Page 68 of The Life We Left Behind

There was no fixing that.

“I don’t know what to do,” I blurted out, spinning on the spot and looking at Blake like she’d be able to give me the answer. All I got was a wide-eyed stare in response before she slowly started shaking her head.

“No, wait, we can do this,” she said determinedly before she suddenly lurched out of her seat and joined me in pacing. “Let’s break it down into small steps.”

“Right! Okay, we can do this. First, I need to tell Cade—” And all the motivation seeped out of me. “Shit, how do I tell him this?”

“Well, start by explaining that Granny is the devil,” Blake scoffed. “What?” she objected at the look I shot her. “She is!”

She wasn’t exactly wrong.

“Okay, not getting bogged down in the details,” I decided, but when I went to start my pacing, Blake’s hand on my arm stopped me.

“It’s simple, Delaney. You tell Cade as gently as you can, and you let him meet his father. From there, you just take it one day at a time. You don’t have to decide how you’re going to exorcise the demon right away.”

I snorted a laugh. We were going to get a lot of miles out of this joke. I hoped Trace didn’t get too offended because once she got started, it would be impossible to hold Blake back.

My eyes moved to the kitchen door. “So, I just go upstairs and tell Cade, then,” I said.

Even I could hear the dread in my voice.

Blake’s eyes were filled with sympathy, but she didn’t say anything. I already knew what I needed to do.

“Okay, I can do this,” I muttered, trying to convince myself more than anything as I moved for the kitchen door.

“You got this, Dels,” Blake said quietly. “I’ll just…make some tea.”

I didn’t even have the energy to tell her not to. It would at least give her something to do.

I slowly trudged up the stairs, all the while aware that there was a ticking clock on this. I had no idea how long it would take Trace to confront his family. Or if he’d let me know when he was on his way. One more thing we really should have decided before I’d stormed in here like the house was on fire.

I paused in the hallway outside the bedroom that Cade had claimed as his own, and my eyes lifted to the ceiling as I asked my dad for help to get through this. He would have known what to do right now. He wouldn’t have hesitated. He always had the answer for any problem I had, even if it wasn’t the one I wanted to hear. The grief swept over me for a moment as I let myself accept how much I missed him. The anger I felt over how he’d shut me out was starting to fade. I reached for the door handle, knowing there was no point in putting this off.

I found Cade sitting in the middle of his bed, watching the door patiently. “Hey, monkey.”

He looked so scared as he silently watched me close the door and move to the bed. I kicked off my shoes and settled on thebed, leaning against the headboard as he shuffled to lean his head against my chest.

“Hey, I don’t want you to worry, okay? Nothing is wrong. No one is hurt. This is…a good thing in a lot of ways.”

“Okay,” he whispered, but I could hear the fear in his voice.

“It’s about your dad, monkey. I saw him today. We had a talk, and a lot of stuff came out that we didn’t know.” I sighed, not knowing how to word the next bit.

“He didn’t know about me,” Cade whispered. He peered up at me with his big brown eyes, and I knew instantly what had happened, even though he admitted it seconds later. “I listened.”

I gave him that motherly look of disapproval before I hugged him tighter. “Yeah, monkey. Your dad’s mom did something really horrible, and she made sure that he didn’t know about you. She lied to me. To him. To everyone.”

I had no reservations about throwing darling Regina under the bus. Just as I would never call her Cade’s grandmother, I also had no intention of her ever being allowed in his life.

“Why would she do that?” he asked.

“It’s kind of hard to explain, monkey. She never thought I was good enough for your dad. She wanted him to marry into a family with money, and she thought that was more important than what any of us wanted and what was happening.”

It didn’t sound quite as maniacal when I worded it that way.

“So…is that what he did? Does he have another family?”

“He did get married, but they recently got divorced. He doesn’t have any other children.”

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