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Joe looked, as well, but all he could see was a door framed by shelves, loaded with little trinkety sorts of items.
“Do you have any suggestions?” he asked.
“Would you like an assortment of chocolates? That way you’re bound to have something everyone will like in the mix.”
“Fine. Give me…what do you think? Five pounds?”
“Well, that would ensure that everyone got their share and then some.”
“Great. Five pounds, then.”
He watched as Louisa ducked behind the big glass case. She plucked handfuls of chocolate from this pile, then from that, filling up a huge box.
Five pounds of chocolate was an awful lot of chocolate. Not only could he treat the staff, but all the patients, as well.
“So this is all yours?” he asked, needing to fill up the silence.
“Like I said, it’s mine and the bank’s. I bought out my old boss’s equipment when he decided to get out of the candy business.”
She smiled when she mentioned her old boss. Joe felt a spurt of something hot. What was it?
No way could it be jealousy. He and Louisa hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade. They had no claims on the other. He had no cause to be jealous.
“The lease was up on his store,” she continued, “so I moved everything here. Perry Square is perfect. There are so many businesses down here, and there’s been such a surge in tourism that The Chocolate Bar has done well its first year.”
“I’m happy for you.” He paused, looking for something else to say. “Do you ever go home?”
“No. With Mama dying six months after I left…well after that, there was nothing holding me there.”
“I heard about your mother. I was sorry.”
“Me, too. She’d have loved—” Louisa stopped short and stared at him a moment, then gave a little shake of her head “—to see me succeed. She always told me I could do anything I set my mind to.”
“She was an amazing lady.”
Louisa placed the box on the counter. “Here you go.”
“How much?”
“Nothing. It’s on the house.”
“I can’t take it without paying.” He reached in his pocket and withdrew a bill and placed it on the counter.
Louisa looked ready to argue, but suddenly her eyes moved past him, and focused on something behind him.
“Hey, Mom, I’m done with my homework. Can I take a Mud Pie home, do you think?”
Joe turned around and found himself face-to-face with a boy…a boy who had his black hair and his green eyes.
“Aaron, you know better than to interrupt when I have a customer. Go into the back, and I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
“Geez, I just want one stupid Mud Pie,” the boy mumbled as he left the room.
Joe stood, unable to move or say anything, as he tried to process what he’d just seen.
No, who he’d just seen.
“Louisa?” he said as he slowly turned around and faced her.
She didn’t need to answer his unasked question. It was there in her face.
Guilt. “Why?” he asked.
Why had she hidden the fact he had a son—he had a son!
The boy had to be sevenish, he thought, quickly doing the math in his head.
“Why?” he repeated.
Louisa was white as a sheet. “I didn’t mean for you to ever know.”
“That’s obvious,” he said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He didn’t want to.
Even after she’d left him without a word, Joe would have sworn that Louisa would never do anything so despicable.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you didn’t want kids—”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough. And I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry we rocked your nice, neat little world. You can be sure that wasn’t my intention. You never wanted kids—you made that clear. I didn’t plan on Aaron, but I don’t regret him. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Just walk away and forget that you saw me, forget that you saw him. Go back to the life your parents planned and plotted for you.”
When they were young and talked of a future, he’d said no children. He looked at the mess his parents and Louisa’s parents had made raising children and had decided he wouldn’t take the chance of following in their footsteps.
He was so young then, and all he’d wanted was the woman standing in front of him. He thought she’d known him inside and out, but if she thought he would turn away from her because she was pregnant, she’d never really known him at all.
But she was about to.
Joe needed to think. Needed to somehow find a way to breathe again. He felt as if he’d been sucker punched and there was no oxygen left in the room.
He turned to leave. Not to walk away, but to get his feet planted firmly beneath him before he tried to decide what to do next.
He just had one more question before he left. “What’s his name?”
For a moment he didn’t think Louisa was going to answer.
She sighed and said, “Aaron. Aaron Joseph Clancy.”
She hadn’t even given the boy his last name. The thought added to the pain.
He turned and walked toward the door, chocolates forgotten.
“Joe,” she called. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out.”
But figuring it out was harder than Joe could have imagined. Hours later Joe still didn’t have a clue. His mind couldn’t seem to focus on anything except the fact that he had a son.
Aaron.
The boy’s name was Aaron.
He’d lost the first seven years of the boy’s life…of Aaron’s life. He felt a sense of awe and wonder every time he thought his son’s name.
He made his way to the dock, though if asked he couldn’t have said how he got there.
“Aaron Joseph,” he whispered out loud. He didn’t say Clancy. The boy should be a Delacamp.
Louisa had given the boy his name for a middle name, but that’s the only thing Aaron had of his. He’d walked into the room, looked Joe straight in the eye, and there hadn’t been the slightest trace of recognition.
But Joe had known. Aaron looked just the way he had at that age. All gangly, not quite grown into his body. Dark hair. And his eyes.
Aaron had his eyes.
Joe had given him physical attributes, but nothing else. Not by choice, but that didn’t matter.
Joe had missed so much, so many things he should have done for and with his son.
He’d never gotten to change a diaper, never cradled him when he fussed. He hadn’t seen Aaron take his first step, never kissed a boo-boo. He’d never sat up with him all night when he was sick or afraid. He’d never sung him a lullaby.
Of course, with his lack of singing ability, Aaron probably wouldn’t miss that part, but Joe did. He resented the hell out of it.
The list of nevers kept growing as he sat on a bench at the end of the dock, mindlessly watching the sun sink behind the peninsula.
He hadn’t taken Aaron to his first day of school, hadn’t helped him with his homework. He’d never gotten to teach his son how to stand up to bullies, or how to stick up for the underdogs.
There were just too many “nevers.” The endlessness of them weighed so heavily on Joe he was afraid he couldn’t move under it.
Joe couldn’t change the “nevers.” His heart ached at the thought, but he was sensible enough to acknowledge one fact.
Joseph Anthony Delacamp had a son, and he didn’t plan to miss any more of his life.
That was a promise, to himself and to his son.
“Mamma, you’re sad today,” Aaron said that night.
Louisa had tried to keep up the appearance of normalcy for Aaron’s sake. Oh, rather than cooking dinner, she’d treated him to fast food, but that was a treat. She’d even managed to focus enough to scold him after he showered and missed a dirt smudge on his right arm.
“Soap. It’s not a real shower if you don’t soap all over,” she’d told him.
His grumbling had felt good. It had felt normal.
But nothing else did.
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
The thought kept intruding, inserting itself between showers and scoldings, making her stomach clench and her head ache.
“Mom?” Aaron repeated.
She’d finished reading a chapter of the newest Harry Potter book to Aaron. It was their evening tradition. She enjoyed sitting next to him, feeling his warmth and sharing the quiet time with her son.
Her son.
Not Joe’s. Joe had made it clear he didn’t want children all those years ago, and today, when he’d turned and seen Aaron…
“Mom? What’s up?”
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
Louisa pulled herself together and kissed Aaron’s forehead. “Nothing. I’m just tired. See you in the morning, bud.”
She walked woodenly toward the door.
“Hey, Mom?”
She turned back and drank in the sight of her son.
When he’d asked, she’d told him she’d loved his father, that they’d been young—too young to handle a relationship.
That much was true, at least as far as it went. She’d told him when he was older she would help him find and meet his father, if he wanted. He accepted her explanation and never seemed particularly bothered by the lack.
What would he think of Joe?
What would Joe would think of him?
Aaron was snuggled under the denim quilt she’d made him. It fit so perfectly with the dark-blue walls of his room. A giant poster of the planet earth was behind his head, other space pictures dotted the other walls. Aaron dreamed of being an astronaut someday, and she’d done her best to indulge him.
She wanted nothing more than for every one of her son’s dreams to come true.
“Yes, Aaron?” she asked.
“I love you.”
She held back the tears that threatened to overflow and managed to croak out, “I love you, too.”
She turned off the light, and shut the door.
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
