Chapter 36 - Dad
1560 Words
Noah loved Adrian before I did. At first, Adrian was simply the man who appeared every few weeks with terrible gifts. Not terrible because they were cheap. Adrian didn't understand cheap. They were terrible because he had absolutely no idea what children wanted. For Noah's first birthday, he brought him a handmade wooden rocking horse from Switzerland. Noah preferred the box.
Adrian stared at him. “I paid an unreasonable amount of money for that.” Noah slapped the cardboard. Kaelob laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair. “Welcome to children.” “You bought him a plastic truck.” “Fourteen dollars.” Noah crawled toward it immediately. Adrian looked personally offended. I laughed. “You'll learn.” “I don't intend to compete with a fourteen-dollar truck.”
He did. For years. He usually lost.
Noah grew surrounded by people who loved him. Mum spoiled him. Grandma denied spoiling him while actively feeding him things I'd forbidden. Grandpa taught him about wood before he could properly pronounce the names of the trees. Kaelob taught him things nobody had approved. Our family was smaller after everything that had happened, but somehow Noah filled many of the empty spaces.
And Adrian kept coming back.
When Noah was two, Adrian spent Christmas with us. When he was three, we spent part of the summer in Mallorca. When he was four, he started waiting at the window whenever Adrian was supposed to arrive.
That was the year it happened.
Adrian had been away for almost three weeks. Noah heard a car outside and ran toward the door.
“Daddy!”
Everything stopped.
Adrian had barely stepped inside when Noah threw himself at him. Adrian caught him automatically, then froze. I froze too. Noah didn't. “Daddy, look!” He immediately started showing Adrian something he'd made.
Adrian looked at me over his head.
Later, after Noah was asleep, I found him outside alone. “You okay?” “Yes.” “Liar.” He looked toward the garden. “He called me Dad.” “I know.” “I didn't tell him to.” “I know.” “I would never try to—” “I know.”
He finally looked at me. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Rose.”
“He chose it.”
Adrian swallowed. “He doesn't understand what it means.”
“He understands who comes when he calls.”
That silenced him.
I moved closer. “You're his dad, Adrian.”
“And Damian?”
The name still changed the air, even after years.
“Damian is his father.”
Adrian nodded slowly.
It wasn't perfect, but it was true.
We married while Noah was still young enough to complain that the ceremony was boring. He wore a tiny suit Adrian had chosen. Kaelob loosened his tie before the photographs. Mum cried. Grandma cried. Grandpa pretended something had gone into his eye. When Adrian kissed me, Noah shouted, “Gross!” Everyone laughed.
That was the photograph Damian eventually found.
He couldn't see Noah because Kaelob was holding him just outside the frame.
Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if the photograph had been wider.
If Damian had seen a small blond boy standing beside me.
Would he have counted the years?
Would he have come?
I would never know.
Life moved on. Mallorca became part of us. At first, it belonged to Adrian. Slowly, it became ours. Noah learned to swim there, learned to ride a bicycle there and fell out of an olive tree there badly enough to break his arm. I blamed Adrian. Adrian blamed the tree. Noah asked when he could climb again.
We had ordinary mornings. That was what surprised me most about happiness. It wasn't dramatic. It was cereal spilled across tables, missing shoes, Adrian answering emails while Noah climbed onto his back and me shouting that we'd be late.
Sometimes I looked at them and forgot there was anything unusual about us.
Adrian and Noah had nothing physically in common. Adrian had dark hair. Noah was blond. Adrian's eyes were nothing like Noah's impossible blue ones. But children copied the people they loved. Noah stood with his hands in his pockets like Adrian. He frowned at menus like Adrian. He had started saying interesting whenever he actually meant that's stupid.
That was entirely Adrian.
And yet sometimes Damian appeared so suddenly in Noah that it hurt. His temper. The way frustration came quickly. His laugh. The way sunlight caught his hair.
Adrian saw it too.
He never resented him for it.
When Noah was eight, we told him the truth.
We had always agreed we would. He deserved to know his own story from us before anybody else could use it against him.
We sat outside in Mallorca. Noah was eating ice cream.
“Noah,” I said. “There is something we need to tell you.”
He immediately looked worried. “Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
He looked at Adrian. “Dad?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Every sentence I'd practiced disappeared.
Adrian took my hand.
I tried again. “Before Adrian and I were together, I loved someone else.”
Noah made a face. “Gross.”
I almost laughed. “Thank you.”
“Did Dad know?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Adrian. “You let Mom have a boyfriend?”
“It was before me.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I took a breath. “His name was Damian. We were very young and we loved each other very much.”
“What happened?”
“He had to go back to Germany. His sister was very sick.”
“Did she die?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed. “After Damian left, I found out I was going to have a baby.”
Noah stared at me.
Then at Adrian.
Then back at me.
“You mean me?”
“Yes.”
He put down his ice cream.
“Damian is my real dad?”
Adrian answered before I could.
“I'm real.”
Noah looked at him.
Adrian smiled gently. “Damian is your biological father.”
“What does biological mean?”
“The person whose DNA helped make you.”
Noah frowned. “So he's my father.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And Dad is Dad.”
My eyes filled immediately.
Noah looked horrified. “Why are you crying?”
“Because mothers are weird.”
Adrian nodded. “Very.”
I hit his arm.
Noah thought for a moment. “Does Damian know?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I tried to tell him. But he didn't know I needed to tell him something that important.”
“Why didn't you tell him later?”
Children always found the question adults avoided.
“By then, a lot had happened.”
It wasn't the entire truth, but it was enough for an eight-year-old.
“Is he bad?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“He was young. His family needed him.”
“Did he love you?”
My throat tightened. “Yes.”
“A lot?”
“Yes.”
Noah looked at Adrian. “Did you know?”
“Yes.”
“Before you married Mom?”
“Yes.”
“And you still married her?”
Adrian smiled. “Unfortunately.”
“Hey.”
Noah laughed. Then he became serious again.
“Do you love me?”
Adrian's face changed.
He moved from his chair and crouched in front of him.
“Nothing you learned today changes a single thing about how much I love you.”
“But I'm his.”
“No.” Adrian shook his head. “You are yours.”
Noah stared at him.
“And I get to be your dad because you let me.”
Noah's eyes filled.
“So if Damian comes one day, you're still Dad?”
Adrian couldn't answer immediately.
Then he nodded.
“Yes.”
Noah threw his arms around him.
Adrian closed his eyes.
I was crying openly now.
Over Noah's shoulder, Adrian looked at me.
Then Noah whispered, “Damian is my father.”
Adrian nodded.
“And you're my dad.”
That broke him.
Adrian Keller cried so rarely that Noah pulled back in alarm.
“Dad?”
“I'm fine.”
“You're crying.”
“Apparently.”
“Mom does that all the time.”
“I know.”
“Hey!”
They both laughed.
And somehow that was it.
No screaming. No broken family. No dramatic rejection.
Just another truth becoming part of us.
As Noah grew older, he asked more questions. We answered them. He knew Damian's full name. He knew he lived in Germany. He knew he had a grandmother named Maxime, a grandfather named Leo and an aunt named Chloe. He knew about Rea too.
He knew some of the story.
Not all.
Some parts belonged to adults.
And some still hurt too much.
Noah never asked to contact Damian.
Not then.
We never pushed him.
We told ourselves there would be time.
Later.
I should have known better than to trust that word.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD