Page 63 of The Chosen Two

At the mention of our kids, something flashes across his eyes. He furrows his brow and looks downward at the bedsheet, as if trying to pull at a loose string of the shroud covering a long-lost memory he can’t quite make out.

“Our children…”I move closer. “Yes, Jake. Our children. Jessie, Phoebe, Natalie, and Sammy. Do you remember them? Or has this bitch somehow managed to wipe them completely from your mind?”

Callie giggles. “There’s no need for name calling, Miranda. I would never disrespectyoulike that. And I don’t wipe minds. I just cause a cessation of obligations. That means he wants to behere. You should walk away now, before you get hurt more. You are the Guardian. You don’t need this man to find your true power.”

Now I laugh. “I don’t need that man, but you, a goddess, do? And for the record, the only way to cessate the obligations of being a parent would be to make someone completely forget they are one.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a fool. Cessate is not a word!”

Color rises in my cheeks. “Whatever.”

Jake softly repeats, “our children,” in a tone that hints at emotion, but only confusion at that.

Sitting naked on the edge of that massive bed, he suddenly looks so small. He’s innocent in this, a pawn. Granted he’s a pawn that got to sleep with four goddesses for a few weeks, but still. He didn’t choose this life.

Moving briskly to kneel before him, I take his hands in mine and look into his eyes. I hope he’s in there somewhere. I hope when I wake his ass up from this, he can forgive himself. I also hope I have it in me to forgive him, because, on some level, he did choose those women. Between forgetting about our family and the massive amounts of infidelity, this may be a difficult reawakening for us to handle. But that’s all later. Right now, I need to get him off this mountain.

I look him in the eyes, and even though his eyes move to lock on mine, I can tell he doesn’t actually see me.

He keeps whispering, “Our children. Our children. Our children.”

“Yes, Jake. Our children. Jessie…Phoebe…Natalie…Sam. Do you remember them? They’re home, and they miss you.”

“Our children. Our children. Our children.”

To my left, Callie watches, biting her lip shakily. “Oh my dear, naïve, Miranda. You’re just dragging out the inevitable. You know how weak-minded men can be.”

I glare at her. “It will take your father to help you if you broke a good man.”

Her face becomes a mask devoid of emotion, but when she swallows hard, I know she’s nervous. I scootch closer to Jake and speak softer, hoping only he will hear me.

“Jake, do you remember the day we brought Jessie home from the hospital?” Hope calms my heart when he stops his quiet chant. "We’d had only an hour of sleep the two nights we were there. Remember? She wouldn’t let us put her down without wailing, and we couldn’t bear to leave her in the nursery. She nursed all night, and the nurses yelled at me for keeping her on me for so long. And then it was time to go home. They had us exit that hospital with this brand-new baby in her car seat. No owner’s manual. No real instructions. We had no idea what we were doing. But they let us take her home. That was it. And we’ve been scared every day since. Every single day!”

The harem behind Jake whimpers, and Callie’s lips press into a white line. But Jake tilts his head to the side as if to hear me better.

I rub the back of his hand. “The fear that we wouldn’t know how to keep her alive turned into the fear that we would screw her up. And let’s be honest, we did screw her up. We screwed up all our kids, but they’re still pretty fucking amazing regardless, and that’s got to at least be partially because of you, right? I mean, yes, I am a ridiculously amazing mom. Top notch really. But we’re a team in this.”

Jake stares at me in silence, a coin spinning on its edge, and no one knows which way it’s going to tip. I need to control the fall.

I let out a brief laugh, hoping it sounds convincing. “Oh my god! Do you remember when we were driving home from...I don’t remember from what. But both Phoebe and Jessie had reached their limit with the car ride. So, Jessie started one of her long-ass tirades. And after six solid minutes of Jessie whining, yelling, and flailing while spewing her three-year-old stream of consciousness, Phoebe just let out a tiny ‘Meh’ from her car seat. And Jessie screeched, ‘No! You don’t get a turn! Ever!’”

I have tears in my eyes when I finish the anecdote. My laughter isn’t real, but the tears are, because behind these memoires I keep thinking, what if this is all for nothing? Maybe I need more heartwarming stories, less amusing ones. Think, Miranda. Think!

“Oh! Remember when Jessie and Phoebe would fight over who got to snuggle you first at bedtime?” The corners of his mouth twitch, but not enough. I need to go more personal. And fast. I want to get out of here.

“Remember how excited Phoebe was when we brought Natalie home from the hospital? How she bounced around in her tutu, chanting, ‘I’m a little sisteranda big sister!’ We were so afraid of how she’d feel about not being the baby anymore, but she was so in love withherbaby from the moment they met.” I stare into his face. Silently, a tear rolls down his cheek.

One more… come on Miranda, think. “Remember catching Sammy as he would jump off the couch, yelling, ‘Look Daddy! I can fly!’ in his little superhero pjs with the Velcro cape?”

More tears are seeping out of his overflowing eyelids now.

Callie notices too. She takes a step toward us and uses her silky, sultry voice. “Jake, come back to bed. Miranda can go take care of the kids. Miranda, honey, you know as well as I, while decent as lovers, men make shitty fathers.” She’s not entirely wrong, and I do know that first hand.

I think back to my eighteenth birthday. Instead of coming to my last ever band concert, my father was off fucking his girlfriend. He was home in time to cut my cake with my friends, but we all knew the cheap perfume clinging to him was not my mom’s. They dispersed quickly after I blew out the candles, not wanting to be a part of my twisted memory. He laughed in my face. “Some friends.” I could actually smell the sex in his breath, mixed with the sweet icing from my cake. I spent the night in the bathroom, throwing up and finding more ways to distract myself from the emotional torment he put me through.

But every birthday with Jake has been different than that. Flowers sent to work, cake under moonlight, always with a “Happy Birthday, Baby. Make a wish.” And he hasalwaysbeen there for our babies. He’s missed flights, business trips, calls, and deals, just to make sure he is always there for our kids’ birthdays and events. Every concert, every recital, every conference. He is there.

Callie takes my long silence as my compliance. “You see Miranda, your kids are better off without him. They’re old enough that they don’t need him anymore.”

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