“I’ve gotta tell you something. And I need you to actually hear me out completely, before you say anything back.”
My stomach tightened hard. “Okay.”
“I invited Reggie to the championship game tomorrow.”
I didn’t say a single word back. I genuinely couldn’t. That particular name hadn’t been spoken inside our house in nearly a decade, and hearing it come out of Deshawn’s own mouth felt like somebody had suddenly flipped a switch somewhere in the dark.
“He found me on social media three months back,” Deshawn said, talking fast now. “He kept messaging me over and over. Stuff like, ‘I want to make things right, son.’ And, ‘Let me actually be there for the big moments in your life.’ Says he’s changed completely. He’s married now, to a woman named Nadine. Made real money in commercial real estate.”
“Three months?” I shot back. “You’ve been talking to him for three entire months, and you never once said anything to me?”
My son looked down at the quilt between us. “I kept trying. But every single time I opened my mouth at dinner, I chickened out at the last second. I figured if I waited any longer, you’d end up hearing it from somebody else eventually, and that would’ve been considerably worse.”
“Scared of what, exactly?”
“Scared you’d think I was somehow choosing him over you.”
I rubbed one hand hard across my own face, trying to keep my voice level and steady. The clock on the nightstand read 11:14 that morning. Puck drop sat less than eighteen hours away.
“Deshawn, do you actually know what time he called me, the night your mother died?”
“Dad.”
“Two in the morning. And you were the only one still there, by the time I finally arrived at the house.”
“I know the whole story already.”
“Then you already know exactly what kind of man walks straight out on his own child.”
My son finally looked up at me directly. His eyes were wet, but his jaw stayed set firm. That particular detail was what genuinely got to me. He wasn’t backing down an inch.
“Dad, please try to actually understand this. I’m not asking you to like him. I’m asking you to trust me instead.”
I wanted badly to forbid the whole thing outright — to tell him that man had no right whatsoever to walk into the single most important night of his life and start playing biological father all of a sudden. The words sat right there on my tongue, ready.
