“I’ll take responsibility,” I say firmly. “Whatever Dog needed me to do, I’ll do it for his boy.”
“There’s a process,” she warns. “And you have to be sure you’re capable of not only caring for him now, but for eighteen years at least.”
“I’m already a father.” My tone comes out sharp, the insinuation I don’t know what raising a child entails, raising my hackles. “Dog was family. Perhaps not by blood, but by love. His son is our family now. There will always be room for him here.”
“Very well, we’ll move quickly,” Beth says. “I don’t want him in foster care longer than necessary.”
“What about his mother?”
“The police will be searching for her. There isn’t much to go on, but hopefully we can track her down safe and well. Anyone who leaves their child on a relative stranger’s doorstep can’t be in a good place.”
We shake hands, and Beth pushes Dog’s possible son’s pram down my path. A sadness surfaces. Now I’ve seen him, I want him safe. I want him home. He already feels like mine.
Hannah’s in her bedroom, tears streaming down her face. My guilt that my daughter has had to witness this fiasco unfold is rising by the second. She’s been through enough already. I walk over and sit beside my daughter on her bed as I’ve done dozens of times before.
“Do you want to talk about this, Hannah? Do you have any questions?” I ask. She continues to cry but says nothing. We sit in silence; both our minds lost in the shock of the situation.
Finally, she speaks. “If he’s Dog’s son, and you keep him, that means he’s your son.”
“I suppose,” I say, my voice soft. Ownership hadn’t really crossed my mind, what he would call me, even less so. All I knew was I wanted to ensure he wasn’t lost in a system I couldn’t control. Not the way his father was.
She looks up from her pillow. “Will you love me less?”
My heart breaks in that instant for my little girl. She’s dealt with so much over the past few years. The breakdown of our family, the loss of heruncle,me losing my leg, and now this. Wrapping her in my arms, I hold her tight, trying to glue all the broken pieces back together. I bury my face in her hair as my tears start to fall in synchronization.
“Don’t you ever think I will love you less, Hannah. You’re the most important person in the world to me. If this little boy is Dog’s son, then I’ll love you both with all my heart. We can all live here together. It won’t be easy, but we will get there. There’s plenty of love to go around.”
We both sit back, staring at each other. The fear in her eyes seeps away with my words. The confidence that ebbs and flows in a teenage girl returning.
“Who’s his mum?” she asks. “I didn’t know Dog had a girlfriend.”
My little girl may only be young, but she’s shrewd. There’s no pulling the wool over her eyes. She’s been like that since ever she started talking, asking the awkward but logical questions that make adults flinch.
“He didn’t.” Honesty is the best policy. It’s what I tell my daughter all the time. And it’s what I’ve learned she needs to hear. “He had a holiday fling.”
She chuckles, almost silent, but there’s a smile on her lips all the same. The swift change in her mood surprising me.
“What is it?” I prompt, missing the joke.
“It’s just Uncle Dog causing chaos.” She laughs again, harder this time. “Only he could give me a brother and be dead.”
My jaw drops, her bluntness hitting me square in the ribs. “Hannah…”
It feels like I should be scolding her. I trap the laugh threatening behind my teeth. It barely stays locked away.
“Chill, Dad, that’s what Dog would say anyway. It will all sort itself out.”
Hannah moved in with me the day I got home from the hospital. She refuses to go back to her mother’s house. I’ve tried to get her to split her week, but the most she will do is visit for a day. She says she needs to be here with me to support me, but the truth is, she doesn’t feel comfortable in our old home.
There are too many memories that Ainsley is trying to blot out with new ones.
After Hamish moved in, the house was redecorated, and all the family photos were boxed up for the attic. Hannah sobbed downthe phone to me as she told me what her mother’s answer was to her being upset.
“Hannah, today is the start of our new life. Everything else is to be left in the past.”
That night was her night with me; she arrived with a bulging suitcase. I’ve tried to talk to Ainsley about it, but it just ends in a slagging match. A truce or compromise unable to be met.
My daughter will remain here with me until she decides otherwise. In all honesty, her mother is so caught up in her relationship that she doesn’t seem to notice. It probably suits her. That smashes my heart and infuriates me in equal measure.