When I finished, she folded her hands and said, “If she tried to re-enter their lives suddenly, you can set terms, Hank. Especially if minors are involved. According to the paperwork, you are their legal guardian. And since Calla has been assumed deceased, protecting their emotional stability matters.”
“So, we can fight this? I can protect my kids?”
“Without a doubt, Hank. I’ll work on it this evening.”
By the next afternoon, Denise had filed formal notice: Any contact with the minors would go through her office, not through Mara.
“I can protect my kids?”
Three days later, I met Calla in a church parking lot halfway between our town and hers because I didn’t want her anywhere near my house.
She got out of a silver sedan and looked at me like I was a mirror she’d been avoiding.
“Hank.”
“You don’t get to say my name like that, Calla.”
She looked older, worn down in a way that gave me no comfort.
“I know you hate me,” she said.
“Hate would be much easier.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I thought they’d move on. The kids, I mean. And you… I thought you could give them the kind of home I couldn’t.”
She looked older.
I laughed, and the sound was ugly. “You don’t get to dress this up like sacrifice. You didn’t just leave ten kids. You taught one child to lie for you and call it love.”
She went still. “I never wanted to hurt Mara.”
“Then why contact her first?” I asked.
Her face crumpled. “Because I knew she might answer.”
That told me everything I needed to know.
“Of course,” I said. “You picked the child you already trained to carry your guilt.”
“You let us bury you without a body.”
“I never wanted to hurt Mara.”
She started crying then, and I remembered how easily Calla could look fragile.
Then I remembered Mara at eleven, carrying guilt no child should know.
“Listen carefully,” I said. “You don’t get to come back now and call this pain a misunderstanding. You left. That’s the truth. If the kids hear anything, they hear all of it. The honest and heartbreaking truth.”
She pressed a hand over her mouth. “Can I at least explain to them?”
“Maybe one day,” I said. “When it helps them more than it helps you. Are you really sick, Calla? Or did you lie to Mara?”
She cried harder at that, but I had nothing left to give her.
She started crying.
“No, I’m not. But I’ve been dreaming about the kids, and I wanted to —”
