”

“You and I both know there might not be a later,” Mom says, taking a deep breath through the pain. Cancer is a bitch and it’s stealing away the only family I’ve ever known.

I never knew my father, they met while he was in Mexico on spring break. After a brief fling, he went back home to Ireland. She went through a bit of a wild phase and getting pregnant with me was her wake up call. At least, that’s what she’s always told me. My grandparents, though, thought a little differently of her awakening. They disowned her after I was born. Apparently, it wasn’t okay for me to have an Irish father.

“Mom,” I sniffle, not even trying to hold back the tears. It’s no use. My eyes haven’t stopped leaking for days now. “Don’t say that.”

“Honey,” she says in her soothing tone that normally makes me feel so much better. “I wish this wasn’t the case. You know how badly I do. Now, there’s something you need to know and it can’t wait any longer.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“It’s not scary, Chloe girl, but you might be upset with me. I need you to see it as the blessing that it could be, though.”

“I’ll try,” I assure her.

“You have a brother,” she blurts out.

I sit next to her bed, her hand in mine and stare at her face. Her skin is darker than mine but my eyes are hers. Deep brown and thick black lashes. They’re my favorite feature, because when I look in the mirror, I see her. Mom’s hair has always been black as coal, whereas mine is naturally a few shades lighter almost the shade of walnut. Right now, though, it’s a beautiful deep auburn. Being a hair dresser gives me the means to experiment often with coloring my own hair.

I finally blink, my eyes dry from staring at her, wondering when she’s going to start laughing and let me in on the joke.

“Okay, Mom, sure. Whatever. Now that you’ve got my attention, why don’t you tell me what you really needed to.”

“I know it’s a surprise, honey. I’ve told you how getting pregnant with you changed my world. Well, it’s the truth. But you aren’t my first and only child. About two years before you were born, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. His dad lived here in the US but we met on Spring Break.”

“No, this ismystory, Mom.” The doctors told us there would come a time where she’d have moments of delusion and the medical staff and I have been noticing she’s been mumbling this same thing in her sleep for a few days. But she’s never said it while she was completely lucid and wide awake.

I reach up, touch the back of my hand to her forehead but she twists away from me. She’s shaking her head in frustration and releases my hand, pressing hers into the mattress to help herself sit up. I help her, fluffing the pillow behind her back before she leans back.

“You’re not listening. It is your story. It was also your brother’s. I clearly have a type,” she laughs but I don’t. “I couldn’t resist a tall, blond man with an accent.” The accent comment produces a ghost of a smile from my lips. My whole life she’s the one who’s had a bit of an accent.

“I don’t understand.”

“When I was a young lady living in Mexico, tourist season was my favorite,” she says, a hint of smile on her beautiful face. I do my best not to shudder. “I met a man and we hit it off. A few months later, I realized I was the one who received a souvenir from his spring break vacation. Fortunately, we’d exchanged numbers so even though we didn’t keep in touch, I had a way to get ahold of him.” Mom pauses when I open my mouth, but the flood of questions rolling through my mind seem stuck in my throat. I snap my mouth shut and she closes her eyes, leaning her head back. Quietly, she adds. “Yeah, that was a fun phone call.”

“Right,” I mutter. “He was mad?”

She turns so she’s looking at me and I see so much sadness in her eyes. Regret, even. “He wasn’t mad so much as in shock. I asked if he remembered me and then just blurted out that I was pregnant. I remember sitting on the pay phone I had to use so no one would know I was calling someone internationally thinking our connection was lost because he had gone silent. Eventually he spoke up, asked what I was planning to do and promised to be there for me. He offered to send me enough money to come here.”

“Why didn’t he go to Mexico?”

“Because I wouldn’t let him. I had no intentions of my family ever finding out. I was so stupid. I thought I was so clever, hiding my pregnancy just because I wore baggy clothes.” I rub my forehead, feeling like my brain is going to explode at any minute. “A few months before the baby was due, I moved here to live with him and to give birth. After your brother was born, panic set in. I had just turned nineteen, and I was terrified. I grew up in such a strict household and I didn’t know how they would react if I brought a baby home with me. I grew up with nothing but my parents had big plans for me; high expectations. They thought I was moving to the states to nanny for a wealthy family. I kept telling my parents that it would only be for a little while, just to make enough money that I could come home and help take the burden off financially.”

“They didn’t fight you?”

“No, because I’d never given them a reason not to trust me before. It was terrible of me, but I was scared and didn’t know what to do. I felt stuck.”

“So why did you go back to Mexico? Why leave your baby?”

“Paul, the boy’s father, I just knew he’d be okay without me. He was, well, he was great. In the short amount of time I lived with him, in a guest bedroom, just so you know.”

“That hadn’t even occurred to me,” I mumble. My entire life it was just Mom and me. She very rarely dated and if she did, she never brought him home or around. Maybe this is why; she feared getting pregnant again. She coughs a few times and takes a small sip of water. I help her to get settled again and she sighs deeply. “He showed me what a good man he is. I wouldn’t have left my baby with him if I didn’t trust him completely. I loved the little boy enough to walk away. I know that sounds like a copout, but it’s the truth. I didn’t have anything to offer him and Paul was really amazing, had already stepped up so much as a daddy. Was way better at the parenting thing than I was. I was going through a little bit of post-partum. I only knew Paul, and didn’t really even know him that well. I had no family around, no friends, and it was just too much for me to handle. I moved back home but my lies didn’t hold up. One night, I finally admitted everything. There was a lot of yelling and eventually, they kicked me out of the house for lying to them.”

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