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She was still numb.
No, she was aching. There was a lump in her throat, and she thought her heart was going to break all over again.
Joseph Delacamp had come into her store today, and he’d found out he had a child. He wasn’t pleased. She could see that on his face.
Maybe he was worried that she would come after him for support, or would try to make him take some interest in his son. His wife wouldn’t like that. His mother would like it even less.
Well, Louisa could put Joe’s mind to rest. She wanted nothing at all from him. He could keep his society wife and his society life.
Once upon a time she’d thought she couldn’t live without Joe…but she’d learned differently. She wondered that she was able to keep breathing after she’d left town…left him. And yet, day after day, breath after breath, she survived.
Not that it hadn’t been tough at times.
She’d moved to Erie when she was almost three months pregnant and had worked full-time throughout the remainder of her pregnancy for Elmer Shiner at his small chocolate store. Somehow she’d managed to survive her mother’s death, just weeks before Aaron’s birth.
Elmer had helped her through that. And he’d been the one to suggest she bring the baby to work with her, when Aaron was born.
Elmer had started out a boss and turned into her best friend. She smiled at the thought. Oh, maybe it was odd, having a seventy-year-old man as a friend, but Elmer was full of life and wisdom. He was the only father figure Aaron had ever known.
She owed him a debt she’d never be able to repay.
Everything she had, she had because of Elmer.
Aaron had never gone to day care, but had spent his first five years going to the candy store with her. He was a favorite with the customers.
When Elmer’s lease on the building ran out, he announced he was ready to retire, and sold her the chocolate-making machinery at a ridiculously low price.
He’d helped her locate her new building. Helped her set up everything and get the store off the ground. He still stopped in almost every day, just to check on her and was always willing to work when she needed him.
She heard the downstairs door slam.
She rented the upstairs flat. Elmer lived in the lower one. He was home.
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
She ran down the back stairs that connected the two apartments and knocked on the door.
“Come on in, Louie,” he called.
“Elmer…” She wanted to tell him everything that had happened and tried to force the words out, but her throat constricted, and all she managed to do was cry.
“There, there, puddin’. Don’t cry.” He wrapped her in his arms and patted her back.
“I don’t cry,” she said midsob.
“What happened?” the gray-haired man said in a gruff voice. “Did something happen to Aaron?”
“No,” she finally managed to say. “Not really, at least not that he knows about. His father came into the store today.”
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
Elmer let her go and stared at her. “What’s he doing in Erie? I thought you left him behind in Georgia?”
“So did I. But he’s here. He’s working at the hospital, so he’s living in Erie.” She gulped convulsively. “Oh, Elmer, it’s so horrible. Aaron walked into the room and Joe knew—he couldn’t help but know. Aaron’s the spitting image of him at seven. Joe knew and he looked furious. He’s probably worried a secret son will upset the life his parents planned for him, that it will upset his perfect society wife. I don’t know what he’s going to do, and I’m sick with worry.”
“Now, what’s to worry about? He went and got himself engaged to someone else all those years ago, despite the fact he’d asked you to marry him. So you sign some paper saying you don’t want anything at all from him, make it all legal,” Elmer said, echoing her own thoughts. “You and Aaron have got along without him this long. You certainly can manage. Just go see a lawyer and make it all legal-like, then he’ll have nothing to complain about.”
“You think?” she asked.
She needed reassurance. She’d built a wonderful, happy life for herself and her son. She didn’t want Joe Delacamp to complicate it.
“Sure I think.” Elmer patted her back. “Now, stop fretting and go get some rest. You call a lawyer. That Donovan guy across the street seems okay. At least Sarah seems to think so.” He laughed.
Weddings seemed to be becoming commonplace within the Perry Square business community.
Libby at the hair salon had married her neighbor, Josh, the eye doctor. Then Sarah, the interior decorator who’d opened her store about the same time Louisa opened The Chocolate Bar, married Donovan, from the neighboring law firm.
“You’re right. I’ll call Donovan tomorrow.”
“Then call me. I’ll watch the shop when you go and see him.”
“Thanks, Elmer. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Well, don’t look to be figuring it out anytime soon. I plan to stick around a good long time.” He paused a moment and then said, “Did I tell you I have a date?”
“No,” Louisa said, knowing he was trying to change the subject, to brighten her mood. She was more than happy to allow him to. “Who?”
“You know Mabel, that acupuncturist? I was a bit nervous about dating a lady who pushed pins for a living, but she’s mighty cute.”
Louisa couldn’t help the small smile. Mabel had been hanging out at the candy store a lot, but only on days when Elmer was there. She sensed a romance in the making. “When are you going out?”
“Next week. She asked me for this weekend, but I told her me and Aaron had plans.”
“Oh, Elmer, you should have simply canceled.”
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “There’s a bunch of blue gill in the lake that have my name on them. And I got tickets to some fancy-shmancy show Mabel wants to see, so it all worked out.”
“If you’re sure.”
Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
Why couldn’t she shake that thought?
Because Joe was in Erie.
Somewhere, right outside that window, Joe Delacamp was walking around, breathing the same air she was.
Elmer must have sensed her thoughts. He said, “I’m positive about fishing with Aaron. Now, don’t you fret about that man—though I use the term in its very lightest sense. He got engaged to someone else, which means that not only isn’t he much of a man, he’s not very bright, either. Just call up Donovan tomorrow, and take it from there.”
Louisa felt a bit better as she climbed the stairs back up to her apartment. Of course Elmer was right. Joe hadn’t wanted children eight years ago; he wouldn’t want his son now.
The thought wasn’t quite as comforting as it should have been. She climbed into her pajamas and went to her room. She pulled a dark-green journal from her drawer and started writing.
“Dear Joe, today you met your son—the son you never wanted….”
As she wrote, she glanced up at the eight similar books that sat on the top shelf, above the television. She’d started a journal right after she found out she was pregnant and had bought a new one when Aaron was born. After that she bought a new journal on each of her son’s birthdays.
If Aaron ever wanted to meet his father, she planned on giving them to Joe as an introduction of sorts. An introduction to a son he’d never known and hadn’t wanted.
My heart froze in my chest when Aaron walked in. I saw the look of understanding dawn on your face, and then the raw, bitter anger. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry, but it would have been a lie. No matter what your mother said, I didn’t plan to get pregnant, I wasn’t trying to trap you. You were engaged to someone else and asked me for time. I’d have given you anything…but I didn’t have time to give. Your mother was right—Aaron and I would have held you back from the life you were born to have. My only sorrow was that you’ll never know what you missed.
She wrote and finally she rested. Her last thought was Joe Delacamp had met his son today.
Chapter Two
Joe waited outside the candy store, still uncertain what to do, what to say to Louisa.
He worked third shift last night, and was kept busy for the entire eight hours. But at the oddest time a mental picture of the boy, his son, would explode in his mind.
Aaron.
He’d whispered the name to himself, marveling in the wonder of having a son, and strangling on the knowledge that he’d missed so much.
He spotted Louisa walking down the block.
She still was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. The kind of woman who didn’t realize how striking she was.
If all that lay between them didn’t exist, she was the kind of woman he’d ask out.
Her expression when she spotted him gave none of her thoughts or feelings away. So many things about Louisa were different than he remembered, but that was probably the biggest change in her.
When they were kids he’d been able to read her like a book. Well, now the book was closed, at least for him.
He refused to speculate about whether there was another man reading her these days.
Joe met that emotionless face and wondered if maybe he’d been wrong, maybe he just thought he’d known her when they were kids.
The Louisa he’d believed in could never have done what she’d done.
“Louisa, we have to talk,” he said.
“Come in,” was her wooden response.
She unlocked and opened the front door and set a stack of papers down on the counter to her left.
“What do you want, Joe?”
What he wanted was to have the first seven years of his son’s life back, but since he couldn’t have that, he settled for asking, “Why?”
Maybe if he could understand, he could forgive Louisa.
She turned and he could see pain in her expression.
“Joe, I never meant for you to know,” she said softly. “And now that you do, it doesn’t change anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to make an appointment with a lawyer. I’ll have it all drawn up, nice and legal. Aaron and I expect nothing from you.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it? How could you keep the fact that I had a son from me?”
“Joe, I was going to tell you, but then that announcement came. You’d just gotten engaged to Meghan.”
“I explained that.”
“You asked me for time…. I didn’t have time to give you.”
“You should have told me then.”
“And what? You’d have gone against your parents, risked the business merger, broken the engagement with Meghan?”
“It wasn’t real. Our parents felt the stockholders would be more comfortable merging the companies if they thought the families were merging through a marriage between us. But it wasn’t real. I told you that. You should have believed me.”
“I did. I believed you when you said repeatedly you didn’t want children. You had a life all planned out. I couldn’t take your dreams away from you.”
“You were my dream. You know that.”
“Joe, look at you, a doctor working in an E.R. You’ve done everything you wanted. You accomplished your dreams. I couldn’t take them away from you.”
“So you made the decision for me? You left, taking my son with you…a son I didn’t even know existed.”
Louisa might have learned to hide her emotions, but Joe couldn’t. He could hear the pain in his own voice, but it did little to reflect the depth of what he was feeling.
“Joe, my whys and the past aren’t worth talking about. We can’t change it. It’s over. I know you’re worried about what your wife will think, what your family will think. They never have to know. I’ll have the papers drawn up and send them to you stating we have no claim on you financially. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to work.”
She turned as if she was going to leave, but he grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around.
She’d shut him out by not telling him about his son, but she would never shut him out like that again.
“I do mind,” he said. “We have to come to some sort of agreement here and now. The kind of agreement that doesn’t require a lawyer.”
He dropped his hand from her shoulder.
This time Louisa didn’t move.
“There’s nothing to agree on. Aaron’s my son.” Her voice was flat and her statement final. As if she expected him to shrug his shoulders and simply walk away from the knowledge that he had a son.
Maybe Louisa hadn’t known him any better than he’d known her.
“He’s my son, too,” he said softly.
“Only in the most biological sense. You’re nothing to him.”
