The Presence of the Past

Mrs. Lopez found Dan stewing at her desk. "Is everything okay? Did you get a lawyer?"

"Yes. It's just... Karen. She can push my buttons better than anyone else. She wants to tell Lucas tonight. This is something he should hear from me, not her. But I can't do it over the phone, and it's going to be a while before I can get back there."

"You could always fly back to North Carolina and explain it to him and then come back for the final hearing," Mrs. Lopez suggested, for once actually agreeing with this pain in her ass.

Dan gave her a look. "I'm not leaving Nevada without my son."

Mrs. Lopez gave up. It was just going to be a miserable few weeks, she knew it. "Well, it's late, and I have to finish up all the paperwork. Why don't you and Nathan go back to Ms. Carver's house? The guard at the front desk can call you a cab. Remember, 8 am, sharp. Family court is right next door."

"Okay. I'll go get him." Dan stood to leave and Mrs. Lopez moved to reclaim her desk.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked. He looked confused for a moment, and then appropriately embarrassed as she handed him Deb's envelope, as yet unopened.

The house was exactly what he would have expected from Deb. Warm and comfortable, with pictures of Nathan everywhere. Nathan, who had said not one word to him the whole cab ride back and had immediately disappeared into the bathroom, from which shower sounds emitted almost immediately. Dan didn't blame him, he wanted to shower that place off him as quickly as possible as well. In the meantime, he settled for calling the hotel concierge and asking them to pack up his room and bring it over. One thing you could never fault Vegas for was the service in their hotels and the cheerful voice assured him it would be taken care of immediately, no doubt at significant damage to his hotel bill.

While he was waiting, he examined the pictures. Toddler Nathan, playing in a sandbox. First day of kindergarten. He and Deb clowning in someone's kitchen. What looked like a Thanksgiving pageant, Nathan dressed as an Indian in construction paper feathered headdress. They had a similar shot of Lucas, dressed as a Pilgrim, in the dining room. Lucas hated it. Now, here was a good one. He took the small framed shot off the wall. Nathan looked about 11. He was leaning casually against a gym wall with a basketball tucked loosely under one arm, wearing shorts and jersey. He looked good. Natural. Yep, Dan smiled to himself, breeding will always show. Nathan was going to make a great ball player.

"Everything meet with your approval?"

Dan started. He hadn't heard Nathan come in. "I was just looking at your pictures. Trying to get a sense of your life."

Nathan took the basketball photo out of his hands and put it back on its hook. "My life was happy. Mom and I were happy. That should be enough for now."

"Was?"

Nathan smiled bitterly. "Past tense, remember? I'm a quick learner. Don't you dare sleep in her bed. There's a futon in the office. I put a set of sheets on it. And jiggle the toilet handle or it'll run all night." He turned to leave the room.

"Wait," Dan said, stopping him. "Don't you want to eat something? I know you didn't eat dinner."

"Not hungry." Nathan left without anything further and Dan heard a door close a little harder than was necessary.

After finding the promised futon, unpacking his luggage and getting cleaned up, and eating a solitary meal out of the well-stocked refrigerator, Dan knew he couldn't put it off anymore. The sealed envelope had been mocking him all evening. It was time to know what Deb had to say for herself.

"Dan-

I didn't know you long enough to know how you're responding to this. By now, you know you have a son I never told you about. You probably think I was selfish, keeping him to myself the way I did. That's partly true. I had always wanted to be a mother, and I was so excited when I found out I was pregnant. I couldn't wait to tell you. But you told me your surprise first, and just like that it was all gone. I admit, at first it was spite. You'd never even told me about Karen, much less that you'd known she was pregnant the whole time we were dating. I rationalized it by saying if you were going to choose her and her baby over me, you didn't deserve to know about Nathan. Later I realized that was completely unfair, but by then it was too late. You were gone, married, and I just had no idea how to tell you.

I went to Tree Hill once when Nathan was a year old, to try and tell you. I got your address from the phone book and went to your house. You and Karen were getting ready to go somewhere, and you were putting bags in the car. Karen was carrying your son, who was pulling her hair up like rabbit ears and saying "Bunny!" over and over. You were both laughing, and you looked so happy. I didn't want to ruin that for you. So I just left; kept driving until I found myself in Las Vegas, and I stayed. Got a job, raised my son, and tried to tell myself I was doing the best thing for both of you. But now he's 14, and I can tell he feels the loss. How can he lose something he's never had? But he does. He asks me about you every now and then and I try to tell him as much of the truth as he'll understand. He's a good kid, but I think he resents you. I tell him it's not your fault, that it was my decision, but it's hard to a boy his age to understand why he has no father. You're going to inherit the damage from that, which, I think, more than anything, is what I have to apologize for. He really is a good boy, happy, friendly, and well-behaved. He gets decent if not great grades. There's just this gaping hole in his soul where you should have been.

And, since you're reading this, there is now one where I should be as well. It's on you and Karen to make him whole again. I knew you well enough to know that you're fundamentally a good man, when you get your mind off basketball. I know nothing about Karen beyond that brief glimpse 13 years ago, but you chose her over me, so she can't be a bad person if you could see a future with her you couldn't see with me.

I don't regret your choice, or mine. You were happy, and you gave me a son I could not have loved any more, or made me any happier, if he'd been designed to order. Nathan is the best thing I've ever done with my life, even if I couldn't always give him what he wanted or deserved. I did what I could for him, but God has decided my part is done. I'm relying on both you and Karen to take my son and raise him the rest of the way. Give him a family, a brother, and a home. Give him love and joy and compassion for the rest of his life. He deserves nothing less.

Deb

(PS - I've rewritten this letter every year for the past 13 years. If you want to see the old versions, my lawyer has them. The first few are... Well, I don't feel that way about you anymore.)"

Dan put the letter down. He heard her voice in her words, that sweet, gentle voice that had always made him feel a little brighter, had gotten him through his knee injury, had made his brief college career happy. As he put the letter away, all he could think was, why, that night 16 years go, hadn't he let her talk first? How different would his life be? With those troubled thoughts he slid into an uneasy sleep.