Page 111 of Ebbing Tides

“He doesn’t feel like my dad,” he muttered. “I barely even remember him.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s not your dad though,” I countered gently.

“I didn’t evenknowhim.”

I nodded. “I understand that.”

He scrunched his face and turned to me. I had known the boy for two years. I had celebrated two birthdays, bought multiple sizes of clothing and shoes, but it only struck me now how much he had changed. Not just the number on the calendar, but his face, his eyes. Fuck, I thought fifty years was wild, but the changes in this boy’s face represented only two, and he was nearly unrecognizable to the little boy he had been just twenty-four months ago.

“No, you don’t,” he argued, shaking his head. “You knew your dad.”

I sniffed a bitter chuckle, but it wasn’t directed toward Luke. “I did know him. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t. But … that’s not what I mean,” I said, redirecting the conversation. “You knew your dad for a few years, right?”

He dropped his gaze, swallowed, and gave his head a little nod.

“Okay. So, I’m not going to pretend to know what it was like for you. Especially seeing him like that,” I went on, implying the prison scenario Luke Senior had been in. “But did you know I had a son?”

His brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know that I was married to someone before I married your mom, right?”

“Yeah …”

“Her name was Laura—”

“I know. I’ve heard you guys say it.”

“Right,” I replied, nodding. “Well, Laura and I were going to have a baby. She was pregnant, and we knew it was a boy.”

Luke hung his head as emotions crept in to wrinkle his chin. “What was his name?”

The breath escaped my lungs. God, I hadn’t spoken this to anyone, not in twelve years. I had seldom allowed myself to think it, apart from reading the words etched on his tiny tombstone.

“Gregory,” I muttered as my chest cracked open, and a grief unlike any other flooded the room. “His name was Gregory. Laura wanted his middle name to be Maxwell—”

“That’s your name,” Luke interjected.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “I didn’t want him to have my name. I—”

“You don’t like your name?”

“I …” I gestured with a flippant hand. “I don’t hateMax. I hate Maxwell. I hate what I hear when I think about it. Or I used to anyway, before I met Grandpa Max, and, um …”

I cleared my throat, chasing away the sound of my father’s bitter, nasty, scorning voice from my mind.

“Anyway, we agreed to name him Gregory after a friend of mine in the Army, and I eventually settled on Benjamin for his middle name. So, Gregory Benjamin Tailor. That was his name.”

“What happened to him?”

I tipped my head. “Well, he, um … he died with Laura.”

Luke was quiet as the words suspended in the air before dropping like soft, deadly bombs at our feet.

“He never got to be born,” I explained. “I never got to hold him. But I did know him. I would feel him kicking in her belly, and I’d read to him and play music for him. I loved him more than … God, I loved him more than anything. I still love him. Of course.”

I was starting to choke up, and I swallowed against that surge of emotion before continuing, “I didn’t get to know him for very long, and my memory of that time is getting a little hazier as the years go on. But that doesn’t make him any less my son. And so, your dad … he isalwaysyour dad. No matter what. That’s his blood in your veins, and from what I know of him, you’re lucky to have it.”

Luke pulled in a deep breath, then sniffled. He rubbed his hand beneath his nose, and then he wiped at his eyes.