“Oh, my God!” she whispered. “I hadn’t even thought about them. How am I going to tell them that he’s gone?”
“There’s no need to say anything yet,” Hank said.
“But we have to. Maybe he said something to one of them about where he was going, what his plans were.”
Hank shook his head. “He’s too much of a loner. He wouldn’t say anything. He’d just go. Now, please, Annie, just stay here with Liz and try to stay calm.”
Calm? He was asking the impossible, but she finally admitted the wisdom in what he was suggesting. Someone had to stay with the kids and there really wasn’t any point in upsetting them unnecessarily. But she felt so helpless and it wasn’t a feeling she liked. She needed to do something. She needed to be part of the search for Jason. She needed to be there to talk to him, to find out why he’d gone, to hold him and remind him how much she cared.
As if she’d read her mind, Liz said, “Ann, he could come back here on his own. It’ll be better if you’re here waiting for him.”
That was the most persuasive argument of all. Giving in finally, she sighed and buried her face in her hands.
Hank hunkered down beside her chair and took her hands and folded them tightly in his. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, though.
“I’ll find him, Annie,” he said. “I promise.”
Yet another promise. She heard the conviction in his voice, but she heard something else as well: fear. Was he more afraid for Jason than he’d admitted or was he afraid of what this would do to the two of them? Perhaps both. God knows that’s how she felt. She was torn apart inside thinking about what could be happening to Jason. She also knew that things might never be the same between her and Hank if their time together had been the cause of his running away. Blame and guilt would always be there between them, eating away at the fiber of their still-new relationship.
When Hank and Todd had left, she looked over at Liz and finally dared to speak her fears aloud. “It’s my fault. I never should have left here this afternoon. I knew how much he resented Hank and I went off with him anyway.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You have every right to a life of your own, Ann. You owe it to yourself to grab for whatever happiness you can find. You’re long overdue.”
“Not at the expense of my children.”
“Spending one afternoon with Hank is not robbing your children of anything and, as much as you love them, they do not have the right to choose your friends or your lovers.”
How many times had she counseled divorced parents on just that point? Living through it for the first time herself, she began to fully understand the complexities, the mine field of explosive emotions involved. Nothing was as clear-cut and easy as she’d always made it sound. “But they weren’t prepared,” she told Liz. “We should have talked about it.”
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that you were going to sit those kids down and tell them that you wanted to go off to make love with Hank?”
Ann felt the color rise in her cheeks. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t have put it like that. I could have told them that we were going out, though, instead of just sneaking away like a couple of teenagers trying to escape the watchful eyes of their parents.”
Liz sighed. “Okay. I can’t deny that that might have been the wise thing to do, but not doing it is hardly the end of the world. You did not behave irresponsibly. You didn’t leave them alone. They were here with us. They were having a good time. There are five kids out on the patio who did not suffer any emotional harm just because you needed some time to yourself.”
“But there’s one who did.”
“You have to stop thinking that way. You don’t know that Jason’s leaving had anything to do with that. He’s been troubled since the day he moved in with you. Maybe he just picked today to take off because he thought he could get away with it.”
When Ann started to deny Jason’s ongoing behavior problems, Liz held up her hand. “Don’t forget how many conversations you and I have had on just that subject.”
Ann felt her shoulders sag. It was true. She had admitted more than once to Liz things she’d refused to acknowledge to Hank. It was as if she’d wanted Hank’s approval of Jason so much that she’d been afraid to acknowledge to him that the boy had problems that needed correcting, problems that she’d found herself unable to address.
“For a psychologist, I’ve really mucked this one up royally, haven’t I?”
“That’s because you’re a mother first and mothers sometimes make mistakes. We’re not nearly as dispassionate and objective when one of our own’s involved. You’ve spent so much time worrying about Jason’s terrible past that you haven’t been nearly as tough as you should have been in guiding his present. That’s a very human reaction.”
Seized by sudden uncertainty, Ann asked, “Do you think I can make it up to him?”
“I’m not sure you have anything to make up to Jason, if that’s what you’re asking. You’ve given that boy every chance. You’ve loved him as if he were your own. He’s repaid you with nothing but heartache.”
Ann smiled ruefully. “Actually, I wasn’t talking just about Jason. I was thinking of Hank, too. I was awfully hard on him.”
Liz grinned back at her. “Oh, I’m sure you can make it up to him. Hank’s got a tough hide, but he’s a real softie inside. I found that out when he had a heart-to-heart talk with me when I was about to walk out
