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“Do you really think she’d do that? Plan things so carefully to entrap you?” Pamela’s voice was skeptical. But even if Holland had lied to me, had planned things this way, she wouldn’t have told Pamela that part.
The old darkness filled me. “She’s pretty big on plans, actually.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes, Pamela watching me thoughtfully and me trying to think of other things to prevent myself from having to throw something. Her voice interrupted my misery.
“It took a while for Kenner’s dad to decide he wanted to be involved. We weren’t married. I was working as a receptionist in one of the other towers, and your dad had always been friendly when he came over for meetings and things. There was one day, where I just didn’t know how I was going to do everything—I was broke, I was alone, I was young . . . and he found me crying. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Adam talked me off a ledge and helped me see that I could do it myself, that I’d be okay. He also bought me a crib and came to the hospital when I was in labor. He was right outside through the whole thing, and when Kenner was born, he flew in to see if I was okay. Adam held my son before I did!” Pamela smiled as she said it, her eyes misting. I knew she could see the memory in her mind as she described it.
“Adam did that?” I couldn’t believe it. I tried to remember Adam four years ago when Pamela would havebeen having Kenner, but I couldn’t find a memory of him talking about anything like this.
“He was very discreet, and he spoke to John—Kenner’s dad—when he finally showed up at the hospital to meet Kenner. I have no idea what he said to him, but it was enough to make John stick around for those first couple weeks when things were really hard.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I didn’t know . . .”
“He and your mother were very kind to me. And Adam gave me a raise and helped me get Kenner placed in campus daycare even though there were no openings.” Her voice had gotten quiet, and she was sitting, tracing a line on the table with her finger. After a long silence, she looked back up at me from under the soft line of hair falling in her eyes. “Now you see why I’m loyal to your father.”
The way she talked about Adam had caused a longing inside me, an emotion I didn’t want to feel that made me wish for things that were impossible. To talk to Adam again, to have my mother’s arms around me. I wanted to hate them for not trusting me with the truth of my adoption, but it was becoming more and more difficult in the face of my lingering love for them. I cleared my throat, hoping to push down the emotion that had welled up.
She fixed me with a gaze that was evaluative, her light brown eyes unreadable. “Here’s the thing, Oliver. Do you love Holland?”
I had already admitted it to myself. Hell, I’d already said as much to her. I did love Holland.I nodded.
“What do you think about fatherhood? Are you ready for that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, something uncomfortable turning in my stomach at her words.
“First time moms don’t know, either,” Pamela said. “But we don’t get a choice. We get just under a year to wrap our heads around it and then it happens, ready or not.” She paused, watching me, and then continued, “Having a baby changes everything for a woman. Things I’m not sure men can understand, and maybe they don’t need to. But that switch, that process of going from thinking about yourself to thinking of someone else first—having a baby rewires every circuit we’ve got and things never really shift back. So what is happening to her now—what will happen to her—it’s huge.”
I nodded. I got that.
“Whether it’s your baby or not—and for the record, there’s not a single doubt in my mind that it is—you need to figure out if you want to be involved, and it’s a choice you don’t get to make and then unmake. If she has a partner in this, she needs to know that and feel confident about it.” Pamela narrowed her gaze and her voice lowered. “But if there’s any part of you that isn’t sure you’re in—really in . . . She might love you, but if you’re thinking of this as an optional situation in any way, or planning to decide on your level of involvement later . . . she’s better off without you. Even if she doesn’t see that yet.”
I let her words sink in and stood, thinking as I paced the room with Pamela’s words reeling through my head.
The anger I’d felt over finding the brochure haddissipated, and I was left feeling stupid. I’d jumped to one huge fucking conclusion, and had potentially ruined everything I’d just barely gotten back. But the time had given me a break to think about being a father, having a baby. What if it was mine? I’d been completely blown away when Holland first told me, the idea of my blood running through a child’s veins, of seeing part of me in another person, had been overwhelming. It had seemed like the answer to the question that had been hounding me since I’d found out about my own adoption. But with the distance I’d had over the last week had come a swarm of creeping doubts. Was I really ready to be a father? I knew I loved Holland, but what if I couldn’t do it? What if it was too much? The last thing I wanted was to try and then let her down. “I don’t like this at all,” I said.
Pamela shrugged but her eyes were sympathetic. “She’s a package deal now,” she went on. “And if you’re not completely committed, you might as well get out now. Give her time to settle on her own—or to find someone else.”
Fire spiked in my blood at the thought of someone else in Holland’s life, but I knew it wasn’t fair to feel that way. If I couldn’t commit one hundred percent to being a father, I had no place feeling jealous if someone else could.
“You don’t mess with a single mom,” Pamela said. “Take it from a single mom. We’ve got enough shit on our plates.”
My heart sank as I raked a hand through my hair. Pamela was right.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe that wasn’t whatyou wanted to hear.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I told her. “But it’s nice to have someone to talk to.”
Pamela put the last of the food into the garbage can and moved to the door. “I should get home,” she said. “You okay?”
I nodded and thanked her, and then sat down behind my desk and dropped my head into my hands. A familiar blackness was edging in around the sides of my consciousness, and the deep sadness I’d kept at bay for so long threatened to envelop me again.
CHAPTER 24
Holland
At less than three months into my pregnancy, my body looked pretty much the same, but I was an emotional disaster. Talking to Pamela had made me feel better, at least a little bit, but I found myself in tears over ridiculous small things—like not being able to get a lid off a jar of peanut butter—and I worried the baby was actually causing me to lose my mind. I didn’t hear from Oliver for weeks after he found the stupid brochure in my apartment, and I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to him any more than I already had. When I saw him at work, he spoke to me only about business, leaving me feeling more empty than ever.
My apartment was a dark cave in which I moped and wallowed like an increasingly large and grumpy bear, and I worried that my butt was making a permanent indent in the center of my couch. It would match the permanent hole Oliver had left in my heart, at least.
