Page 36 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

I have a grandfather. Could I have other siblings? Cousins? Aunts, uncles?

In my pocket, my phone vibrated once again.

Slowly, the old man turned to face me, giving me his full attention, and the relief I felt was enough to make me cry.

“Tell me something, Maxwell Benjamin Tailor.”

I nodded eagerly. “Yes, sir.”

“Are you a good man?”

The hope in his eyes was reminiscent of my own. He was looking for something, and I wondered how long he'd been searching for it. Wondered how long he'd been wondering.

You could've found out years ago , I thought of saying.

He could've reached out, could've contacted me. I'd been a grown man for decades now, and where the hell had he been for all that time?

But there is more to this story , I reasoned. I'd only just found out about the woman who had given birth to me, I had only just met him, and it was impossible to pack forty-eight years of history into just a few hours.

So, I simply replied, “I'm a better man than the one who raised me.”

Maxwell Benjamin Meyer lifted his chin, seeming satisfied with that response.

Then he studied me. Not with the horrified expression he'd exhibited before, but one of approval, pride, and I tried not to let it get to my head.

Tried not to puff my chest up with a feeling I'd seldom known in my years of living.

But, dammit, it felt good, and I wanted to curl up inside this moment far longer than I knew I'd be allowed.

I wanted to live in it and revel in knowing that a man who'd known me for all of two minutes could look at me with more pride than my father could ever muster.

Then the old man nodded and hung his head again, dropping back down to his hunched-over height.

“I'm sorry I couldn't have known you,” he said. “My daughter …” He glanced toward her grave. “Maybe I shouldn't tell you this.”

“With all due respect, sir, I'm sure I've heard worse.”

That didn't seem to help matters much because he hung his head even lower, but still, he nodded.

“My daughter was a troubled girl,” he admitted. “And when she became pregnant, she had no intention of ever keeping the baby. But she saw an opportunity, you see, and she went through with the pregnancy anyway.”

My phone vibrated again in my pocket, and again, it went ignored as I tipped my head, absorbing his story and noting how it aligned so far with my father's version.

Maybe he is capable of telling the truth after all.

“Of course, your father had no interest either.

The man was screwing around behind his wife's back, and Lord knows what that must've done to his marriage,” Maxwell grumbled.

“One second, he was infatuated with my daughter—or so she said—and the next, he was assaulting her after she announced to him that she was pregnant.

I told her to press charges against him, I told her to call the police, but she said she wasn't going to bother. Said she was going to have the baby, was going to take care of things herself. So, she did,” he said with a sigh.

“She went through all those months. My wife helped, her sister—”

“She has a sister?” I interrupted, raising my brows like a lost puppy.

He smiled and nodded. “I have two other children. A daughter and a son. Carol and Jack.”

I felt weightless and wonderful. I had an aunt and uncle?

“We all helped Lilly,” Maxwell went on. “We thought … we thought that baby would be all of ours. A new little member of the family. She gave birth, and we took care of him for a bit as she recovered. She hadn't given him a name yet, so we just called him Little Guy, Little Buddy, Little Man …”

His voice grew tight and emotional as he turned to look away from me, clearing his throat and blinking rapidly.

It struck me hard and fast in the center of my chest that he wasn’t just talking about any baby. He was talking about me . I was Little Man, who could pull such sadness from the soul of this old man.

I had been loved.

And not just by him, but by his wife, his children … everyone but my own parents.

“But then, one day, while I was at work and my wife was at the supermarket and Carol and Jack were at school, Lilly took the baby and left.

We didn't know where she had gone, didn't know what she was up to, didn't know where to even look—this was before the days of cellular phones, of course. But we looked. We asked her friends. We searched everywhere we could think of. And then, a few weeks later, she was home.” He looked up at me, an empty ache reflected in his eyes. “But the baby was gone.”

“She left me on my father's doorstep,” I told him. “That's what he told me this morning.”

Maxwell nodded. “Yes. She told us that baby—that you …” He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could hardly believe it—and that would make two of us.

“She said you were sent to ruin Richard's life.

That was your purpose . She was never right , if you understand my meaning, but I believed her.

I believed that Richard's life would be in shambles, and for that, he would punish you for the sins committed by adults.”

A boulder rose from my chest and sat squarely in the center of my throat as I bit my bottom lip, warding off a powerful surge of pain and sadness and agony. He had no idea how right he was—or did he?

“So, I went to him,” Maxwell said, sounding feebler and frailer than moments before. “I asked … no, I begged him to let me take that baby. I swore I'd ask for nothing in return. I swore he'd never see or hear from me again. But he said no.”

Sadness turned to anger, and I barked a laugh into the clear, early afternoon sky.

“Of course he did! God,” I uttered, shaking my head with anguish. “Goddamn him.”

I should kill him , I decided, nodding to myself as I looked toward Lilly's grave. I should kill my father. It won't make anything better, it won't make anything right, but it would give me maybe, possibly, a small shred of satisfaction to remove his evil soul from my life.

Then a cool, wrinkled hand touched the skin of my wrist, and I turned to Maxwell's crystal-blue eyes, and it hit me. My eyes didn't look like my father's. Similar in hue, yes, but … no, my eyes belonged to this man. Filled with kindness and acceptance and love.

Maybe if I looked harder, I could find something else Maxwell Meyer had given to me too.

“I won't pretend to know what your life was like, son,” he said softly.

“But your father believed your safety was at risk.

He told me that, if I brought you back to my home, she would never allow it.

I didn't believe him, of course, and when I left his office, I went to Lilly.

I asked if she'd like me to bring the baby home, if she'd like the chance to be a mother. And do you know what she said?”

I shook my head. “What did she say?”

“She looked me dead in the eye and said, 'Daddy, if I have to hear that thing cry one more time, I will throw him off a bridge, and nobody will see him ever again.’” He wilted with a sigh and held steady to his cane.

“I'll never forget the look in her eyes.

It was cruel, evil … and I couldn't understand it, how she could say something so terrible about her own child . But I knew she was telling the truth.”

A brusque chuckle forced its way through my throat as I laid a hand over my forehead and rubbed my brow. “So, you're telling me that—”

“Your father saved your life,” Maxwell finished. “That's exactly what I'm saying.”

“And Lilly never …” I blinked, dropping my hand to my side. “She never wondered about me, never asked, never—”

“Not that any of us know of, no.” He shifted his weight and gestured toward nothing with a flip of his hand. “Now, of course, my wife—Patty—passed away some years ago, and Lilly's been gone now for, oh, twenty … no, twenty-one …”

“Twenty-two years,” I corrected with a weak smile. “She was twenty years older than me, and I'm forty-eight. She died when she was forty-six.”

“Forty-eight,” Maxwell said, wonder in his tone as he looked at me once again. “Forty-eight years, and will you look at you now?”

I sniffed a laugh, and my phone vibrated. “Yeah.”

“Can I ask if you're married?”

I sighed and lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Widowed actually.”

“Ah, sorry to hear that,” Maxwell replied sadly. “Any children?”

“A couple of stepdaughters I haven't seen in a decade,” I admitted easily, though it broke my heart. “But apart from that, no.”

“Hmm,” Maxwell grunted with a nod. “You should. Reach out to them. They would love to see you again.”

I couldn't help but laugh. “You don't know that. You don't know me.”

“Yes, I do, Max,” he replied with a smile so sad and kind that I stopped laughing on the spot. “Yes, I do.”

My phone buzzed with life, and this time, I pulled it out of my pocket with a muttered apology. There, glowing bright on the screen, was a text from Melanie.

Melanie: Hey, I'm not sure what's going on, but I hope everything is okay. Are we still down for dinner with your family tonight? Give me a call when you can.

I swallowed and looked back at Maxwell, still standing there on a cold walkway in the middle of the cemetery I'd worked at for years.

How many times had our paths crossed? Had we ever seen each other? Had we exchanged pleasantries, unbeknownst to either of us of the shared blood we had flowing through our veins?

“Have somewhere to be?” he asked with a nod toward my phone.

I nodded. “Yeah. My, um … this woman I've been seeing … I'm supposed to bring her to dinner to my, um, my sister's house, but I can—”

“Go,” Maxwell said with a smile and a wave of his hand. “We can always meet another time.”

“Can we?”

He nodded reassuringly. “There's so much to catch up on, and we will. So, go on. Have your dinner. But let me give you my number first, and promise me you'll call.”

I was already opening my Contacts to put him in when I said, “Maxwell, you have my word.”