Page 62 of From LA to London, With Love

“I guess your aunt had second thoughts about overcooking the turkey after all,” Steven whispered with a wink.

The children nearly bowled me over when they saw the toy box. We had to threaten removal of their pecan pie privileges if they didn’t wait until after lunch to play with the new toys.

As I helped myself to a second serving of turkey, which was surprisingly tender, my phone pinged. A photo of Alfie and Jenny, looking sporty in active wear, popped up.

Jenny: We went to #Doga (dog yoga) earlier today. Child’s pose was the only pose Alfie mastered. He spent most of the class trying to sniff the other dogs’ butts.

I showed Sophie, who burst into giggles. “Maybe I can take Elliot when we get back and continue the joint training sessions! I read that some babies start doing downward dog in preparation for walking, so it could be perfect for Elliot!”

“Aw, I can just imagine how cute they’d look, doing downward dog together, peering through their legs at us.” I chuckled.

Sitting at the table, watching my large, blended family pass the sides Sophie and I had cooked together, Elliot chewing on a bit of turkey in his high chair next to me and screwing up his face at his first taste of collard greens, Sophie laughing at something my mom said, my heart felt like it might explode. This was a million times better than pretending to be Muscle Man, the arrogant duke, or any other character the scriptwriters could throw at me.

Screw those voices in my head that questioned whether falling too hard, too fast, too soon after the Vanessa debacle was a good idea. I’d never been happier.

* * *

SOPHIE

I was recovering on the couch from eating way too much turkey and pecan pie, reading my book and enjoying the fire blazing in the corner. The last guest gone and the final dish dried, Chris was helping Steven in the garden, Elliot was having a long nap, probably due to the impressive amount of turkey he’d consumed or exhaustion from all the attention, and Julie…well, I wasn’t sure where Julie was.

As soon as we met Julie and Steven at the airport, I’d immediately felt comfortable with them, and it was the same with the rest of Chris’s family over lunch. Watching Chris interact with them all had given me a warm, fuzzy sensation. Jumping up to help clean up once lunch was over, playfully teasing his sisters, and playing with his nieces and nephew once the last morsels of pecan and pumpkin pies were demolished.

As if I’d conjured her with my thoughts, Julie walked into the living room holding a pile of albums in her arms.

“Sophie, I thought you might be interested in having a look through these,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

“If they include cute photos of baby Chris, and/or incriminating photos of his teenage years, yes, please!” I said, sitting up and setting my book aside.

Julie took a seat next to me and opened the first album.

Chris had been a really adorable baby. Blonde hair, chubby cheeks and legs, and a sweet gummy smile. As he grew older, his hair darkened, and he began to look more and more like the Chris I knew. There were several photos of Chris and his biological father. His father holding Chris in his arms as a newborn, playing in a sandpit with him as a toddler, and standing, smiling next to Chris for his first day of kindergarten. And then he disappeared from the albums.

I lingered on the photo of Chris on his first day of school, and Julie smiled sadly.

“That’s the last photo I have of Robert, Chris’s biological father. He left not long after. It was really heartbreaking for both Chris and me. I still remember Chris running down the hallway to show Robert the paper airplane he’d made, and how devastated he was when he couldn’t find him. He was only five years old. I’d sensed something wasn’t right with Robert for some time, but he wouldn’t open up to me. He absolutely adored Chris, I know that much, so it was a real shock when he left us without a word. It was completely out of character. We asked all of his family and friends, but we never found out what happened.”

Julie’s voice wavered slightly. It was clear that, even all these years later, she was still hurting.

“The next year was pretty tough. While we were fine financially because Robert left all our savings in our joint bank account and I had a job, we both struggled emotionally. Not knowing why he left or if he was okay.”

Tears formed in my eyes as fast as I could blink them away. Stories involving little kids being hurt physically or emotionally had always made me feel distressed, but after having Elliot, they were like daggers in my heart. I hated the thought of five-year-old Chris being devastated by his father abandoning him. I also couldn’t imagine how any parent could leave their child. But I knew it happened with alarming regularity—take Josh and Erin’s parents, for example.

Julie continued. “Robert disappearing made me question a lot of things, including my faith. We were both raised Catholic, and we’d been regular churchgoers, but I ended up leaving the local church, which was very conservative. Not only did I lose my husband, but I also lost my support network. My friends were all in the church, my parents had passed away, and I didn’t have any other relatives.”

My heart went out to Julie. I’d found being a single mother isolating despite having friends and family around on weekends and after work. It must have been incredibly difficult for her, especially when single motherhood had been foisted on her rather than a conscious choice, like it had been for me. I’d spent a long time working out how I could look after a child by myself, crunching numbers, talking to my parents, convincing Josh to be Elliot’s godfather, going through all the logistics. I’d gone into it with open eyes, knowing what I was signing up for. Julie didn’t have that privilege.

Julie’s face brightened. “Thankfully, about twelve months later, I met Steven. He was the English teacher at the high school in the neighboring town. We struck up a conversation in the supermarket one day and hit it off, and before I knew it, we were dating. Happily, Steven and Chris got on really well, so much so that Chris actually asked if he could take Steven’s last name when we married. I was thrilled when Steven got the job offer to move to Chicago. It felt like an opportunity to start afresh.”

Julie smiled, shaking her head.

“Because Robert was missing, we had to jump through all sorts of hoops in order for me to get a divorce so that Steven and I could marry. We had to file an affidavit of all our attempts to locate him, then publish a notice to him in a newspaper once a week for three weeks, describing the proposed divorce before we could seek an order for divorce from the judge. When we finally got married, I was already pregnant with Chris’s sister. Good thing I’d already left the Catholic church!”

“Did you ever hear from Robert?” I asked.

Julie sighed. “No. When Chris was still a child, I tried looking for him fairly regularly. I thought it might give Chris some closure if we found out what happened to him. But I never got a lead and eventually gave up. I can tell it still hangs over Chris’s head—he told me a couple of years ago he wished he could just sit down with him and ask him why. But if Robert wanted to find us now, he wouldn’t have any trouble. Chris doesn’t exactly have a low profile.”

“Hmmm.” I frowned, staring at the photo of Robert and Chris. “Robert probably wouldn’t recognize him. I mean, he has transformed from a tiny five-year-old to a six-foot-two Muscle Man. Or he might just not be into superhero films. And didn’t you mention that Chris took Steven’s name? Robert wouldn’t have known that.”