Roy Cray lied. He released the story about my pregnancy with the morning news cycle. It was repeated on nearly every celebrity and gossip blog in the country.
I called Cray before I boarded my plane.
“You told me I had 24 hours.”
“We decided to go to press.”
“So why did you bother to call me, then?”
“Come on, Tamar, you’re in the business. I’m sure you have friends who would have loved to have this story. My editor was concerned I’d tipped you off. We didn’t want me getting scooped.”
“Thanks for the professional courtesy.”
“So, no comment? I mean, you have to tell your side to somebody? Where is the child?”
“Figure it out yourself,” I yelled, ending the call.
***
My taxi stopped at the gate to Stephen’s subdivision. There were a couple of reporters hanging around.
I’d texted Stephen to let him know I was here. He texted back:
Your name is still on the guard’s list.
The taxi pulled through the gate and emotional adrenaline came down heavy. I don’t think I’d ever felt so tired. It was the racing of my heart. The constant, constricted pounding in my chest was wreaking havoc on every muscle in my body.
He’s going to hate me.
It was all I could think. The possibility of a civil relationship between us was over. Over, again.
Stephen opened the door. He was leaning on a cane. He hadn’t shaved in possibly days because he had a small beard. His curly hair was a mass of waves that wrapped around each other like plants on a vine. He reached up with his free hand and ran it through his hair like he was subconscious about it. Everything about him looked different. His looks, his physicality, and his demeanor. He didn’t look bad, just different – like a recluse.
“I’ve been calling you for hours.” His voice was sharp.
“I was on the plane. I got here as fast as I could.”
“Seems like you’ve been getting here for twelve years.” Those words were even sharper.
I hadn’t even entered the house and he was jabbing at me. “Are you going to let me in?”
Stephen stepped aside.
I dropped my bag on the foyer table and shrugged out of my coat. “Let’s just talk, okay?”
He nodded and took my coat. He hung it in the hall closet. He was getting around good. I was afraid to say so. I had no idea how he would take it. I didn’t need him biting my head off any more than he already would be.
Once he finished with my coat, he turned to face me. “Ladies first.” He’d taken the temper out of his voice. He swayed a palm in the direction of the living room. Hospitable though he was, the tight lines on his forehead and his cinched lips told me what was really in his heart right now.
I didn’t waste time getting started. “I’m probably not going to be able to make this make sense to you.”
Stephen raised a hand, interrupting me. “Did you have a baby eleven years ago?”
“Are you going to let me tell you what happened?”
“No, Tay.” He frowned. “I’m not in the mood for your melody of words. I just want answers.”
I took in a deep breath of tense air. “Here I’d prepared my speech.”
Stephen said nothing.
I swallowed before saying. “I had a boy.”
Stephen dropped his body onto the arm of a chair. He closed his eyes and released a long, solid, pained breath. “Is he alive?”
I cleared my throat and answered. “Yes.”
He stood and took a few steps away from me, like he needed to distance himself. “Is he my son?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Stephen closed his eyes again. When he opened them, I could see the glint of tears. “Where is he?”
“He lives in South Georgia. He was adopted.”
Anger flashed across his face. “By whom?”
“My mother’s sister.”
“Aunt Joe?” The name came out like it was stuck in his throat.
All I had were nods and yeses, so I nodded again.
Stephen didn’t respond for a long minute. I could see the wheels turning in his head. He was shocked. Shocked into a temporary silence. “So, you see him?”
“Yes. I’m living with Aunt Joe right now.”
He shook his head like I’d given him the wrong answer. “I mean, you’ve always seen him?”
“Not often. Sometimes, when I visited.”
His eyes became tiny slits as he stared me down. “Does he know you’re his mother?”
“No.”
“Who does he think you are?”
“His cousin.”
Stephen nodded. “Is he healthy? Happy?”
“He is.” I tried to keep the pride out of my voice. “He’s a great kid.”
Stephen stood. Attempting to pace, he hobbled around on his cane before stopping and dropping down on the arm of another chair, further away from me. “Does he have another father?”
“No, my aunt is single – you know that – but she’s really active in her church, so he participates in different mentoring activities with the men.”
Stephen was silent again. He raised his hand to wash over his hair and face a few times. Frustration was building and then releasing. He was like a ticking bomb. I took the moments to steel myself against whatever he would finally say when he spoke.
“Tamar, I want to understand this. I really do, but you need to tell me why you did this to me?”
I threw up my hands. “I was eighteen. I had left home. A home I didn’t think I could come back to. I was pregnant. I had neither a job or the skills to get a job that would feed me, let alone a baby.”
“That’s because you decided to disappear. We graduated from high school and you left.”
“You left first,” I replied, correcting him.
Stephen frowned. “I left for two weeks. You knew I was coming home before I had to go back again—”
I interrupted him. “You’re asking me what happened and I’m telling you. You left and you didn’t even say goodbye to me—”
This time it was Stephen who interrupted. “Don’t you dare act like I didn’t try to say goodbye. I’m tired of your distorted memory of how things happened. You were locked away in the house. You wouldn’t answer the door, or the phone, or an email, or a letter. Your father was like a pit bull. He wouldn’t let me near you.”
I closed my eyes, covered my face with both hands, and shook my head. I did the best I could at the time. I empowered myself with my truth before speaking again. “You asked me what happened.”
Stephen sighed, calming himself. “Did you know you were pregnant when you left Pine?”
“Yes.”’
“Why didn’t you think you could tell me that, Tay? We were in love.”
I finally sat. The weight of my answer was like that emotional cloud that engulfed me back in the taxi. This was the hard part. “You were leaving for summer training. We weren’t talking. We weren’t together.”
“We weren’t talking because you wouldn’t talk to me.”
I chuckled painfully. “What difference does that make? Our relationship was over.”
Stephen closed his eyes to my words. Then he opened them with his. “I loved you. You knew that.”
I shook my head. “No. I knew a video was circulating. That’s what I knew. I also knew you were leaving. My father hated me. I was being tortured by the entire town and the entire Internet. That’s what I knew.”
He shook his head. “You knew who I was, from age six. You knew I wouldn’t want you dealing with a pregnancy alone.”
“I hated you.” My lip trembled. “I hated you back then.” Tears slipped down my cheeks. “You were being celebrated, and I was being vilified. Stop acting like you don’t know what was going on.”
Stephen groaned. “We’ve hashed this out already.”
“Not in the context of Isaiah.”
He was propelled to his feet again. He walked in my direction, closing the gap he’d opened between us. “Isaiah?”
I reached for my bag. I removed tissues and a small photo album. “Stephen Isaiah Ferguson.” I extended the album.
He accepted it and sat with it. “You named him Stephen.” Wonder filled his face. It almost hinted of a smile.
“No one calls him Stephen. We call him Isaiah.”
Stephen took his time going through the pictures. Occasionally, he asked me about one and I told him what I knew. Unshed tears filled his eyes. “He looks like me.”
“He does.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe you kept him from me.”
I shrugged. “You were going to college, Stephen. We had both worked so hard. We had scholarships. You wanted to play ball. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”
He closed the album and placed it on the table. “I don’t understand why you would let me learn about my son from a reporter. Why didn’t you tell me back when you first came home?”
I spoke on an exasperated wind. “It was complicated at first, but then I knew I had to tell. That was the reason I called you. This is what I wanted to talk about.”
Stephen frowned. “Called me? When?”
“A little over a month ago. I left a message, and I sent you a note in the mail with a card.”
Stephen chuckled bitterly. “Are you kidding? What, is the Illuminati conspiring against us? I didn’t get a message from you and sure didn’t get a note. Why are you lying?”
I rolled my neck. “Lying. I’ve never lied to you before in my life.”
“Except when you didn’t tell me I had a son,” he practically snarled the words.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what? Let me guess a secret and a lie are two different things, right?” He raised his finger and pointed like he wanted to jab it into my face. “Tamar, they’re not, so from December 22nd up until today, you lied to me every time you talked to me.”
I felt heat rush to my face. I crossed my arms. “Technically you don’t have a son. Like I said, he’s been adopted.”
“If he’s my flesh and bone, I will always have a son.”
I jumped back and dropped my arms. His screamed could have shattered the windows.
“You should have told me.”
The door to the townhouse flew open and I heard footsteps coming from the foyer. Robert and Donna Pierce entered the room. I cringed. This was about to get worse.