Page 2 of Revived

“She knew. I have a picture of her holding him.” She reached into her pocket and pulled the picture out. I guess she had brought it as some sort of memory to share at the graveside of the woman so vile that she kept my own son from me.

I held the picture, my mother holding a little baby swaddled in a blue blanket with tiny little guitars all over it. My stomach rolled and it felt as though the Earth was spinning out from underneath me. I crouched down, tucking my head as close to my knees as I could get, before looking back up at the woman who just rocked my entire fucking world off its axis. “You mean to tell me that I’m a father to a kid I never knew about? How the hell does something like that happen?”

She sighed again, shrugged her shoulders and came over to sit in front of me on the grass blanketing another poor soul’s grave. “I tried,” she said, just above a whisper. “I told your mom. I even snooped through my dad’s stuff and finally found the name of your manager. I sent him a message. He was none too kind in his response about gold digging whores, paternity tests, and the like. When I explained I had no trouble with you taking a paternity test, but that I had my own money and didn’t need anything from you except for you to know, he told me that you didn’t want a kid or a woman holding you back from the big time. Said he passed along the word, and that’s what you had for him.”

“You believed I’d ever say something like that?”

“I never believed you’d leave without me. We had a plan, and then one day you weren’t there anymore.” She cocked her head to the side, using the tree just behind me to keep the sun from blinding her as she studied me. Her blond hair, slightly curly now, seemed to glow with a halo effect from the sun’s rays that snuck around the tree’s edges and lit her hair with golden fire. It was a sight to see as I answered her with the only words that rang true in that moment.

“Fair enough, I guess, but Kendra, I was always coming back for you.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t have let my parents, or some stupid boy they forced on me, push you away then.” She glared at me a moment. “He was gay by the way. That’s why it didn’t bother him that I was in love with someone else and waiting for him. Waiting for you.”

We sat in silence, both of us absorbing the cluster fuck our younger selves had made of our lives. “Ken,” I called to her and her eyes shifted toward me. The tears pooling in those same sapphire blue eyes I used to be unable to look away from would haunt me for the rest of my life.

“Yeah?”

“We have a kid together?” I still couldn’t wrap my head around that shit.

“We do.”

“Does he know about me? Does he think…”

She was shaking her head vehemently before I could finish. “I told him he would have to wait until he turned 18, and that it was for his own good. That’s all I’ve ever told him.”

“Because you thought I’d reject him?”

She shrugged. “I hoped you wouldn’t, but in all honesty, everyone in your life told me that was exactly what you had done.”

I glared over at the plot where my mother had been laid to rest. My fist clenched and my teeth gnashed together, mind in a red haze, I tried to process the betrayal. Then the knowledge that I missed out on my son’s entire childhood kicked in. Then the tears started, and I sobbed, right there in the middle of the cemetery. Not one tear was for the mother I’d lost. It was all for the baby, the toddler, the boy, and the teenager that I’d never get to know. He was a damn adult now, had to be.

When I was finally able to pull myself together, Kendra was rubbing soothing circles on my back. I hadn’t even realized she had moved until then. “I’m so sorry, Gabe. I didn’t realize. I would have tried harder if I’d…”

“Don’t. This was a fuck up we all had a part in, and the two of us were played for the fools we were back then. I’d like to meet him though.”

“Of course,” she said softly. “I’d like to be able to prepare him for that meeting first.” Kendra hesitated in whatever it was she seemed to want to say. “This is going to be big for him. I realize it will for you too, but he’s my son. I don’t want him blindly walking into something so life-altering.”

“Kendra, you don’t have to explain. I get it.”

“So, how do you want to do this? Give me your phone number, or do you want to just arrange to meet at a certain place and time? I, um,” Kendra glanced back over at the patch of newly-lain sod over the spot where my mother was buried. “Maybe it can wait a while. This isn’t the best timing.”

“Wait a while?” She flinched at my harsh tone. Her reaction reminded me that none of this was her fault, that other people had stepped in and created this mess for us. “I think 18 years is plenty of waiting, and I’m certainly not waiting longer for someone who hid him from me all this time. Fuck her!”

“She was your mom.”

“She was barely that, even before I found out that she kept my child a secret all this time.” I turned my back on her grave. “I spoke to her once a month, like clockwork. At first, I was checking to make sure she’d be okay with me gone. Then it was to make sure she got her hush money and didn’t attempt to make up sob stories to sell to the press. Once a month for nineteen years, and not once did she ever mention him to me.”

“What a mess our parents made for us, huh? Didn’t matter which side of town we lived in. They both messed up equally.”

“You still talk to yours?”

Kendra offered up a distant look. “My parents were gone before Chevy turned a year old.”

“Chevy?

“That’s his name,” she told me as a sweet smile bloomed on her face bringing with it a blush that reddened her cheeks.

“You didn’t,” I laughed out loud, the sound ragged and ravaged by the crying I’d just done.

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