Caleb’s humor disappeared.
“You didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t give them back.”
“No.”
Mason looked at him.
Caleb rarely sounded wise.
It made his moments of wisdom irritatingly effective.
“You want to punish yourself, go ahead,” Caleb said. “But don’t mistake that for helping anybody.”
Mason stared into his coffee.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“The next right thing.”
“That’s your advice?”
“Best I got.”
“That’s bad advice.”
“Still better than most advice you’ve followed.”
Mason almost smiled.
Caleb nudged his shoulder.
“You can’t be her father yesterday. You can be something useful tomorrow.”
The next morning, Rose agreed to talk with him in the shelter garden.
The garden was small, enclosed by a wooden fence, with two benches beneath an old dogwood tree. Lily stayed inside eating pancakes with Nadine while Rose carried two coffees outside.
She gave Mason one.
He accepted it.
They sat at opposite ends of the bench.
The distance between them was perhaps three feet.
It felt larger than twelve years.
“I don’t know how to start,” Rose said.
“Start where you can.”
She looked at him.
“You used to say that.”
“I remember.”
She wrapped both hands around her coffee.
“After you left, I found out I was pregnant.”
Mason’s breathing stopped.
Rose did not look at him.
“I tried calling. Your number stopped working. I wrote to the clubhouse address. Nobody answered. I went there once, but the place was closed.”
“I was in New Mexico.”
“I heard.”
“You did?”
“Eventually. Rumors. Someone said you were dead. Someone else said you’d joined another club. Another person told me you didn’t want to be found.”
Mason closed his eyes.
“I was hurt. Badly. I was in a hospital for weeks.”
“I know that now.”
“When I got back, you were gone.”
Rose stared at the ground.
“Darren helped me.”
Mason’s jaw tightened.
“At first,” Rose added quickly. “He knew someone who knew my landlord. He helped with rent. He gave me rides to appointments. He acted kind.”
Mason said nothing.
“He didn’t become controlling overnight. That would have been easier to recognize. It happened a little at a time. He wanted to know where I went because he cared. He didn’t like certain friends because they were a bad influence. He thought I should stop working because pregnancy was stressful. He offered to handle money because I had enough to worry about.”
Rose’s mouth tightened.
“Every bad thing arrived disguised as help.”
Mason stared ahead.
“By the time Lily was born, I had almost nobody left.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
Rose gave him a tired look.
“I did.”
He turned.
“Five times.”
She laughed once without humor.
“The first time, he apologized. The second time, he threatened me. The third time, he found me. The fourth time, he promised he would change. The fifth time, I stopped believing promises and started planning.”
Mason’s hands curled.
Rose noticed.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that says you want to go backward through twelve years and hit every version of Darren.”
“I do.”
“You can’t.”
“I know.”
“Lily needs a father, not another angry man.”
That sentence landed where she intended.
Mason relaxed his hands.
“You’re right.”
Rose’s expression softened slightly.
“I remember when you used to hate hearing that.”
“I got older.”
“You got gray.”
“That too.”
For the first time, something almost like their old familiarity passed between them.
Then Mason asked the question he had been afraid to ask.
“Rose.”
She looked at him.
“Is Lily mine?”
Rose’s eyes filled instantly.
That was answer enough.
Mason looked away.
“Mason…”
“How long have you known?”
“Since before she was born.”
His jaw tightened.
“I wrote you.”
“I believe you.”
“You should be angry.”
“I am.”
Rose flinched.
“Not at you.”
She looked down.
“I sent letters to every address I had. Two came back unopened. One disappeared, and Darren found another before I mailed it. After that…” She swallowed. “After that, I was afraid even trying to contact you would make things worse.”
Mason pressed his thumb against the edge of the coffee cup until the cardboard bent.
“You thought I’d abandoned you.”
“For a while.”
“I thought you chose him.”
“For a while.”
The symmetry of it hurt.
Two people separated not because either had stopped loving, but because fear, violence, bad timing, and silence had built a wall neither knew how to cross.
“I would’ve come,” Mason said.
Rose’s voice broke.
“I know that now.”
“I would’ve come anywhere.”
“I know.”
“Rose, I would have crawled.”
She covered her mouth.
Mason looked toward the shelter windows.
Somewhere inside, Lily laughed at something Nadine said.
The sound nearly undid him.
“What is she like?”
Rose wiped her eyes.
A tiny smile appeared.
“She’s kind.”
Mason waited.
“Smart. Too observant. Draws animals on everything. Hates peas. Loves strawberry milk. Sleeps with one foot outside the blanket because she says both feet under makes her too hot. She sings when she thinks nobody is listening. She’s terrible at keeping secrets unless the secret matters, then apparently she can carry one for months.”
Mason smiled despite the tears threatening him.
“What else?”
“She gets nervous around loud voices.”
His smile vanished.
“But,” Rose continued, “she still ran almost a mile down a highway because I told her the wolf would help.”
Mason pressed both hands over his face.
For several seconds, neither spoke.