Grumpy Doctor’s Holiday Twins (Forbidden Doctors #17)

30. Ethan

30

ETHAN

O ne week to Christmas, approximately four days after the shocking revelation that I was a father, I stood in my parents' living room with a string of Christmas lights in hand staring at an almost-bare Douglas fir. I'd have canceled on this event like I planned to months ago when she asked me to be a part of it since I was home, but after hearing the gossip going around town, my conscience wouldn’t let me. Besides, I had nothing else to do and I couldn’t sit around my house another day by myself thinking of Melody.

"Over there, Ethan," Rick snapped, and I looked up from my daze to see that he was pointing at an outlet to the right of the tree which Luke was straightening up. They had been annoyed at me for what they considered my interruption of their tradition, one Mom started with them when I left town the first time. She wanted the togetherness, and after hearing rumors that she was sick, I felt like I knew why.

Mom hadn't said anything. When I asked my brothers if they'd heard anything about it around town, neither of them had any clue. Though, they didn't live here in town and it was a trek for them to come just for decorating. I figured they did it when I left since Mom and Dad were upset that I wouldn't be around for the holidays at all anymore. I felt like an invader here now.

"Oh, be nice to your brother," Mom snapped, though she'd been her usual grumpy self all day anyway. "Just plug that in to test the lights anywhere you please, Ethan." She swatted at me with her hand, and all I could think was how I wanted to go out and get some fresh air. But I couldn't help but notice how her skin was thinner. I could see her veins.

And while I was plugging in the tree, I noticed how much more silver she had in her hair. She used to cover it up, hide her age, but at some point, she'd given up on that and embraced aging. She was still a beautiful woman, but time was passing and she wouldn’t be here much longer. I couldn’t imagine her not being here when I came home to visit, and that made me want to not leave town so quickly, to not skip holidays.

I strung the lights on the tree after they were all checked and avoided the back and forth my brothers were involved in. Their cheerful holiday happiness annoyed me, but not as much as I'd have been aggravated by it last week or the week before. I was too emotionally burnt out from so much overwhelming heaviness, I didn't have energy to fight back or even be a Grinch. I did what they told me with a somber mood until Mom asked, "Are you okay, honey?"

Luke cracked a joke about the Grinch's heart growing three sizes and Rick laughed at him, but I shrugged it off.

"Just need some fresh air," I told her, and I set down the box of white bulbs I was supposed to be hanging on ten empty branches while the boys positioned the star and hung the garland.

I walked away from them and weaved through the kitchen and dining room to the back door. The patio had been cleared of snow, though my coat was in the front closet, but I stood outside and looked over their pristine back yard. Back in the day, us boys would have had the entire yard covered in footprints and tracks from where we rolled snowballs up for snowmen. Now it just looked lonely and forgotten, like my heart.

"Are you alright, baby?" Mom stood next to me with a warm shawl wrapped around her shoulders and puffs of crystalized air surrounding her with every breath. She had tired age lines near the corners of her eyes and sadness in her expression. We hadn't spent very much time together since I took the job with Doctors, and I felt like I hardly knew her anymore.

"Are you sick?" I asked bluntly. The jewelry store lady had gotten to me, but more than that, it was Melody and how losing her mother had led her to make poor decisions, such as hiding my children from me and my losing years of their life. I was hurting and I needed answers, and rather than facing the real pain, I asked questions to which I felt I already knew the answer.

Mom sighed and looked out over the snowy yard, but her posture didn't change. I watched her face for any hint of change in her expression, but the only thing that happened was she softened and offered a sad smile.

"I had a scare, Ethan. It was more than six months ago and the doctor gave me the all clear back in October. I'm perfectly healthy, but for a moment, we were worried." She turned to look at me with sadness in her eyes, and I felt like a fool.

"Why did you never tell me?" I was the only doctor in the family, and while I was a pediatrician, I still knew things. And I had connections here in town and in nearby Chicago where there were a lot of well-established doctors.

"You were overseas. You never called home. You didn't seem to care what was going on here." Mom turned to me with a frown. "What's this really about, Ethan? Because the boy I raised isn’t here right now. He hasn't been for years. I want my boy back. My time isn't over yet, but it's short. I'm in my seventies now. I won't live forever."

I stared at her with no words. How could I tell her the reason I was so broken was something that never should have happened? That she had grandchildren she was living in the same town with whose mother was someone she loathed? She'd never understand and she would only resent Melody more. Did it matter, though? What I had with Melody was gone. I didn't know that I'd ever get it back.

"I, uh…" I looked away, unable to hold her gaze. I couldn't find the words.

"It's that girl, isn't it? John's sister?" Mom's elbow rested on the deck railing, and she leaned on it. Both of us were shivering slightly, but this wasn't a conversation I wanted to have around my brothers.

"She, uh… Well, we had a fling a few years back, and she got pregnant and never told me." I hung my head as I said the words, making them feel more real than they had ever felt, as if somehow by not saying them out loud, I had avoided accepting it, but it was true. And now I had to face it.

"Well, I see." Mom's other elbow dropped to the deck railing, and she folded her hands in front of her. "And now she's roping you in to stay when you want to leave?"

The opposite was true and I couldn’t tell her that. I didn’t know how. I was going to leave, and Melody never said a word. Even when I told her I’d stay, she hadn't said a word. I didn't know what she was thinking or why she hid them from me. I was gutted and I needed someone else to sort out my negative thoughts before they consumed me.

"Well, Ethan, I can tell you that when my mother died, I was distraught. I didn't think right for months. My entire personality changed. I became guarded and nervous. I started wondering when life would end for me, and I got fearful. It hurts like hell, and it changes you." She patted my hand, then continued.

"I can't speak for Melody at all, but I can tell you that an absent father is worse than having never met one. The ache in my heart when my mother was gone and I could no longer call her for comfort or just to get a recipe for Nana's noodles was just soul crushing. You were gone, and you made no excuses or explanations. It was your life, and you were living it. Maybe she was protecting her own children…" She sighed, and I got very angry.

My hands balled up into fists and I wanted to storm off. Mom was being really hurtful again, calling me a deadbeat dad. I never knew they existed. How could I choose to be there for them?

"Or…" she breathed, wrapping her hand around my fist, "maybe she loved you enough to let you go. Your first love has always been that job, that dream you got in your head in college when we wanted you to follow your father's footsteps and John convinced you to go into medicine. You changed into someone we never recognized and you haven’t looked back.

"I imagine she saw it too, that your first love is that work. If she truly loves you, I could imagine a woman who would protect your heart and your dreams by holding a secret so close to her heart, so painful that she was devastated by it and the lack of you in her life, but she did so to help you. To love you." Mom squeezed, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes like a damn fool.

"You mean like you hid your sickness from me so I didn't worry and rush home?" I asked, knowing in my heart that she was right.

I knew Melody inside and out, and whether I wanted to admit it or not, that was the type of love she had for me. She loved me enough to let me go if that was what I wanted. I just wished she'd have given me all the facts. It would have changed what I wanted, the same way John's encouragement to chase this dream changed my heart from wanting to follow my father to following my dream.

"Exactly like that." Mom leaned over and kissed my cheek, and her perfume enveloped me in a warm hug. Years of being a young boy getting kisses on the forehead from her and a hand cupping my cheek, and I never forgot that scent.

"I love you, Ethan, and you should probably think long and hard before coming to any snap decisions. I'd hate it if this changed you permanently and made you a bitter old man like me. Your father’s had to put up with a lot since Mom died and I went through that change. I know we have our differences and I'm not fond of the choices you made with your life at times, but John was right. Being a doctor suits you. So who am I to say that Melody Winters isn’t right for you?"

The way she patted my shoulder as she walked back toward the house encouraged me. That was the nicest thing my mother had said to me in years, and I knew it came from a higher truth than she was typically able to access. She did care about me and what I wanted and what was best for me, even if her own defense mechanisms and fears got in the way at times. Love does what it takes to make things work, and she was proof of that.

Now if I could wrap my mind around the pain I'd have to go through to make things work, I was sure people would call me a saint. I just had to decide whether Melody wanted me here or not, because I never wanted to be an absent father, but I wasn't sure I could do for her what my father had done for my mother.