“First,” I said slowly, pausing my fidgeting hands, “I want to apologize.”
“For what?” she said with a scoff.
“For my brother.” I let that sink in as her mouth snapped shut. “I don’t know what you guys had, if it was a one-time thing or a relationship.” Jesus, I hoped it wasn’t a relationship. “But whatever it was…he wasn’t raised to run out on his responsibilities.”
“Let me stop you right there,” she said with a soft smile. “Because I think you might be confused about some stuff.”
I watched her closely as she settled more firmly into her chair, her body relaxing fractionally.
“I’ve never been angry with Henry,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “We didn’t plan to get pregnant. Honestly, we took every precaution there was, but ship happens, you know?”
My mouth twitched at her alternative word for shit.
“But Henry didn’t want kids. It wasn’t just a ‘for now’ thing, and it wasn’t about me. He never wanted kids.”
That was news to me.
“I could’ve made him step up,” she continued. “I could have forced it. But it was my decision to go through with the pregnancy, not his.”
“That’s a pretty forgiving way to look at it,” I said, surprise coloring my voice. A small voice inside my head wondered if the reason Henry didn’t have a relationship with his daughter was because Morgan hadn’t allowed it, and that was why she was so forgiving, but I quickly silenced it. Even if Morgan had made Henry’s life a living hell, there hadn’t been any excuse for what he’d done.
She shrugged again.
“His good days as a parent wouldn’t have been as good as my worst days,” she said gently, her voice filled with understanding that I hadn’t afforded my brother since the minute I’d learned of his daughter’s existence. “He just wasn’t equipped for it, and she deserves better than that.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, a little bit in awe of the calm woman in front of me. I couldn’t understand how she was just okay with the way Henry had bailed on her. What she was saying made sense intellectually, but emotionally I was still grappling with her words. Part of me, a big part, wondered if she was full of shit. Something didn’t feel right.
“Is that all you wanted?” she asked after I’d been quiet too long.
“No,” I said, swallowing hard again. “We—me and my family—we’d like to get to know you. You and the baby, I mean.” I stumbled over the words. “No pressure, whatever you’re comfortable with. We were just hoping that we could meet her, maybe, or—”
“I’m cool with that,” she said, saving me from my word vomit.
“You are?” I asked, watching her closely. Now would be the time she would state her demands.
“Sure.” She nodded, surprising the hell out of me. “A kid can’t have enough family.”
“Well, she’s got a big one,” I replied idiotically as I tried to figure out why this was going so smoothly.
“I know.”
I nodded, then paused. “Wait, what? Did Henry talk about us?”
She laughed a little and tilted her head to the side.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” she asked, smiling.
I stared at her, but recognition was just out of reach. “Should I?”
“When you knew me, I was about six inches shorter and about fifteen pounds heavier,” she said. “And my last name was Harlan.”
“Morgan Harlan,” I said out loud.
“I was fostered at your house for about two months when I was thirteen,” she said, and just like that, recognition dawned.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, looking her over again.
“That’s what Henry said when I ran into him at a bar,” she said, laughing. “He recognized me, though.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice still a little bit high with surprise. I wondered if she’d been this beautiful when we were kids and I just hadn’t noticed. Thirteen-year-old girls weren’t on my radar back then.
“No worries.” She waved her hand from side to side. “I look different than I did ten years ago, and you were too old to pay any attention to me when we were kids anyway.”
“Hen had the biggest crush on you,” I remembered out loud before I could catch myself.
“I know,” she said, still laughing a little. “But he was such a scrawny thing back then, I didn’t even care.”
“Damn,” I said, shaking my head a little as memories, one after another, played through my mind. She’d come to us just as school was letting out for the summer, and she’d spent those two months with us running wild all over the property with the rest of the kids. I’d been too old to spend my days playing in the creek—by then I’d already started working with my dad at the logging company—but I still remembered sitting down to dinner with all the muddy, sunburned, disheveled kids each night.
“What happened after you left?” I asked. I’d always wondered what happened to the kids who stayed with us after they were gone, but beyond the few who had stayed in contact with my parents, I’d never had the chance to ask.