The visit had been three days after I met Alice.
I had already accepted this. The baby boy I had held in my arms, the name Isaac Hardy I had given him, had never been mine. Even now that I knew he had been a part of another lie Alice had told me, it didn’t change how I felt about him. Isaac was a Hardy. I’d been the only parent to hold him. I’d been the only person at his memorial. I was all he ever had. I was the one person on this earth who mourned for him and loved him.
That alone made me his father.
All this paperwork did was tell me Alice had been lying from the very beginning. There had never been real love between us. I loved someone who never existed. I didn’t know the real Alice. I had married a girl because I thought she was pregnant with my child. I believed I loved her. In reality, I had fallen in love. With the baby she carried inside her.
“Are you okay? Do I need to get the whiskey?” Larissa asked me, her voice softer now. Not in command mode like she had been when she walked inside here.
“I’m okay. I’d already accepted this. Annie showing up like she did and blindsiding me with it had been necessary. I get it now, but this was something I think deep down I knew and I was running from the truth because I wanted him to be mine biologically,” I explained. “But it took me some time alone to face this and accept. I’ve done that and out of all the lies Alice spun and the destruction she left behind, she can’t take away how I felt holding Isaac in my arms. I grieved for the life he would never have because I loved him. I was the only person who did and that makes him mine. I was also his.” I handed the papers back to Larissa. “You can have these. They hold facts, but those facts don’t change how I feel about him.”
Larissa took the papers then took two steps back to sit down into the chair behind her. “Shit. Now I need a fucking drink,” she said, reaching up to wipe a tear that had rolled down her cheek.
“I can make you coffee,” I offered.
She looked up at me and gave me a watery, emotional smile. “Is it bad that I hate this bitch? She’s dead. You shouldn’t hate the dead. Right?”
I understood hating Alice too well. I’d lived seven months hating her, but there was no point in that. Not anymore. “She’s dead. I’m not. I have a life to live the best way I can. Why hate her because she lost the chance to change her ways? She lost the chance to choose to be a good person. The short life she had started with horror and instead of finding a better life like her sister did, she died in horror as well. I can’t hate her because she was never well mentally.”
Larissa leaned back in the chair. “You’re a good man, Eli Hardy,” she said with a touch of pride in her voice. “No amount of tattoos or moody asshole decisions can change the good in you. Try and cover it up all you want but you will never be a bad boy. Get over it.”
None of that had to do with me trying to be someone I wasn’t. Circumstances had caused me to change. The truth was I wanted to be a good man. My dad had a great life and he was never a hell-raiser. Being bad for fun never appealed to me.
“I’ll never be the same guy who left here again. Too much happened and it changed me but I’m not going to let it ruin me. Not anymore. I’m not weak and it’s time I remember that.” I said the words I’d been telling myself the past few days aloud. Hearing them helped solidify that decision.
“That’s a relief,” she said, looking pleased. “What about Ophelia? Have you talked to her? Fixed shit there?”
I shook my head. It was all I could do. Saying her name was difficult. She was always on my mind. Every decision I made, her voice was there in my head. My dreams were always of her. She would be the one who taught me that loving a woman was more than sappy emotions, attraction, shared memories, hot sex, and the way you felt around her. Really loving a woman was wanting her bad moods as much as her good ones, craving the sound of her voice even when you can’t stand the thought of speaking to anyone, finding peace in her presence when you thought you’d never find a way free of the sorrow, loving a woman is when holding her is all you need. Loving a woman also meant acknowledging when you hadn’t treated her the way she deserved and letting her find the man worthy of her. Ophelia Finlay would forever own my heart. While she had given unselfishly, I’d allowed my inner turmoil to ignore what she deserved.