Page 49 of The Regrettable Mistake

“It’s been three days,” I lamented as my mom tsked.

“You need to learn patience, Son. After what you put that poor girl through, it’s the least you can do.”

“I understand that, but I’m missing her whole pregnancy.”

“Whose fault is that?” My mom snapped.

“Sorry. You’re right.”

She huffed and then sat beside me on her floral print couch that she hated six months after she bought it. She kept the thing out of sheer stubbornness because she didn’t want to hear Dad tell her “told you so” about the tiresome pattern.

“We all mess up. I even understand the reason you messed up in a weird way. The problem is, that reason you thought you had to go there, in itself was a slap in the face of the woman who married you for love and helped to raise your son. I don’t want you to lose hope, but I also don’t want you to live with false hope, Oliver. What you did to that woman…” Mom shook her head and held her hand over her heart. “I don’t know how she’s surviving it, especially knowing that she is having the baby of a man who only planned to use her as a nanny for his son.”

“Mom, I swear, when I first thought about the plan, it didn’t sound that bad.”

“Yeah?” She asked, and seemed genuine in her question.

“Yeah. I thought everything would be okay.”

“If you truly believed that, you would have been upfront with your plan from the very beginning. You would have sought out a woman who would agree to give your son the family atmosphere you craved for him, but without all the messy trappings of a real love match.”

“I wouldn’t want the type of woman who would agree to that to be in Den’s life,” I snapped.

“Yeah, and the type of woman you did want meant that you had to deceive them from the beginning. So, you knew what you were doing was wrong. Knew it would hurt that person if it ever got out. And it did. Not only did you hurt Steph, who absolutely did not deserve what you’ve put her through, but you hurt your son, that baby, our whole family and probably hers too. Her mother wouldn’t even speak to me when she was here. Granted, she’s always been a bit jealous of my maternal relationship with her daughter, but still… None of them even told me she was in the hospital or how she was doing.”

My mom was in tears by the time she was done explaining herself to me. I hadn’t realized just how many people had truly been affected by my actions until that moment. She was right. It hadn’t been only me and Steph living with the fallout. It was my son, both sets of our parents, her brother, our friends. Sure, we were the two most directly affected, but it didn’t end there. Our new child, when it was born, would also live with the ramifications of my dumbass decision.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” I admitted.

“Some things can’t be fixed. Sometimes, you just have to figure out how to live with the future you inadvertently created.”

That wasn’t the advice I wanted from my mom. I knew it was the truth, but it still sucked to hear. My phone lit up with an incoming call and I almost ignored it, since it was an unknown number, but my mom stared down at it. “You might want to answer that. Never know who it might be.” She patted me on the leg and then got up and walked away as I debated answering. Considering Steph had been admitted to the hospital once already in her pregnancy, I decided not to test fate and answered the call just before it stopped ringing.

“Hello?”

There was only silence on the other line for a minute, but I could hear someone breathing. I almost hung up, thinking it was Jia trying to call me again from jail, but that couldn’t be because it always came through as a collect call when she did.

“Hello?” I called out again.

“Ollie,” her voice sounded like heaven to me. “It’s Steph.”

“Got that from your voice, sweetheart.” I nearly fucked up and called her precious. That was a habit I would have to break because even though the meaning of it had changed over time for me, I knew she now understood what it had once meant. To say it had a tainted meaning now was an understatement.

“Did you get the gifts?”

“Yes, thank you. It was all perfect.” Silence grew thick and heavy on the other end of the line. I didn’t want to spook her or give my wife a reason to hang up on me, so I remained silent and exercised some of that patience my mom had been telling me I needed earlier.

Eventually, Steph spoke again. “I have an appointment on Thursday at eleven. Do you think you can make it?”

“I will be there, as soon as you tell me where to go.”

“It’s not until Thursday,” she reiterated.

“Right.”

“Okay. I’ll text you the information.”

“Steph?”

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