Your Cheesy Bookstore Romance Pt. 6

But as fate let it happen, no one had to say anything. Gryphon got out of work early one night and walked into his home to find a man pacing in his living room, smoking a cigarette. “Uh ... hello?” Gryphon said. She came out then with two suitcases and set them down without looking up.

“Take these out, and I’m almost ready with the baby.” She left the room again without seeing her husband standing there. Gryphon was paralyzed, trying to figure out when he had fallen asleep because this was making no sense in his waking world. Nothing his brain knew could begin to explain what he had walked into. He went to the doorway of the nursery; the man in the living room had grabbed the suitcases and gone outside.

She was rushing around, shoving diapers, bottles, toys, clothes into the baby bags.

“What’s going on? What are you doing?”

She dropped a pink stuffed bunny, startled, and before she could catch herself said, “Why are you here?” then continued as if she’d said nothing.

Gryphon’s mind finally snapped to, and he hollered, “What the hell is going ON?!?”

She looked at him, not stopping. “I’m leaving. Leaving with Max.”

“WHAT?!?! What do you mean, you're leaving? Where are you going?” Finally he grabbed her shoulder to stop her running around and get her to face him. “WHAT IS GOING ON?”

She whirled around. “I’m leaving. And taking Joy.”

He stopped dead, his jaw hanging. He barely managed to utter “How—what—what happened—"

"Nothing happened, Gryphon. This is how it always was.”

His mind was spinning. “You can’t leave. You can’t take my baby.”

The man now standing in the doorway answered in an Australian accent. “She’s not your baby, Jack.”

Gryphon just stared, looking around the room, trying to find something that could explain all this, something, anything that made sense and would tell him everything was OK. He turned to the crib and picked up his precious Joy. Not his baby. What was he talking about? His wife motioned to Max to go outside, and waited a moment, watching Gryphon and her baby. He was touching her sweet face, murmuring to her.

“Come on, Gryphon,” she said quietly, taking Joy from him and fixing her in her waiting Winnie-the-Pooh car seat.

“How can you do this?” He was barely able to speak. “Where did this come from? What do you mean, she’s not my baby?!”

“Let me go, Gryphon.”

“Let you go? I come home from work to my wife and child and I find THIS? And I’m supposed to just let it happen like you’re going to your mom’s? Are you going to explain ANYTHING, or are you just going to shatter my world in seconds and leave? Because apparently I wasn’t even supposed to get THIS much, was I? you were just going to leave with her, weren’t you? So I would come home to NOTHING?”

She stopped and sat down in the rocking chair. “All right. I have a minute.”

“A MINUTE?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” She had him hostage. He knelt down beside his child and let her take his finger. Joy smiled and burbled at him.

She sighed. “I met Max just before I met you. He was traveling through the state, on shore leave from the navy.* We hung out a few times, and he left. I didn’t see or hear from him for months, and I thought that was it. Then one day he reappeared, right after you and I started sleeping together, and when I started to know him better he was like nothing I’d ever known. He was the coolest guy I’d ever met. But he had to leave again with his ship, and I’d fallen for him but didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. You know my dad never came back, so maybe I figured he wouldn’t either. Trite, huh?” she smiled a little, automatically, but he ignored it.

“Then I found out I was pregnant, and I knew it was him, not a broken condom like I’d told you. So he shows up again a month later, what, two months before the wedding, and I’d never told him too much about you.”

So that’s why she changed her mind, he thought. That’s why she wanted it small. Like the guy wouldn’t have found out anyway? Everyone in town knew.

“I didn’t want him to know about you … I almost called the whole thing off, but he went away again and I thought, that’s got to be it. And I loved you. Not the same exactly, but I did. I still do. I thought we could raise a beautiful baby in a good life. You’re a wonderful father, Gryphon.”

He was staring at Joy. “So now he’s going to stay? THIS time?” His voice was laced with acid.

“He’s been here since the day she was born, Gryphon. He left all those times because he had to. If he hadn’t gone back to his ship they’d have thrown him in jail. He busted his butt to get weekends off. And the last time he left was to get out of the navy altogether.”

Gryphon stared hard at Joy, fighting tears hard. It didn’t work.

“Do you know for sure?”

“Yes.”

“How long has he known?”

“About two weeks after the wedding.”

“Why now? Why wait till now? Why give me all this time with her just to take her away now? She’s 10 months old now.”

“We’ve saved enough now for all of us to go back to Australia.”

“AUSTRALIA?? How will I see her?!”

“Gryphon, you’re not GOING to. She’s not your baby!”

“Loving and raising her since before she was even born makes me what? Nothing? I’ve devoted my life to her, made sure she has everything, and I’m never going to SEE her again?! I’ve loved her more than anything or anyone I’ve ever known, and you’re taking her away?!”

She was crying now too. “I’m sorry. I’m SORRY. But this is the way it has to be.” She stood up. “We have to go.” She bent to pick up the car seat and the child it cradled.

“Please, please don’t do this—“

“Say goodbye, Gryph.”

He did. He kissed his Joy softly on the forehead and cheek, trying to jump back to this moment from a future time when he wouldn’t have her at all, knowing that in seconds this would be a memory and nothing more, slipped through his fingers, nothing to hold on to, gone forever, trying to make it last a lifetime, his lifetime. “I’ll love you forever, I wish you could know that. I hope—I hope that does something in your life somehow.” He stood up. “Please let me know …” he choked. “Send pictures, a letter, anything …”

She put her hand on his arm for a moment and walked out the door with the car seat and one last bag. Gryphon fell against the wall and slid down it slowly. He heard a car engine start out front and fade into the distance. He looked up at the window from where he sat on the floor, legs splayed like a rag doll, and noticed it had started to snow.




*Note that author intended to put the guy in some kind of Australian navy she assumed existed but never felt like researching. And assumed wouldn't be putting in to port in the States but didn't care at that point.