Before my break is over, and right in the middle of my consideration to start drinking to calm my nerves from stress, I get another call from the school.
“I swear if he got into a fight in ISS, I’m going to—Hello?” I say when the call connects.
“Tinley?”
“Mike,” I say on a sigh.
The middle school principal was my science teacher in high school. He always had a little more compassion for the kids that needed it the most and that included Ignacio Torres.
“What has he done now?”
“The usual,” he relays as if boys getting into fistfights is an everyday occurrence, and maybe for him it is. “He didn’t start it this time. That’s the only thing that’s keeping him out of the alternative school.”
“Maybe that would be better,” I confess out loud. The staff at the disciplinary campus isn’t going to send him home every time Alex decides to bow up to someone on campus. They’re trained to deal with rougher kids, and I even hate thinking of my son that way, but his recent behavior isn’t winning him any citizenship awards.
“You know how things are over there. If you think things are bad with him, going there will only make it worse. I’m doing my best to keep him out of that place.”
I want to argue that his lack of follow-through will only give him more reason to misbehave, but I know the man is doing his best. He cares more than any educator I’ve ever met, and Alex is lucky the man is on his side.
“I know,” I agree.
“Besides, I think things may be turning around.”
“How so?”
“I know Alex will benefit from a positive male role model in his life.”
I freeze with the phone to my ear, my heart pounding in an uneven rhythm.
Of course, he knows Ignacio is in town, and although I’ve never confessed my son’s paternity to anyone other than my parents’, Michael Branford is a smart man. Not only does Alex look exactly like his father, but he also behaves just the same as well. I’ve seen the stubborn set of Ignacio’s jaw on Alex’s face since he was a baby getting annoyed with blocks that wouldn’t stack just right, and a million times since.
“Mike,” I whisper. “Please tell me you didn’t say anything to him?”
“To Alex or his dad?”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “Either of them.”
“I haven’t. It’s not my place to reach out to persons not listed as contacts in a student’s file. That would be unethical.”
“I’ll come up there tomorrow to add him to the no-contact list.”
It doesn’t go unnoticed that neither one of us hasn’t mentioned the man’s name.
“I’ll need you to bring legal documents that say he isn’t allowed information, Tinley.”
“I don’t have anything like that.” He fucking knows it, too. “Are you going to tell him anything?”
“If a child’s parent contacts me wanting information and there’s nothing in his file saying he can’t have it, I’m legally obligated to provide the information.”
“Are you enjoying this?”
“Not in the slightest, Tinley, but I do know what this type of information can do to a young man. It may be best to sit down and have a conversation with Alex while you can still control the situation.”
There is no controlling this situation, and I grind my teeth at just one more person trying to tell me what do to and what’s best for my son. I don’t fault Mike for looking out for one of his students, but parenting suggestions have been flying at me as a single mother for years. I’ve had it up to my eyebrows, and I’m tired of unsolicited advice.
“I can arrange for a youth counselor to be present to ease the blow.”
What goes unsaid is that Alex should’ve never been denied access to his father.
“That won’t be necessary. Will you allow him to ride the bus home? I don’t get off until five.”
“Of course, Tinley. Please remember that I’m always here if—”
“Thank you, Mr. Branford,” I hiss into the phone, cutting him off before I disconnect.
My lies, the things I’ve told my son to protect him, are coming back to bite me in the ass. There’s no way this isn’t going to destroy him. When he came home from daycare at four, wanting to know why others at school had daddies and he didn’t, I told him his daddy died. He didn’t understand death, but he accepted that his father would never be around. When he was older, asking for more details after my own dad died, I lied again, telling the most precious person in my life that Ignacio was a bad person who died while doing terrible things. I could blame the bitterness I was feeling at the time for losing my father, but honestly, I’d hoped all those years that Ignacio went back to the life he was so good at before I left. I needed him to be a bad person because it made it easier for me to keep Alex away from him and safe. No one in their right mind could fault a parent from keeping their child away from a drug-dealing criminal, right?
I still don’t know what Ignacio has done with his life. Mike said Alex would benefit from a positive male role model, but the man has always had more faith in people than they deserve.
What I do know is that Ignacio showed up at my door looking better than I remember him ever being, and the expensive truck parked at the street didn’t make me think he was hurting for money like we have been since Dad died.
People don’t make it out of this neighborhood legally, so there’s still a chance that Ignacio is the bad person I’ve let myself imagine he was all these years. Only now he’s right in the middle of our lives holding a grenade that’s going to ruin everything.
I haven’t regretted the lies I told Alex very often, but when I get home and yell at him for his behavior at school, it kills me to hear him mutter something about being exactly like his father.
I stand at his bedroom door, head pressed against the worn wood, trying to build the courage to turn the knob and tell him the truth, but I just can’t. I need more time. I need the help I so quickly dismissed when Mike offered it earlier. I just need.
I need understanding, someone to tell me I made the right choice all those years ago. Someone who can convince me that the lies I told were the only option even though I know they weren’t.
Regardless of the fact that Ignacio hurt me, he deserved to know. My mother has told me as much for years even though she has respected my wishes and gone along with the lies I’ve told my son. My dad had the same mindset as me. If a man could hurt me as much as he did, then what kind of damage could he do to a small child? I was convinced that I did the right thing until a handful of days ago when the ghost from my past showed up demanding answers.
I’ve been balancing my entire life on unsteady ground, and all it’s going to take is one confession to make everything implode around me.
Last week Alex told me he hated me for grounding him. He may actually mean it by the time Ignacio is done infiltrating our lives.
Chapter 7
Ignacio
Although I gave the testing facility permission to text the results, it seems like too big a piece of news to share via two short sentences and a secure link.
Even still, I spend the next couple of minutes entering my information to create my one-time use account to get the news I already know in my heart.