"Father"

early parenting years • Dylan's POV

***

Sandra Wilson

My eyebrows shoot upwards when I glance at the caller ID flashing across my cell phone screen.

Sandy... Bloody hell. When was the last time... Ah, yeah. I remember the last time.

"Hello," I answer, curious.

"Dylan? Hi." She sounds... different. It's been nearly four years, I guess there's nothing odd about that.

"Sandy? It's been a long time. How are you?"

For some reason, she falters before answering. "I'm... doing just fine. How about you?"

"Alright."

Shit, I don't even know what to say to her.

"I know you're probably wondering why I'm calling," she deadpans. Her voice is... dryer. She sounds tired.

"Definitely a surprise. What's it been, three, four years?"

I think I catch her let out a sigh. "Nearly four," she confirms. "Listen, Dylan, I..." She swallows. Seems like she's having some trouble saying what she wants to say. "Are you free some time this weekend to meet with me? I know this is pretty last minute but... it's important."

My forehead knits into a frown and my mind starts racing with the possibilities, but nothing that I come up with makes sense. "Okay. Is... everything alright, Sandy?"

When she answers I can tell her throat is raw. "I... I'll explain everything in person. I can text you my address. When works for you?"

Now I'm dying of curiosity. "It's a rather quiet Saturday. Does this afternoon work? 2 pm?"

"That's perfect." She hesitates before asking, "Are you... seeing anyone?"

"Yes. Yeah, I am." Back when I ran into her a few years ago, I'd have been the last person to be in a committed relationship, but there it is.

"Bring her with, will you?"

More mysterious by the second. I talk about leaving my work at the station, but in reality my mind doesn't bloody stop. Once a detective... "Sure. See you soon."

"See you."

I find Victoria in the kitchen with an apron tied around her slender waist and her silky chestnut hair pulled back from her flushed face, baking what I think is shortbread. This woman is going to make me very, very fat.

I explain the bizarre call to her. "Sandra and I saw each other for a bit in high school. Then we went our separate ways. Four years ago, we ran into each other in a bar. She was getting over a nasty break-up and I was in the middle of a bloody awful investigation. We... uh, spent the night together. Haven't seen or heard from her since."

She looks at me with that same bewitching sparkle in her dark eyes. Fuck, I've always been a sucker for dark eyes. "Was she any good?"

I run a hand through the top of my hair and reply honestly, "We were both quite plastered, so I hardly remember much." I find myself distracted imagining what Sandy could wish to speak to me about. Perhaps she's ill? "She sounded... not quite right over the phone."

"Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

As she slips the tray of biscuits into the oven, she purposefully bends over further than necessary to give me a generous view of her lovely behind.

Bloody hell, how I love this woman. Her news from a couple months ago isn't going to change that, as much as I know she's worried it has.

***

My first thought when Sandy pulls open the front door for us is that she looks as though she's aged a decade since the last time we met.

Her hair, once a shiny blonde, is dull and short and pulled back. Light-washed jeans and a navy sweater. She's lost weight and her face is creased with several new wrinkles. She's paler and when she pulls me towards her for a brief, awkward hug, she feels fragile.

There's a sinking feeling in my chest. I think I know what she has to say to me but I don't want to be right.

She ushers us inside so we can escape the biting February cold.

"This is my girlfriend, Victoria."

Sandy gives her a warm smile and Victoria greets her with her usual irresistible charm and grace, and then Sandy invites us into her living room and offers us coffee. We both politely decline.

Sandy sits across from us, runs her hands up and down her thighs nervously. "So, there's really no easy way to say this, Dylan..."

The expression on her face is pained and it fucking hurts to look at her, to see her like this. She used to be so full of life. We had so many good times together, back in the day.

She pinches her eyes shut, takes a deep breath. "A few months ago, I... I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer."

It feels like all the air has been punched right out of my lungs.

I don't know how to respond but I don't have to because she keeps talking, barely meeting my eyes as she does. Those once bright hazel orbs are shiny and worn. "They say I don't have... a long time left. I didn't... I wouldn't have contacted you, but... there's something else I..."

She trails off as her voice cracks.

"I'm so sorry, Sandy," I breathe, gruff with emotion and disbelief.

She offers me a watery smile. "Look, Dylan, I... haven't been entirely honest with you. My parents both passed away within the last few years, and, you know I'm an only child. So there's really no one else I could..." She reaches for a tissue, dabs a little at the corner of her eye. "I was never planning on telling you this, Dylan. I... never wanted to get you involved but once I got my diagnosis I had no choice..."

I'm... struggling to understand what exactly she's trying to tell me. Not just that she's dying but, apparently also something else.

She takes a steadying breath, squares her shoulders back. "The last time we... you remember, almost four years ago?"

My eyebrows knit together as I try to fit together these pieces that don't seem to connect.

"Yes, of course I remember."

She closes her eyes and says, "I... I have a three-year-old son, Dylan. When I found out I was pregnant, I... was at a strange point in my life and I decided to keep him. I know you wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him and that was fine... I didn't want or need to get you involved."

I swear the earth stops spinning as I process what she's saying. I feel Victoria's hand on my thigh but I can hardly register anything as the world as I know it shifts and tilts and morphs right before my eyes.

"Are you saying..." The words coming from my mouth are barely a strangled whisper.

"He's yours, Dylan. We can get a test if you want confirmation, but... Michael and I hadn't been with each other like that for months, and there was no one after you before I found out. I knew I was getting up there, and I'd always wanted a child of my own, and I could afford to be a single parent, so... but now..."

She breaks herself off because there are tears streaming down her face. "I'm not gonna make it to his fourth birthday, Dylan. I wouldn't have contacted you if there was anyone else, but, there's no one else, and..."

Fuck, I can feel my throat stinging, my vision starting to blur. I want to feel angry, to be upset and appalled but she's fucking dying and I just feel helpless and stricken. "I have... a son, and you never told me? Sandy..."

"I know, Dylan. I know it's not exactly fair, but..." She cracks a humorless smile. "The Dylan Rowley I used to know wouldn't have wanted anything to do with a child. You wouldn't have wanted to be a father. And I didn't want to drag you into co-parenting with me, or any of that mess, I..."

"I could've... should've helped you, Sandra. Raising a child on your own and now..."

Am I really such a bastard that a woman would rather raise our child all on her own than ask me for help? Until she's bloody dying of brain cancer?

"I didn't need your help. I promise I didn't. My parents left this house, their house to me when they died. Car accident, a few months after I found out I was pregnant."

I stand up and cross the room so I can sit down beside her and take her hand. The blueish veins are visible and her skin seems papery thin. "I'm sorry, Dylan."

"Don't you dare apologize. I'm sorry, Sandy. I'm so very sorry."

She gives my hand a squeeze, surprisingly strong though she seems so frail.

She looks across the coffee table at Victoria and gives her an apologetic smile. "And I'm sorry to you too, Victoria. I know this isn't fair to you, to put you in this position. I promise I wouldn't have if it didn't seem like the only option..."

Victoria also has tears trailing down her face. She rises to her feet and comes to sit on Sandy's other side, takes her free hand in both of her own. "Can I share something with you?" Vicky begins, wiping the wetness from beneath her eyes. "I've always wanted a child of my own. Except..." She swallows, her full lips tilting up into a sad, quivering smile. "A couple months ago, I was having all these strange symptoms and... long story short..." She sniffles. "I found out that I'll never be able to have children."

Sandy offers her the tissue box and they swipe away at their tears together.

Fuck, yeah, I'm crying. Fuck.

"And I was so ashamed and devastated and I thought... that the universe was such a cruel place but..." She looks at Sandy leans in and says with a sad smile, "But the universe makes its own plans, doesn't it?"

They hug each other and I sit here and imagine raising a child, my child. A three-year-old boy whom I could've never known about.

"I... by April, the doctors say I'll start losing a lot of neurological function and it'll progress rapidly from there. I don't want... I don't want Luke to see me like that..."

Luke. His name is Luke.

"Where is he?"

"He's taking a na—"

"Mommy?"

When I look over to the entrance to the living room there's a tiny boy standing there.

A warm shock travels down my spine as I take him in. Dark brown hair, big brown eyes. My eyes. Round pinkened cheeks, fat little hands. He's wearing Thomas the Train pyjamas and looking at us with alertness and confusion.

"Hey, baby," Sandy greets with a trembling voice. I can hear the smile she's forcing behind her words. "Come over here for a minute, sweetheart." She holds out her arms and assures, "These are Mommy's friends."

I'm sure I must be frightening the lad, the way I'm staring at him. He looks... he looks exactly how I would imagine a son of mine to look like.

"He... looks just like you, Dylan," Victoria observes, sounding awestruck.

Luke watches us both with wide, wary eyes before taking just a single unbalanced step towards us.

"Hey, little man." I barely recognize the hoarse sound of my own voice.

I don't know what overcomes me but I reach out a hand towards him, instinctively. Sandy coos at him encouragingly and he scurries towards her on those wobbly little legs of his.

Bloody hell, he's beautiful. He climbs onto her lap and looks at me, and I look at him.

"Dylan, this is Luke," Sandra introduces unnecessarily. "Luke," she whispers in a sweet, sing-song voice. "This is your daddy."

I extend a hand towards him experimentally and he curls a chubby fist around my index finger and I've never... never experienced something quite so indescribably fascinating in my entire life.

It's not like I've never been around infants. Darcy and Ophelia are my godchildren, but Luke... fuck, fucking hell, he's my child.

"His birthday is December 5th," Sandy shares. "He just turned three a couple months ago."

I hazard a glance over at Victoria. She's looking at Luke with a kind of wonder that makes my heart contract beneath my ribs.

Luke squirms in his mum's lap, wiggles himself back down to land on those little feet of his and scampers off somewhere out of sight.

"He's..." I scrub a palm across the lower half of my face and blink away the wetness behind my eyes. "He's..."

"I know," Sandy soothes with a tiny smile. "He is."

We sit for a moment, collect our breaths. "Sandy," I begin. "When... when do want us to... well, whatever you need, just tell me. I have my chequebook in the car—"

She rests a dismissive hand onto my shoulder. "No, no cheque. I'm going to be gone in a few month's time and I'm leaving every last thing I have to him, so there's..." She shrugs. "No point."

"What else can I do for you?"

She gives my shoulder a squeeze. "I really want to spend whatever good time I have left with him, you know? But I know you want to get to know him, so... we can take it one step at a time. We can... sort out the paperwork, all that. We don't have to talk about it today. I'll... have my lawyer send over all the stuff you need... I..."

When she looks at me this time with a familiar softness on her face, she reminds me a little of the girl I knew decades ago, back in the twelfth grade, with whom I stole liquor from our parents' cabinets and had sex with in the backseat of my tattered car during those 90s drive-in movies. "Thank you, Dylan."

I do the only thing I can think of, which is to fold her into my arms. She sobs into my shoulder and Victoria holds onto her too, and I can't help but think how bloody, impossibly unfair life has been to someone who deserves it the very least.

Before we leave she tells me, "I was wrong, Dylan. You... you'll make an incredible dad."

Victoria and I sit silently in my car for a while in Sandy's driveway, a strange stillness hanging over us.

"Are you alright?" she eventually asks, quietly.

"I... I'm not sure." I sift my fingers tiredly through my hair, still trying to make sense of it all. "I just... have a hard time with the idea that... she didn't want to tell me because she thought..." I swallow back the dry lump in my throat. "She thought I was no good. That she was better off on her own."

She takes my hand, gives it a firm, comforting squeeze. "Well, we'll just have to prove her wrong then, won't we?"

I reach over, swipe my thumb tenderly over the curve of her bottom lip. "Victoria, I... I know this is something so very serious to ask of you..."

I can't imagine exactly what she must be thinking, feeling.

She captures my fingers, wraps them tightly with her own. "He has your eyes."

I exhale a shaky breath. "Yeah, fuck. He does."

More silence before she says, "So how many other children of yours do you think are out there?"

And I look at her and she looks at me and we laugh, and I know, suddenly, that things will be okay between us.

***

"Hey man," Gavin greets, his voice a little crackly through the Bluetooth.

"Hey, mate. Listen... Victoria and I just learned some... crazy news. Are you and Mel at home? If you have a couple minutes..."

I can hear muffled voices conversing on the other side. "Yeah, of course. Give us half an hour?"

"Sure. We'll bring dinner? Thai?"

"Sounds great." A beat before he inquires, "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. Everything is... just the way it's meant to be, I suppose."

***

A/N:

Thoughts, comments, concerns about the truth behind Dylan and Luke?

Let me know which MIK bonus chapter was your favourite!

XOXO Ami