Chapter 4 - Helen Asked the Question She Had Avoided for Ten Years
Helen drove to Grant’s house that evening without Caleb.
Monica answered the door.
“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
Monica’s face hardened.
Helen walked past her.
Grant sat in the living room.
The mark from Helen’s slap was gone.
The anger was not.
“You had no right to hit me.”
“You had no right to throw your fourteen-year-old son out.”
“He has been disrespectful to Monica for months.”
“Then parent him.”
Helen stepped closer.
“Why did you return Laura’s letters?”
Grant froze.
Monica looked between them.
“What letters?”
Helen noticed.
Monica genuinely did not know.
That mattered.
Grant stood.
“Caleb talked to her.”
“Yes.”
“She had no business contacting him behind my back.”
“He contacted her.”
Grant’s jaw tightened.
“She’s manipulating him.”
“Did she send birthday cards?”
Grant did not answer.
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
“Did you give them to Caleb?”
“No.”
Helen stared at her son.
“Why?”
“Because every time she came back into his life, she disappeared again.”
“She was trying to get sober.”
“And I was raising him.”
Grant’s voice rose.
“I was the one staying up when he had fevers. I handled preschool. Kindergarten. Homework. Nightmares. She got to send a card and feel like a mother.”
Helen understood his anger.
That was the dangerous part.
Grant had been abandoned too.
Laura’s addiction had left him parenting alone while working full-time.
There had been nights Helen found him asleep beside Caleb’s bed because the child would not settle.
Grant had carried enormous resentment.
But resentment had slowly turned into ownership.
“You could have told him the truth.”
“What truth? That his mother chose pills over him?”
“She chose treatment.”
“She relapsed.”
“And then she recovered.”
Grant looked away.
Helen caught it.
“When did she recover?”
Grant said nothing.
Helen stepped closer.
“How long has Laura been sober?”
Monica now looked at her husband.
Grant finally said, “Seven years.”
Helen felt something inside her drop.
Seven years.
Caleb had been seven when Laura achieved long-term sobriety.
Grant had continued telling him she was still gone because she did not want him.
“Did she ask for contact after that?”
Grant stared at the floor.
Helen already knew the answer.
May you like
The question now was not whether Grant had lied.
It was what he had been afraid would happen if Caleb learned his mother had changed.
