Page 89 of The Endowment Effect

Then once that timeframe went by, she’d ask to stay through the end of the year and then another school year and then another and then college. Her fears had her by the throat, making her believe worst-case scenarios.

She took a breath to calm herself and said, as collected as possible, “We’re supposed to move to Duxbury. I have a job waiting for me there.”

“I know, but I want to spend more time with Luke. He’s great and he seems to like me and I want to get to know him better.” She was quiet as she leaned back on her arms and then said, “Why didn’t you tell him about me?”

Birdie pulled a piece of grass from the sand and began to pull it apart, strip by strip, millimeter by millimeter. Just like her heart. “I was afraid he’d take you away from me.”

Mia seemed to be thinking through that comment. “From what little I know; it sounds like you weren’t friends… back then. Why would you… make a baby with someone you didn’t like?”

Birdie closed her eyes, wondering where to begin. How to have this conversation. “I liked your dad very much. We were just at different places in our lives. He was going away to college and I was heavily motivated to get out of Wayward.”

She was still omitting information. Still hiding parts and pieces of half-truths. Wasn’t that part of the parenting process? Sharing information your children were old enough to understand and process?

“Why didn’t you tell me that? Why did you have to tell me he didn’t want us?”

“I never told you that, Mia. You assumed it and I guess I never corrected you.”

Mia wiped her hands in front of her in distaste. “So you just let me believe he didn’t want us? That’s kind of shitty, Mom.”

“It was,” Birdie said in agreement. “I guess by that time, I was fearful you’d want to hunt him down. Leave. And here we are sitting in front of the ocean, hundreds of miles from home, and just a couple miles from downtown Wayward, and you’re telling me you want to stay.”

She dusted the sand from her hands. “First of all, we no longer have a home. Second, I’m not going to promise you that it’s only for a short time, because I’m not sure.”

“That’s… extremely… honest of you.”

“I’m mad at you for lying to me. You know that you lied, right? You’ve told me many times that omission is no different than lying.”

Oh, yes, she had. She wished she’d known those life lessons would one day bite her in the ass.

Karma.

“But, even though I’m mad at you, I also know how much you love me. All I’m asking for is more time with him. Will you let me have that?”

Birdie nodded. “I will. Has he agreed to this… extra time?” She thought of what Grant had confided in terms of Lucas’s issue with keeping loved ones at a distance.

Leave it to Lucas to come up with a rational, structured way to compartmentalize the people in his life in an orderly, sterile manner.

Mia looked out toward the ocean and then lowered her head, picking up a nearby reed and poking it in the sand, her hair creating a dark brunette curtain, hiding the emotions on her face. “Would you ask him for me?”

“You don’t want to ask him?” Birdie asked, surprised at her outspoken daughter’s sudden temerity.

“I’m afraid of what he might say,” she said, with an expression toggling between that of a child and a young woman. “I think I might, I don’t know, lose it if he were to say no. If he rejected me, for real.”

Wasn’t that just great?

Now, Birdie was torn between the fear of Mia wanting to live with her father in a town that hated her mother with an unholy level of disdain and being told by her father he didn’t want her.

Seeing the hope in those dark chocolate eyes, identical to her father’s, peering up with her with such vulnerability, Birdie knew, without a doubt, which fear she would have to force herself to overcome.

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