Page 18 of Wait for Me

“Sure.” Marie talked to Mrs. Ping. “Take the afternoon off. Go to the spa. Get your hair done. Or something. Have fun.”

“Good idea,” Logan added. “Don’t worry about the bill. Tell them I’ll take care of it.”

“Wow. Thank you.” Mrs. Ping’s eyes brightened. “I’ll get him showered and dressed for nap time, and then I’ll go.”

Marie wasn’t sure if Mrs. Ping realized that she wouldn’t know what to do with Jonas at nap time, but she was glad not to have to ask for help with getting Jonas ready. Doing so in front of Logan would only make him think the worst of her.

How could any birth mother give up her only child?

Marie had her reasons.

Certainly, God had sent Mrs. Ping to fill in where Marie had been unable to fulfill her job.

Oh how she longed to be Jonas’s mother again.

Truly be. Not from a distance, but there, right there with her own son.

Something I need to pray about.

Chapter Eight

Walking in the moonlight on one of the decks of the cruise ship sailing across the waters could have been romantic, but not for this pair with their irreconcilable differences.

Which, Logan was certain, had been primarily due to their geography and career choices. They had clearly failed in their long-distance marriage. Marie wouldn’t leave her job in Europe, and Logan couldn’t leave his job in Atlanta, Georgia.

Other than that, they had produced a gorgeous child—when he wasn’t trying to manipulate his parents into giving him everything he wanted.

Case in point: this birthday cruise.

“If we keep giving him what he wants, we’ll run out of ability or means to do so before he’s twenty-one,” Marie said.

She was dressed modestly in a dark purple dress. Cruise dinners used to be rather formal affairs, but today’s cruises no longer required its patrons to dress up in tuxedos and gowns before they entered the main dining room. While the dress code wasn’t golf casual, no one needed to show up looking like they were attending a wedding or a funeral.

Logan liked Marie’s simple dress. She had on strapped heels, but the dress was long-sleeved.

He wondered now if she was cold. She hadn’t brought her cardigan.

“Right?” Marie waited.

“I hear you, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” It was the best answer Logan could think of at this point. He wished that—

He didn’t know what he could wish for. He wanted to be the best dad ever for Jonas, but he had so much work to do at the office that he had left the parenting to Mrs. Ping most of the time.

Although Marie had been an absentee mother, Logan hadn’t done much better, even though he was in town and lived in the same house as his own son.

One could be in the same house and be distant, be strangers, be out of touch with the rest of the family.

Lord, I don’t know how to be Jonas’s dad.

“You’re going to get there sooner than you think,” Marie said.

Logan stopped walking. They were standing across the deck from more lounge chairs. On the other side of the railings were lifeboats.

“Me?” Logan asked. “I thought you saidweearlier.”

“We’re not together in this. I’ll go back to Paris soon, and you’ll have to raise Jonas on your own. You have full custody. Remember that expensive court battle I could not afford?”

“I’m not sure if I want to do this alone anymore,” Logan said. “I’m thinking I need to start dating.”

---