“Elmer…” She wanted to tell him everything that had happened and tried to force the words out, but her throat constricted, and all she managed to do was cry.

“There, there, puddin’. Don’t cry.” He wrapped her in his arms and patted her back.

“I don’t cry,” she said midsob.

“What happened?” the gray-haired man said in a gruff voice. “Did something happen to Aaron?”

“No,” she finally managed to say. “Not really, at least not that he knows about. His father came into the store today.”

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Elmer let her go and stared at her. “What’s he doing in Erie? I thought you left him behind in Georgia?”

“So did I. But he’s here. He’s working at the hospital, so he’s living in Erie.” She gulped convulsively. “Oh, Elmer, it’s so horrible. Aaron walked into the room and Joe knew—he couldn’t help but know. Aaron’s the spitting image of him at seven. Joe knew and he looked furious. He’s probably worried a secret son will upset the life his parents planned for him, that it will upset his perfect society wife. I don’t know what he’s going to do, and I’m sick with worry.”

“Now, what’s to worry about? He went and got himself engaged to someone else all those years ago, despite the fact he’d asked you to marry him. So you sign some paper saying you don’t want anything at all from him, make it all legal,” Elmer said, echoing her own thoughts. “You and Aaron have got along without him this long. You certainly can manage. Just go see a lawyer and make it all legal-like, then he’ll have nothing to complain about.”

“You think?” she asked.

She needed reassurance. She’d built a wonderful, happy life for herself and her son. She didn’t want Joe Delacamp to complicate it.

“Sure I think.” Elmer patted her back. “Now, stop fretting and go get some rest. You call a lawyer. That Donovan guy across the street seems okay. At least Sarah seems to think so.” He laughed.

Weddings seemed to be becoming commonplace within the Perry Square business community.

Libby at the hair salon had married her neighbor, Josh, the eye doctor. Then Sarah, the interior decorator who’d opened her store about the same time Louisa opened The Chocolate Bar, married Donovan, from the neighboring law firm.

“You’re right. I’ll call Donovan tomorrow.”

“Then call me. I’ll watch the shop when you go and see him.”

“Thanks, Elmer. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Well, don’t look to be figuring it out anytime soon. I plan to stick around a good long time.” He paused a moment and then said, “Did I tell you I have a date?”

“No,” Louisa said, knowing he was trying to change the subject, to brighten her mood. She was more than happy to allow him to. “Who?”

“You know Mabel, that acupuncturist? I was a bit nervous about dating a lady who pushed pins for a living, but she’s mighty cute.”

Louisa couldn’t help the small smile. Mabel had been hanging out at the candy store a lot, but only on days when Elmer was there. She sensed a romance in the making. “When are you going out?”

“Next week. She asked me for this weekend, but I told her me and Aaron had plans.”

“Oh, Elmer, you should have simply canceled.”

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “There’s a bunch of blue gill in the lake that have my name on them. And I got tickets to some fancy-shmancy show Mabel wants to see, so it all worked out.”

“If you’re sure.”

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Why couldn’t she shake that thought?

Because Joe was in Erie.

Somewhere, right outside that window, Joe Delacamp was walking around, breathing the same air she was.

Elmer must have sensed her thoughts. He said, “I’m positive about fishing with Aaron. Now, don’t you fret about that man—though I use the term in its very lightest sense. He got engaged to someone else, which means that not only isn’t he much of a man, he’s not very bright, either. Just call up Donovan tomorrow, and take it from there.”

Louisa felt a bit better as she climbed the stairs back up to her apartment. Of course Elmer was right. Joe hadn’t wanted children eight years ago; he wouldn’t want his son now.

The thought wasn’t quite as comforting as it should have been. She climbed into her pajamas and went to her room. She pulled a dark-green journal from her drawer and started writing.

“Dear Joe, today you met your son—the son you never wanted….”

As she wrote, she glanced up at the eight similar books that sat on the top shelf, above the television. She’d started a journal right after she found out she was pregnant and had bought a new one when Aaron was born. After that she bought a new journal on each of her son’s birthdays.

If Aaron ever wanted to meet his father, she planned on giving them to Joe as an introduction of sorts. An introduction to a son he’d never known and hadn’t wanted.

My heart froze in my chest when Aaron walked in. I saw the look of understanding dawn on your face, and then the raw, bitter anger. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry, but it would have been a lie. No matter what your mother said, I didn’t plan to get pregnant, I wasn’t trying to trap you. You were engaged to someone else and asked me for time. I’d have given you anything…but I didn’t have time to give. Your mother was right—Aaron and I would have held you back from the life you were born to have. My only sorrow was that you’ll never know what you missed.

She wrote and finally she rested. Her last thought was Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Chapter Two

Joe waited outside the candy store, still uncertain what to do, what to say to Louisa.

He worked third shift last night, and was kept busy for the entire eight hours. But at the oddest time a mental picture of the boy, his son, would explode in his mind.

Aaron.

He’d whispered the name to himself, marveling in the wonder of having a son, and strangling on the knowledge that he’d missed so much.

He spotted Louisa walking down the block.

She still was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. The kind of woman who didn’t realize how striking she was.

If all that lay between them didn’t exist, she was the kind of woman he’d ask out.

Her expression when she spotted him gave none of her thoughts or feelings away. So many things about Louisa were different than he remembered, but that was probably the biggest change in her.

When they were kids he’d been able to read her like a book. Well, now the book was closed, at least for him.

He refused to speculate about whether there was another man reading her these days.

Joe met that emotionless face and wondered if maybe he’d been wrong, maybe he just thought he’d known her when they were kids.

The Louisa he’d believed in could never have done what she’d done.

“Louisa, we have to talk,” he said.

“Come in,” was her wooden response.

She unlocked and opened the front door and set a stack of papers down on the counter to her left.

“What do you want, Joe?”

What he wanted was to have the first seven years of his son’s life back, but since he couldn’t have that, he settled for asking, “Why?”

Maybe if he could understand, he could forgive Louisa.

She turned and he could see pain in her expression.

“Joe, I never meant for you to know,” she said softly. “And now that you do, it doesn’t change anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to make an appointment with a lawyer. I’ll have it all drawn up, nice and legal. Aaron and I expect nothing from you.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it? How could you keep the fact that I had a son from me?”

“Joe, I was going to tell you, but then that announcement came. You’d just gotten engaged to Meghan.”

“I explained that.”

“You asked me for time…. I didn’t have time to give you.”

“You should have told me then.”

“And what? You’d have gone against your parents, risked the business merger, broken the engagement with Meghan?”

“It wasn’t real. Our parents felt the stockholders would be more comfortable merging the companies if they thought the families were merging through a marriage between us. But it wasn’t real. I told you that. You should have believed me.”

“I did. I believed you when you said repeatedly you didn’t want children. You had a life all planned out. I couldn’t take your dreams away from you.”

“You were my dream. You know that.”

“Joe, look at you, a doctor working in an E.R. You’ve done everything you wanted. You accomplished your dreams. I couldn’t take them away from you.”

“So you made the decision for me? You left, taking my son with you…a son I didn’t even know existed.”

Louisa might have learned to hide her emotions, but Joe couldn’t. He could hear the pain in his own voice, but it did little to reflect the depth of what he was feeling.

“Joe, my whys and the past aren’t worth talking about. We can’t change it. It’s over. I know you’re worried about what your wife will think, what your family will think. They never have to know. I’ll have the papers drawn up and send them to you stating we have no claim on you financially. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to work.”

She turned as if she was going to leave, but he grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around.

She’d shut him out by not telling him about his son, but she would never shut him out like that again.

“I do mind,” he said. “We have to come to some sort of agreement here and now. The kind of agreement that doesn’t require a lawyer.”

He dropped his hand from her shoulder.

This time Louisa didn’t move.

“There’s nothing to agree on. Aaron’s my son.” Her voice was flat and her statement final. As if she expected him to shrug his shoulders and simply walk away from the knowledge that he had a son.

Maybe Louisa hadn’t known him any better than he’d known her.

“He’s my son, too,” he said softly.

“Only in the most biological sense. You’re nothing to him.”

It was a direct hit. Her remark cut at him, but rather than let her see how much, he simply said, “That’s about to change.”

Right now there wasn’t much Joe was sure of—his whole world had been tilted off its axis—but he was sure that there was no way he was losing another minute with his son.

He saw that statement register and heard a faint quaver in Louisa’s voice as she asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“I want to get to know my son.”

“I won’t have you coming in here, disrupting his life and then disappearing.”

“There won’t be any disappearing. I plan to stick around. I missed the first seven years of his life, I won’t miss another minute. You’re going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that I’m going to be a part of his life. You’re going to have to share him.”

“What do you propose? Joint custody? What will your wife say to that?”

“I never married her, Louisa,” he said softly.

He’d explained that it was just business, that he and Meghan were just friends and she’d said she understood, but obviously she hadn’t. Just like he still wasn’t sure he understood why she’d left.

She wasn’t telling him everything. Eventually he’d get the answers he wanted, but right now he was concentrating on getting his son.

“I told you then my parents set it up,” he continued. “I had to wait until after the merger to get out of it, but I did get out of it. I didn’t marry Meghan. I couldn’t, you see. I was in love with someone else, and back then I hadn’t given up hope she’d come back to me.”

She stopped a moment, staring at him, some emotion on her face that he couldn’t quite identify.

“But she never did,” he finished.

Finally she said, “What do you want me to do? Just introduce you to him, and say, ‘Aaron, by the way, this is your father and he wants to spend time with you, so you’ll be bouncing from the only home you’ve ever known over to his place and then back again.”’

“I don’t want to upset him, I want what’s best for him, and I think I’m best. I am going to be part of his life. I spent the night thinking of options. I’m suggesting something better than joint custody.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Marry me.”

Marry me.

When Louisa had discovered she was pregnant she’d dreamed he would say those words.

Marry me.

It’s what they’d always talked about. She’d always dreamed that she would one day marry Joe Delacamp, no matter that she was just a Clancy. Just the dirt-poor, town drunk’s daughter.

Then he’d gotten engaged to Meghan Whitford. A girl from his social circle. A girl he’d always claimed was just a friend.

He’d said his parents had set it up.

She’d told him to just break it off, but he’d claimed he couldn’t. There was a business deal in the works and publicly breaking off with Meghan could ruin the deal.

Louisa didn’t understand people who would use something as sacred as marriage—or even just an engagement—to forge a business merger.

Joe had asked her to give him time.

Time was something Louisa hadn’t had. She’d been two months pregnant with a child—the child of a man who’d always claimed he’d never be a father.

Still, despite his pseudo-engagement, she’d planned to tell him. To let him decide what he wanted to do.

And then his mother had come to her, and that one visit had changed everything….

Louisa pulled herself back from the past.

It was history.

Ancient history.

She couldn’t alter what she’d done. At the time she’d thought she’d done what was best for everyone.

Now?

Listening to him talk about the son he’d never known, she wasn’t sure.

“Marry me,” he repeated.

“Marry you?” She laughed then, shocked at the bitterness she heard in her own voice. “You’ve got to be insane to think I’d marry you.”

“You’ve got to be even more insane if you think I’m sharing custody of Aaron. I want it all. Every day. I want to be there when he gets home from school, when he goes to bed, when he gets up the next morning and has breakfast. I want to be there when he brings home his report cards. I want to hear how school went. I want to see him play—does he play sports?”

“Soccer and football,” she answered.

There was a yearning in his expression. “Then I want to go to every game. I missed seven years and I don’t want to miss another moment. The way I see it I have two options. I could sue for sole custody, or I can become a part of your family. Taking Aaron away from the only home and parent he’s ever known is cruel. That leaves becoming part of your family. I don’t think us living together—even if we’re not together in a physical sense—sets a good example. That leaves marriage.”

“And what if I have a significant other?” she asked.

“You’d have to break it off, of course.” He paused and asked, “Do you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“No, I guess it’s not.” Abruptly he asked, “How could you just leave me like that?”

His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I explained about the engagement. I thought you understood. And then you were just gone. I decided you were too young. After all, I was three years older than you. I figured you’d had second thoughts and were just too young, too confused to tell me, so you’d just left. But that’s not why. You left to have my son in secret. Why? Did you think I’d be like my parents, trying to control him and squeeze the life out of him, inch by inch?”

“You said you never wanted children.”

“Did you think I’d abandon you and our baby?”

She could tell him about his mother’s visit. She could tell him that it had been easier to just leave than risk having him agree with his parents, having him think she’d tried to trap him.

Of all the things his mother could have said, that was the one that cut to the quick.

Louisa had believed what the town said, that she was just “that Clancy girl,” a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

She’d believed that people would agree with Joe’s mother, that she’d tried to trap him.

She’d believed that his parents would cut him off without a dime, force him to quit school to support her and the baby, and steal his dream of being a doctor.

Maybe they could have found another way…could have dealt with all that. What others thought of her had long ago ceased to matter. But a part of her had felt that eventually Joe would believe all that as well. That he’d think she’d trapped him and stolen his dreams.

That, she couldn’t live with.

What had she done?

She’d been so hurt, felt so betrayed, been so afraid that she’d simply left. In her heart she’d never understood how Joe could love her.

How could she have doubted him?

Looking at the pain in his face right now, she knew that he’d never have abandoned their son.

“Louisa?” Joe said. “You look like you’re going to faint. Sit down before you fall down.”

He led her to a chair behind the counter and helped lower her into it.

His voice was gentle, a whisper of the Joe she used to know. “Here, tuck your head between your knees and breathe deep.”

She’d let her own fears and doubts rob the man she loved of knowing his son.

Slowly she sat up and fought back the tears that threatened to fall.

She should tell him. Should tell him everything that happened.

She wanted to.

She’d believed his mother and doubted Joe. She’d taken the check his mother had offered to secure her son’s future and left, thinking that breaking her own heart was easier than waiting for Joe to break it for her.

She hadn’t trusted him enough…or trusted in their love.

No other explanation was needed.

She’d trust him now.

It was too late for their love, but not too late for him to know his son.

Not that she could marry him.

He said he wanted his son—he wanted Aaron—not Louisa.

She’d thrown away their future when she left, but she would find a way to give Aaron a future with his father.

She’d make it work.

“The past is ancient history. Right now it’s the present we have to worry about. I have an idea,” she said. “I have to do some checking. Meet me after work tonight and we’ll talk.”

“I mean it, Louisa, I want every minute of his life.”

“I understand. And I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I’ll do whatever I can to see to it you and Aaron build a good relationship. We’ll talk. After work.”

Chapter Three

As new man on the job, Joe worked third shift. Ten-thirty at night until six-thirty in the morning.

He should have spent the day sleeping, but instead he spent it tossing and turning.

By five-thirty, as he waited outside Louisa’s store, he was a wreck.

So many questions he wanted to ask. So many details he wanted filled in.

She opened the door and looked surprised to see him there. “Joe, I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I said I’d be here.”

“Yes, yes you did.” She was quiet a minute, studying him. “Let’s go over to the diner. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I look like I need one?”

“It’s a polite way of saying you look like hell.” The comment was softened with a weak smile.

“You always were direct.”

“I still am.”

They walked across the square to The Five and Dine.

“Cute,” he said as he looked around.

It was decorated like something out of Happy Days, right down to a vintage jukebox.

“I like it,” she said as she led him to a small booth in the back.

A waitress followed right on their heels. “Hey, Louisa.”

“Hi, Missy. Could I have a coffee?”

“Sure. And you?” the girl asked Joe.

“Same.” As soon as she was out of earshot, he asked, “You said something about an idea.”

He needed this settled. He didn’t want to waste another minute waiting to be with his son.

Louisa nodded. “I had to ask first, but…” She sighed. “There’s so much we have to talk about.”

“Yeah, like why you left. Why you kept my son from me. None of your explanations have answered all the questions. As a matter of fact, they just raise more. Why—”

“Joe, it was so long ago, and I’ve changed so much since then, but I still remember what it was like.”

“What what was like?” he asked.

“Growing up as Clancy’s kid. I remember feeling as if I’d never be more than that and wondering what you saw in me. Whatever it was you saw, I didn’t see it in myself. When I found out I was pregnant, I’d never been so afraid. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the baby, or even what people would say—they’d been talking all my life. I was afraid of losing you.”

“Why? How could you think I wouldn’t stand by you?”

The waitress brought their coffee and said, “Holler if you need something else.”

“Joe,” Louisa said, as soon as the woman was out of earshot, “when we talked about the future, you said repeatedly how much you didn’t want kids.”

“I was young and I was afraid I’d be like my parents. I thought I couldn’t take the chance. But I’d never have abandoned you.”

How could she have said she loved him and not known even that much about him?

“But at the time, all I knew was that I didn’t measure up to you or your family and I was pregnant and you didn’t want kids. I was so scared. But I planned to tell you. It took me a couple weeks to work up to it, but I’d planned it all out. We were supposed to go out that night and I even memorized what I was going to say. But then I saw the paper.”

“The engagement announcement?”

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