Page 5 of Dirty Little Secret
Uncle James asked, “Do you think you’ll ever try to find her, Kane?”
Shaking my head, I answered him truthfully. “No. I have no idea if she wanted to give him away or not. The fact is she went along with the adoption—and a closed one, at that. She may have wanted it that way too. I won’t find her and tell her about something she may not want to hear about.”
Aunt Nancy had always leaned more toward contacting Zandra one day. “He just turned ten last week. Fox is a bright boy with tons of curiosity. I know he doesn’t talk to you about his mother nearly as much as he talks to me about her, but he does ask about her a lot. I think you should start thinking some more about finding her, Kane. It might be what’s best for Fox.”
Pushing my hand through my hair, I felt that nagging feeling coming over again. The feeling always lingered when I thought about the reality that Zandra might not want anything to do with our son, or me, for that matter.
“But what if she didn’t want him? It might have started out as her parents’ idea, but what if Zandra wanted to get rid of him too, in the end? How would she react then if I tried to pull her into his life when all she wanted was to be rid of him?”
Uncle James smiled at me with that expression of pure wisdom on his face. “What if she didn’t want to give him up and was only doing what her parents made her do? What if she’s still as shy as she was when she was sixteen and doesn’t have a clue how to find her son? What if she’s hurt by what she was made to do and thinks about him every day?”
God, the man knew how to pull at a person’s heartstrings!
Even still, I wasn’t sure about anything, other than that she had given him up in a closed adoption. No authority, other than her parents, had made her do that. “She could’ve told the adoption agency that her parents were making her give the baby up and that she didn’t want to.”
Aunt Nancy shook her head. “I was there when she gave him up, Kane. She had no idea I wasn’t a nurse, Kane, and that girl was heartbroken when I took that baby away from her that day. She told him that she loved him more than anything. She told him that she was sorry for what she was doing, but that he would have a much better life without her or her parents in it.”
Aunt Nancy had told me this a million times. And as many times as I’d heard the story, I had never understood why Zandra would’ve gone through with giving him up if she truly loved him. And I’d never understood why she’d never tried to contact me about the pregnancy.
It wasn’t as if I was some lothario who had slept with countless girls. I’d never intended to just sleep with her and then drop her. I’d thought about her a lot after the party. I’d thought about how I would approach the shy girl when school was back in session, about how I would bring her out of her shell again, just as I was able to that night.
The fact that she never seemed to even try to get in touch with anyone, not even the few friends she’d had at school, had me thinking that she wanted to forget all about that part of her life.
I stayed in Charleston. With my parents’ help, plus my aunt and uncle’s, I raised Fox. Everyone we knew was aware that I was that boy’s father and that Zandra Larkin was his mother. Everyone. Even Zandra’s friends knew about it.
So why hadn’t Zandra ever tried to contact any of her friends?
Each one of the girls I talked to back then told me that Zandra had their phone numbers, though Zandra’s number was no longer in service after the move. And even at Fox’s tenth birthday party, one of his mother’s old friends stopped by to wish him a happy birthday and give him a present. She told him that if his mother were around, she’d be very proud of him. And she also told him that his mother was a very private and shy person, but she was sure that she still loved him, as she was also a very nice and loving person.
I recalled the smile that spread across my son’s face that day as he and his mother’s friend talked. He nodded. “I’m sure she does love me. I love her, and I don’t ’member meeting her ever in my life. But Aunt Nancy said that she held me for a little while before she had to say goodbye. And that she told me that she loved me too. I know that someday I’ll see her again. And then I’ll be old enough to ’member her.”
Most people seemed sure that one day Zandra would try to find Fox. I was one of the few who didn’t think that day would come at all. And I prayed that our son wouldn’t be hurt if the day he was so hopeful about never occurred.
And I wondered how I would react to her if she did come looking for him. Would I be angry with her?
As understanding as I’d tried to be about her situation, I had also been mad back then. Mad that she hadn’t told me what was happening. Mad that she’d planned to give our child to strangers. Mad that her parents thought they could take my son’s future into their own hands.
Zandra may have been intimidated and controlled by her parents, but I never would’ve let them control me too. I would’ve taken care of Zandra, had she told me about the situation.
Looking at the ground, I knew my thoughts weren’t healthy. I’d been a seventeen-year-old kid at that time. Zandra had been a minor; her parents had still been in control of her life.
In reality, I couldn’t have taken care of her. My parents could have and would have. But only if Zandra’s parents allowed that to happen. And we all knew that they would never have allowed that.
The sound of cheers pulled me out of my internal reverie, and I looked up. My son’s team had won the game. The boys were jumping up and down with triumphant joy.
“Looks like we’re going to get to go to a pizza party, Kane,” Uncle James said. We all got up to join the kids on the field to congratulate each one of them and to tell the kids on the other team that they’d played a great game too.
“We did it, Dad!” Fox shouted as he ran to me.
“You sure did, son!” Putting my arm around his narrow shoulders, I pulled him close to my side. “Your home run was the game-winner, too.”
“Hey, Fox, catch,” the coach called out.
He tossed the ball to Fox, who caught it easily. The smile he’d been wearing grew even bigger. “I get to keep the game ball?”
“It’s yours, kid,” his coach told him. “At the pizza party, you can get everyone to sign it for you.”
“I’ll get you a little case to keep it in, Fox,” Uncle James told him as he pulled him away from me to give him a hug.
“Man, this is like the best day ever!” Fox shouted as he held the ball up. “We won! Woohoo!”
Man, I bet his mother would love to see him like this.
