Page 107 of The Sculptor

But my son pleaded his father’s case, admitting they both had no idea about each other.“I mean, it wasn’t like I recognized his ass, either,”he had confessed.“Nothing felt different when I joked with him. I just felt… comfortable around them all—and that’s not something I’m used to experiencing.”

Yet, he moves around my room, talking trash about his uncles and father, like this is something we do regularly over coffee.

“Be honest.” Remington cuts me this adorable smile that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing. “Does Duke really say cringey shit like that often?” He snorts. “Out of all of the Potters, I thought he had more game than that.”

I’m hoping the ease with which we speak to one another means he feels comfortable around me, as well.

“You’re a Potter now, too,” I remind him. “Seems like you would have more‘game’than any of them.”

He looks up from a sketch he finds on the nightstand. “I like the way you think.”

It’s not just how I think. I can tell this boy will be a heartbreaker. I already feel sorry for the woman he decides is his for the taking. Because he won’t ask her to be his, he’ll demand it.

“What is this?” he asks, bringing my attention to the sketch in his hand. “Is this me?”

I move in closer, still careful to give him his space. “Duke and I never got a picture of you,” I explain. “I couldn’t bear it.” I trace along the edge of the big brown eyes on the sketch. “So, I started drawing you every day.” I offer him a soft smile. “I know it doesn’t look all that much like you—just the eyes, but it was all I had.”

Grabbing the sketchbook from the bed, I hand it to him. “There are hundreds of sketches in here. Pictures of Duke holding you on what would have been your first birthday. Pictures of you smiling up at me.” I shrug. “I captured it all—living what would have been our life together.”

He pulls me to him when I wipe at the tears accumulating. “I never moved on,” I confess. “I couldn’t. I had to know you in whatever way I could—even if it was just in spirit.”

Remington’s chin rests on the top of my head. “We’ll fix that, I promise.”

His words wrap around me like a cocoon of happiness. “I’d like that.”

It’s all I can say. I know he’s grown and is just starting his adult life, but like any mother, I’ll cherish every moment—every conversation and picture—he’ll give me.

Letting me go, Remington tucks the sketchbook into my bag. “You ready to go home?”

Home.

I asked Duke to trust me to bring our son home.

Instead, our son is bringing me home.

To his father.

I can’t help but ease the emotion coursing through my veins with a joke. “What if I’m not ready to see your father?”

Remington grabs my bag, hitching it over his shoulder. “Then we better get a head start, because your husband is a persistent bastard.”

That he is.

“Agreed.” I laugh as Remington extends his hand. It’s at that moment I worry I won’t be able to let this boy go one day. But then again, I’ve never been able to let him go. At least now, I can cherish his presence.

“Come on,” he encourages, stepping closer like he might actually toss me over his shoulder if I don’t take his hand. “Show me the way home, Mom.”

“So, Duke didn’t give you directions?” I finally say when I realize Remington is going the opposite way from Duke’s Texas home.

He shakes his head, his fingers drumming along the steering wheel. “Nope. He said you would remember the way.”

The cabin.

That’s the home he’s leading us to.

“Did he happen to tell you the significance of where we’re headed?” You never know with Duke and his caginess.

“Yeah,” Remington says with a frown, like even he dreads going back there, which begs the question of why Duke would want to go back.

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