Page 82 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

She didn’t hesitate to answer. “No. I haven’t seen him in a very long time. Since before you were born, actually.”

Ethan connected some of the dots in his mind about the information the adoption agency had given him. “He didn’t want to be involved then, obviously.”

“No.” She huffed. “He was not at all interested in helping me, which is part of the reason why I made the decision to give you up.” Then she exhaled a shaky breath. “Hearing you now, I don’t regret what I did, but I have carried around a lot of guilt. I often wondered if you resented me or felt unwanted or carried some trauma from adoption.”

“No, Marcela, no.” He raised his hand to his empty living room. “Please don’t worry or feel guilty. I have a wonderful life, my parents—” He stopped, not wanting to offend his birth mother, but she went on, seemingly unruffled.

“From what you’ve told me, your parents gave you everything and more than I could have hoped for.”

Another few seconds of quiet passed, and as if she could tell he was nervous to ask, she said, “I suppose you’d like to know why I decided on adoption.”

“If…” He cleared his throat. “If you want to tell me.”

“My parents immigrated from Mexico, and I was raised being told that this was the land of opportunity, that if I tried hard enough, I could achieve the American Dream. I was the first one in my family to go to college, on a full ride to Georgetown, but then I met a boy.” She let out what sounded like an exhausted breath. “How all trouble starts, I guess, with a cute boy.”

He smiled, relieved that she was okay with telling him this story and that she didn’t sound too distressed over it.

“He was handsome, tall with green eyes…looked a little like Jason Priestly.”

“Jason Priestley?”

“He was on90210.” At Ethan’s silence, she went on. “Anyway, he was on the rowing team and came from an…entitled background.”

Ethan snorted, imagining the type of guy his biological father was.

Marcela went on. “We met in a philosophy class freshman year and were on and off for a while. When we got back for our second year, we went to some party, and I guess we both had a little too much to drink because neither one of us thought about birth control. A few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant, and when I told him, he asked how I knew it was even his. We weren’t officially together, so how did he know I hadn’t been with anyone else.” She sniffed. “But that was just an excuse. He knew I hadn’t been with anyone else. I thought I loved him.”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said.

After an audible inhale, she continued, “My parents were strict Catholics. I didn’t know how to tell them that their only daughter with a scholarship to school messed it all up.”

Ethan rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “Yeah, I understand that Catholic guilt.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I went to Catholic school.”

Marcela laughed quietly on the other end, and Ethan grinned at their commonality.

“So, there weren’t many options for me,” she said. “But I knew if I told my parents, they would want me to leave school, they’d take on extra jobs to help me raise the baby, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t give up all of my hard work, all of their hard work. Brad was not going to help me, and abortion was out of the question, so adoption was my only choice.”

“I understand,” Ethan said, because he did, although he hated the man who gave him half his chromosomes. To take no responsibility whatsoever and leave it all up to Marcela was an awful thing to do. Then to break the silence, he said, “His name was Brad? You had to know he’d turn out to be terrible.”

A big burst of laughter erupted from Marcela. “Too right.”

“Thank you for explaining it to me,” he said after she quieted.

“I want you to know that I thought—think—about you all the time, every day, but especially on your birthday. For the first three years, I’d get a few pictures. I was able to see you blow out your candles, and I was so grateful to your mom for allowing me a small snippet, but I couldn’t bear to see them anymore. I knew you had a good life, and I realized that if I was going to be the person I was meant to be, achieve all the dreams I was supposed to, I couldn’t hang on to you any longer. I had to let go, so I did. But not one day has ever gone by that I didn’t think of you and holding you for the few minutes I got in the hospital.”

Ethan took his glasses off to wipe his eyes.

“I’m so glad you reached out, Ethan. I…” She sniffled and cleared her throat before continuing, “If you would allow it, I would like to talk more, text and call.”

“I would really love that,” he said, putting his glasses back on.

“I want to hear more about your family and how your brother is doing, and more about Delaney. I want to know everything.”

Ethan grinned. “I want to know everything about you too. I told you about the fundraiser and—”

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