eating with us?”
“I think so.” Owen obviously hadn’t managed to tell Ben he was his father today.
“I’d like to,” Owen said, and his face, pleading despite the fact he had the whip hand, startled Lilah with his resemblance to her son. “Spaghetti. Smells amazing, Lilah.”
“It’s Ben’s favorite,” she said, defensive because she still didn’t want him to know she’d remembered.
“Can we help you with anything?” Owen asked.
She wanted to just sit and hold her son. Instead, she set him down and went back to the kitchen. “Nothing left to do,” she said. “I’ve set the table and made the salad and bread. We’re ready to eat. You and Ben should wash up.”
“Aww, Mom.” But Ben looked at Owen and led the way to the bathroom. Their splashing and laughter unsettled Lilah even more. Her boy had missed having a man in his life. He was already bonding with Owen, and she dreaded the day she’d have to leave them together at the airport, or even just at Owen’s car, and come home without her son for days or weeks.
The thought sent her back to the kitchen, where she added pasta to the pot of boiling water on the stove. She poured ice water in glasses, set the pitcher in the center of the table and tried to look self-assured.
“You didn’t dry those hands,” Owen was saying as he danced Ben back into the kitchen with a towel. He drew Ben to the sink and dried his little fingers and dripping-wet palms.
“Thanks.” Ben scrambled into his seat at the table.
Lilah made his salad plate and added a slice of garlic bread and served it to him. To her surprise, Owen dished out salad for her and put some on his own plate, and then set them both on the table.
“The pasta isn’t ready yet,” she said as he peered into the pot of boiling water.
He came back to join them at the table. Ben waited until Owen lifted his fork. They chewed as one man. Lilah closed her eyes, not wanting to see them together.
“You like me, Own.”
Lilah jerked in her chair at the head of the table. He’d also inherited his father’s habit of speaking bluntly.
“I do like you, Ben. You know why?”
Ben had created the most natural opening for Owen to tell him about himself. Lilah dropped her fork and slid her hands beneath the table, twisting them together.
“Because I’m lovable.” Ben gripped his fork like a spear. “Right, Mom?”
“Extremely right,” she said, her insides shattering. Her son was about to gain a second loyalty that would last a lifetime.
“You are lovable,” Owen said, “but I’d care for you, no matter what, because you’re my little boy.”
The fork stopped in midair, pointing across the table at Owen’s face. “Huh?”
Owen’s confidence didn’t waver. It had to be an act, but it was convincing. He looked happy, not anxious about how Ben was going to react. She felt sick.
“You are my son,” Owen said. “I’m your dad.”
“I don’t have a daddy. Mommy says so.”
Owen still didn’t falter. He gazed at Ben’s face with a loving expression of reassurance. “Just this once your mom made a mistake. I am your dad, and I always will be.”
“But I’m a big boy now. I didn’t see you when I was a baby.”
Lilah’s eyes burned as her son seemed to panic. She reached for his hand, trying to make it seem as if this situation only rated a little bit of comfort, and she wasn’t scared. She couldn’t help feeling guilty.
She’d love to believe she hadn’t set up this well of pain for her child the moment Owen walked away from rehab.
“Where’s he been, Mommy?”
“Owen’s been at his house. He didn’t know about you.”
“If I had known, I would have been with you,” Owen said, and Lilah’s guilt increased.
She hadn’t been wrong. She refused to consider the possibility. Owen reached for Ben’s hand, but Ben pulled away from both of them. He threaded his fingers together in his lap, looking down.
“We had a nice time today, didn’t we?” Owen asked.
Ben nodded, looking up with suspicion in the ice-blue eyes he’d inherited from his father. Owen had told her once that his father and all his siblings shared the same color.
“Well, we’ll get to have fun together from now on. We’ll have good times and bad times, but we’ll learn more about each other with every day that passes, and I can’t wait, Ben.”
“Do I have to call you Daddy?”
Lilah bit her lower lip and leaned forward. Trying to save her son, she’d given him grief and confusion. And she still didn’t know if Owen was capable of being a good father to Ben. “I thought you wanted a daddy like your friends,” she said.
“How do I know he’s my daddy?”
“I can help you with that.” Owen pulled two small photos out of his shirt pocket, along with the gift tag her parents’ assistant had draped around the neck of every wine bottle he’d sent to the gallery’s artists. Owen set down the tag, folded to display only Ben’s photo. Beside it, he lined up two pictures of himself, one at a beach, holding up a bright yellow bucket, the other of him perched on a dirty white picket fence, his face more solemn. “Daddies and sons sometimes look alike,” Owen said. “Those two pictures are me when I was your age, and you and I look almost exactly the same.”
Ben looked even more confused. He turned toward Lilah. “I don’t get it, Mommy.”
“You know when people say I look like my mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Owen is saying you look like him, and you really do.”
“But I don’t want to call him Daddy. I’ll call him his name. Own.”
“Sounds perfect,” Owen said, sounding relieved. He must have thought Ben didn’t want a dad, or if he did, he didn’t want this stranger who’d shown up on his doorstep.
“We’re going to Tennessee,” Lilah said, startling herself, as well as Owen and Ben.
“That place where Own lives?”
She nodded. “He wants you to meet his family because they’re also your family. I want to go with you because I’ll miss you too much if you go on your own.”
Water bubbled over the pasta saucepan to sizzle on the stovetop. Lilah sprang to her feet. “I may have to start this over.”
“It’ll be fine.” Owen appeared beside
