Read Family Ties for Free Online Page A

the person called again and hung up as soon as I answered. This time though, I had a return number. It had happened one morning right before Brianna left for school. I waited until she was gone, then called the number back, prepared to curse out some sick pervert who got off on calling women and scaring them half to death.” She shook her head and closed her eyes at the memory of her first conversation in eight years with the father of her child.
     
    “As soon as he said hello I knew it was him. Isn’t that funny? Over the years there would be times when I’d smell a certain scent or hear a song that reminded me of him, but never would I have guessed that I’d still know that voice from just one word. He said hello and I was just silent. I almost hung up on him. Seems like half an hour passed before I managed to ask if it was him and seems like another hour passed for him to admit it was.”
     
    I wanted to ask what happened next, but a story like that you didn’t rush and you damn sure didn’t interrupt.
     
    “I lit into his ass. Cursed him for the coward he was. Cursed him for all the times I struggled. Cursed him for all the times my child has asked me where her father was and how come he doesn’t want to be with her. I cursed him till my throat was sore and my hand hurt from gripping the phone so tight. I cursed him so bad I think I made up some new ones.  Then I cried.  Cried from all the anger.  Cried because I was tired.  He asked if he could come over, and for some reason I said yes. I told him he had to come right then and be gone before Brianna got home from school. It wasn’t until later that I realized I didn’t have to tell him where I lived. He just hung up, and forty-five minutes later he was knocking on my door.”
     
    She looked up at me with a pained look on her face. “You say he looked different, that he looked older. To me he was the same old Jermaine. He was the same nineteen-year-old who left me with stars in my eyes and a baby in my belly.  I looked him square in the eye and asked him where he’d been for the past eight years, and you know what he said? Hiding. I told him he had that right ‘cause I’d looked for him for three years before finally giving up. He said that he wasn’t ready to be a father back then. He watched me get bigger and further along in my pregnancy and got scared. I told him that I was scared too, but didn’t have the luxury of just picking up and running away. He apologized up and down and left and right, telling me how much he had wanted to come back, to contact us, but the longer he stayed away the harder it was to reappear.
     
    “He told me that he’d moved to New Jersey with a cousin and begged his mother and sisters not to tell me where he was. As you know, those trifling bitches had no problem doing just that. His mother never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t believe Brianna was Jermaine’s anyway.  Apparently she was keeping him informed of how we were and he pulled out pictures of my baby, pictures that his sister had taken of Brianna at the park or in front of the building. Pictures that I didn’t even know existed!  He had been spying on me for eight years and I had no idea. I asked him if he could do all that, why didn’t he just take his balls from his back pocket and come be a father to his daughter?”
     
    “What did he say?” My throat was dry as I asked.
     
    “What else?  He was scared.  He felt like he didn’t have much to offer us and didn’t want to come back half-assed.”
     
    “So, what does he want now?”
     
    “He says he wants to be a father to her.  He says he wants to get to know her.”
     
    “Well, screw him.”  I stood up, angry. “He can’t be a man eight years ago and decides it’s just easier to up and run away.  Now that he thinks he’s ready, it’s supposed to be fine for him to just waltz up in here with his tail between his legs, ready to be Daddy?”
     
    “Chloe.”