The Second Chance Read online

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  Six Months Later

  Anna waited outside for the bus to arrive. Today’s was Kylie’s first day of preschool, and Anna had taken the afternoon off to spend extra time with her daughter today. The bus wasn’t supposed to arrive for another fifteen minutes, but Anna had gone outside early so she could enjoy the breeze that whisked through all the neighborhood trees today. She’d only lived in this house for a year, but some days made her feel as if she’d lived there forever. Her soul deep connection to this place had started strong and had only improved since. Since moving to Canada, she’d had a great deal of personal success. After three years of working for a law firm in the Saskatchewan province, she’d relocated to Ontario to start her own practice in Toronto.

  When she’d first moved to the Toronto area, the locals in her neighborhood, and even her family, had called her crazy for abandoning the Florida sun for a place that was, at times, unbearably cold. During her first winter, Anna had discovered that not only could she stand the cold weather, but that she actually preferred it. Sometimes she thought she must have been an Eskimo in a previous life.

  As she relaxed on her terrace, an unfamiliar car pulled into her driveway. She watched in horror as Matthew looked at her through the windshield. To say that he was the last person she expected to see would have been the understatement of the century, especially with Kylie’s bus due to arrive at any moment. She shot out of her seat and ran towards Matthew’s car. She didn’t give him the chance to get out of the car before she was in his face, demanding, “What are you doing here?” in a wild panic.

  He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off before he began.

  “Never mind,” she panted. “You have to leave now! If you came to talk about something, we can talk later… but for right now, you have to get out of here.”

  He opened his mouth again, but this time she didn’t catch his reply because the bus had just come into view. “Unless you want me to hate you for the rest of eternity, you stay right here and shut up!” she said in the harshest tone she could muster with her heart practically in her throat. She took a fraction of a second to appreciate the surprise on his face before she jogged to the end of the walk to meet Kylie’s bus. She quickly boarded the bus and explained the situation to the driver and monitor, and they agreed to keep Kylie on the bus until the end of the route. Anna would just have to drive to the school and pick her up from the main office after she dealt with her unexpected visitor.

  Anna stepped off the bus feeling as triumphant as she could under the circumstances. The bus lumbered on down the street, and she approached Matthews’s car again, this time slowly, with trepidation in every step. She’d barely made it back to the end of the driveway before he exited the small car and shut the door with a resounding slam. She didn’t know what to think as he stared down at her. His brown eyes were normally very friendly, but right now he looked downright dangerous. She’d never seen him this upset before.

  She racked her brain for something appropriate to say, but she found nothing. She had no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he didn’t even realize that the child on the bus was his daughter… The silence between them stretched into a yawning chasm that they could easily fall into and never escape. Anna knew that the next words out of her mouth would affect the rest of her and her daughter’s lives. Tears started to flow unchecked down her face as she searched for the right words. At this point, “I love you,” was probably the easiest thing to say, but it would also have been the most denigrating in the face of her big secret.

  It took her a moment to notice that he was crying right along with her. They inched closer together, and suddenly the chasm of silence seemed a little less infinite. When they were finally toe to toe, Matthew said, “You didn’t have an abortion.” It wasn’t a question; instead it was a statement fraught with unexpected relief.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “My sister and I had a long overdue talk. You do remember my sister Jamie, right?”

  “How could I forget her?” Anna sniffed while trying to stifle her tears.

  “How far along were you when you came back to see me?” he asked.

  Anna didn’t answer; instead she led the way inside and offered him a drink as they settled at her kitchen table.

  Once he had his water in hand, he said, “Anna, will you stop trying to be polite and sit with me so we can talk?”

  She sat down across from him and stared down at the table as she said, “I was seven months along. I’m pretty sure I conceived the morning I left; that was the only time we’d been intimate all month. I couldn’t have had an abortion even if I’d wanted one at that point. I don’t know what your sister told you, but I didn’t come looking for a payoff. I never even cashed that stupid check she gave me.”

  “Anna, why didn’t you ever tell me we had a child together? You’ve always known how to contact me. I still have the same cell number; I still live in the same apartment… Why didn’t you tell me when we spent that weekend together in Montreal earlier this year? I just don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t tell you when I was pregnant, because your sister convinced me that I’d be responsible for ruining your life if I bothered you. Considering the way things ended, combined with your implacable commitment to that job, I thought it was best to leave you alone and let you get on with your life. You certainly looked happy when I saw you leaving the restaurant with your girlfriend that night. I had so many doubts that day, but still I waited all night to talk to you. When you never went home that night, I took it as a sign that I should just leave you alone. I’d moved to Canada and you still lived in Florida. We weren’t supposed to see each other again; it wasn’t supposed to matter.”

  “But we did see each other again, and it does matter. We could have worked things out when we ran into each other. What’s your excuse for not telling me then?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t tell you, because I was being selfish. I knew it would complicate everything and make you hate me. I couldn’t stand the thought of you hating me,” Anna confessed.

  “How long do we have until the bus comes back?”

  “It’s not coming back. I have to go pick her up when they get back to the school at the end of the route. We have about an hour.”

  “So, it’s a girl. I have a daughter…we have a daughter.”

  “Yes we do, and her name is Kylie Anne Jenkins.”

  “Kylie,” he said with a smile. “You picked a cute name. What does she look like?”

  “I can show you her photo album before we go pick her up.” Now that she had resigned herself to this inevitable meeting, Anna felt the remaining tension drain from her body. He seemed miraculously understanding about the situation so far, and she didn’t want to ruin it by overanalyzing or injecting bitterness into this moment.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? A strange man, showing up out of the blue to pick her up?” he asked with a great deal of concern in his voice.

  Anna finally looked directly into his eyes and maintained contact for the first time since this difficult conversation began. “She wouldn’t think you’re a strange man,” she admitted.

  “She wouldn’t?” Matthew asked in disbelief.

  “Not at all. She’s seen lots of pictures of you; she knows you’re her father.”

  “Why would you tell her about me, and not tell me about her? I don’t understand.”

  “Give me a minute to grab her photo album, and I’ll show you. Kylie has been through so much in her life. She needed something to cheer her up and someone to look forward to, so I’ve been telling her stories about her wonderful father, and promising her that we can visit you as soon as she’s well enough.”

  “Well enough? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She was born with a heart defect, and up until last year I didn’t know how much longer she’d survive. For the past five years, w
e’ve dealt with problem after problem. Last year she was finally strong enough to survive the surgery to repair her heart. She’s been doing so much better since that surgery.” Anna couldn’t keep from choking up as she thought about the medical nightmare that had been her daughter’s life so far. “If not for the healthcare system in this country, I’d be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. She’ll need specialty care for the rest of her life, and our best option, our only option really, is to stay right here. Canada is home for Kylie.”

  Matthew reached across the table and took both of her hands inside his. He didn’t say anything; instead he rubbed his thumb back and forth across her hands. The gentle touch did more to soothe her than any words could have done. “One of the reasons I never contacted you after she was born, was because the doctors gave me very little reason to hope that she’d live to see the age of one, much less turn into a relatively healthy four-and-a-half-year-old who goes to school. It would have been cruel to spring a dying daughter on you just because I wanted some extra emotional support while dealing with it all. It just didn’t seem right.”

  “You never contacted me, because you thought she was going to die, and you thought you should handle it on your own?” he asked as his quietly sympathetic eyes caressed her.

  “Matthew, she was in the hospital for three months after she was born, and she’s been in and out ever since. Up until she recovered from her surgery last year, I honestly didn’t think I’d get to see her grow up.” She burst into tears at that point. The pain of being stoic when faced with losing her daughter on multiple occasions had finally caught up with her. Only now, when she realized that Kylie was getting better, could she allow herself the luxury of falling to pieces when she thought of all the pain and sickness her daughter had endured. “She can’t be jerked around, so if you want to be in her life, you’d better be prepared to be there for her like I’ve been,” she said in a tiny voice that she barely recognized. It seemed her strength had temporarily deserted her, and she was now a tremulous mass of feelings and fears.

  Suddenly, Matthew’s arms were around her as he asked, “Anna, why do you think I came here today?”

  “I don’t know,” Anna sobbed.

  “I came because I had to see for myself whether or not you’d had my child. And to tell you that my sister does not speak for me. If you had called me, I would have dropped what I was doing to come help you with Kylie, whether she was sick or perfectly healthy. I’ve made some mistakes with you, but I am not an unfeeling monster… Anna, you of all people should know that.”

  His words opened up a little kernel of hope inside her heart, and she shamelessly enjoyed having his arms locked around her. In the past five years, she’d had very little time to date or even to examine her own needs for companionship and affection. Every waking moment had been spent being emotionally stable for her daughter or working. She picked her head up off his chest and looked into his eyes. It was gratifying to see that he cared. In the last few months, she hadn’t even dared to dream that he’d be supportive in this matter. She’d actually been dreading the inevitable day when she would show up on his doorstep to introduce him to his daughter. “I’ll show you her photo album before we go pick her up. She’ll want you to stay for dinner so she can show you the album herself, but I think its best that you’re prepared ahead of time.”

  Matthew took a seat on the sofa as Anna retrieved the album from a nearby bookshelf. They spent the next half hour skimming through it. Most of the pictures showed a gaunt looking Kylie lying in one hospital bed after another. The last picture in the book had been taken while Kylie was in the children’s hospital recovering after her recent surgery. She was heavily bandaged, and she had dark circles under her eyes, yet still she’d beamed for the camera as if that had been the greatest day of her life. There had been a forty percent chance that she wouldn’t make it through the night, but she’d defied those odds.

  Matthew stared at the last picture the longest. “It’s amazing how much she looks like both of us,” he said. He started crying again as he continued, “She’s absolutely beautiful, just like her mother.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “I wish I’d had the courage to tell you about her that morning in Montreal; you’ll never know how difficult it was for me to lie to you like that. The only reason I was able to do it was because I just kept telling myself that I was doing what was best for Kylie.”

  “What did you lie about?” Matthew asked in confusion.

  “All that stuff I said about moving to Canada to get away from the racism in the South was mostly just a smokescreen to push you away as quickly and decisively as possible. I actually took a temporary position that was only supposed to last a few months while I decided what to do with the rest of my life, but when I found out I was pregnant and that there was something seriously wrong with the baby, I decided to stay. I first applied for citizenship while Kylie was in the hospital. My sole reason for staying here is that it’s best for Kylie,” Anna admitted.

  “Well, your smokescreen worked. I could tell there was something else, but I never thought to question your reasons for moving to Canada. It’s a good thing I’m not a criminal attorney,” Matthew joked with a small smile.

  “We should probably wash our faces before we go pick up Kylie,” Anna suggested as she wiped at the tears on his cheek.

  “Try not to be too scared about this Anna,” Matthew said as he grabbed her hand before she could escape his orbit. “I’m not going to disappoint you this time.”

  Anna looked into his soft, brown eyes and smiled. She almost believed him, and she wanted so badly to trust him. “And I’m not going to disappoint you again either, Matthew.” At his bright smile, sense of new hope settled around her, and her own smile grew sunnier as she gave his hand a squeeze.