A Boy's Christmas Wish. Patricia Johns

I have legal custody of you, which means that your home is with me.”

      “Does she want to take me away?”

      Shoot. He’d probably scared the kid now. Dan sighed. “No, of course not.”

      And a small and petty part of him hoped that Lana stayed both uninterested and very far away...at least until Luke was older.

      “I don’t remember her,” Luke said.

      “You were only three when you last saw her,” Dan said. “Little kids forget.”

      “What’s she like?” Luke fixed big brown eyes on Dan’s face, waiting.

      “When I knew her a long time ago, she was really pretty,” Dan said. “She liked to eat her French fries with honey instead of ketchup.”

      “Ew,” Luke said.

      “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, buddy,” he chuckled. “It’s pretty good.”

      “Do you talk to her sometimes?” Luke asked.

      “No.” She’d left contact information, and she updated that by email periodically, but that was it. She was living in Vancouver now. They didn’t chat. She didn’t ask about Luke. Maybe it was too painful for her—he didn’t know.

      “What if I wanted to meet her?” Luke asked.

      Dan sighed. “It’s not as simple as that.”

      “How come?” Luke pressed. “She’s my mom. I’ll bet she wants to see me.”

      Dan wished that were true, but if Lana had wanted to see Luke, she’d have done it long ago. And he was wary... While it was good that she’d left contact information, she had never made any overtures, and Dan had two fears: first, that she’d change her mind and try to take Luke back. Just thinking about that left him anxious. Dan couldn’t afford court costs, and if she tried to just drive off with Luke... He pushed the thought back.

      The second fear was that she’d show no interest at all in seeing their son, and Luke would be rejected all over again, except this time he’d be old enough to remember it.

      Dan and Lana hadn’t been a terribly serious couple when they’d conceived Luke. They’d met at a party and dated on and off for a bit. Dan hadn’t been a mature guy at twenty-six. He’d been working hard and partying harder, and he’d been wondering if he might have a problem with alcohol, considering how much he was consuming... Lana struggled with depression, and he didn’t understand it very well. Neither did she, for that matter, and they’d been fighting a lot. Then she told him she was pregnant. She said she wanted to raise the baby without him, and he was fine with her choice. He was offered a job in Alberta, and he took it.

      He wasn’t proud of his willingness to leave Lana with all the responsibilities now, and that was why he refused to bad-mouth Lana to Luke. If Lana had kept Luke, she might have told equally disastrous stories about him—how he’d just walked away and never looked back. He wouldn’t do that to Luke...or to Lana. She was Luke’s mom, and he’d speak about her with respect. Always. Even when he felt most threatened.

      “Let me think it over,” Dan said.

      Luke was silent for a few moments, munching his grilled cheese, then wiping his greasy fingers on the front of his shirt.

      “Use a napkin,” Dan said.

      “Don’t have one.” The shirt was dirty now. It was probably high time Luke started learning how to do laundry anyway.

      “Am I allowed to talk to her?” Luke asked. “Because Kiera T. can see her birth mom on Facebook, and sometimes her birth mom will comment on pictures of Kiera T. and say that she’s getting really big or something.”

      Dan put down his sandwich. “I don’t have your mom on Facebook.”

      “But you could search her, right?”

      Luke wasn’t going to give this up, Dan could tell. And he understood why it was so important to the boy, but he couldn’t change facts. Evasion wasn’t going to work, either. Luke was old enough to know that trick.

      “Right now, you can’t talk to her,” Dan said. “I’m sorry. It’s my job to decide what’s best for you, and tracking down your mom wouldn’t be a good idea. Right now. When you’re older it might be different.”

      Luke turned his attention back to his meal. Dan had known this day would come, but somehow, he’d thought he’d be more prepared for it.

      Lana could be unpredictable, and that freaked him out. When he’d told Beth about his son and his ex-girlfriend’s demand that he take over with him, Beth had asked to talk to Lana after she’d dropped off Luke. That had seemed very levelheaded of Beth, and perhaps he should have seen what was coming then, but he’d been optimistic. So he’d given Beth Lana’s phone number, and it was only later—when Beth dumped him—that she told him that Lana had promised to be in the middle of their life from that moment on. She wanted her due.

      Lana had managed to intimidate Beth rather effectively. But he couldn’t blame Lana, because in some ways she’d been right—the full weight of raising their child shouldn’t have been on her shoulders. Dan had a responsibility, too—both financially and emotionally. Except Beth hadn’t known about that when she agreed to marry him, and when she’d weighed it out in her heart, she decided that the headache Lana promised to be wasn’t worth it.

      Lana had never come through on that threat. She’d talked Beth into a corner, and perhaps enjoyed it. Then she’d gone away. Lana wasn’t predictable in the least.

      And neither was Beth... He’d honestly believed that they’d get through it all together. He couldn’t have been more wrong. And while Lana had disappeared to Vancouver, Beth had returned. He hadn’t seen that one coming, either.

      Seeing Beth again had reminded Dan about how detrimental her stepmother’s rejection had been, and he wouldn’t allow Luke to go through the same thing again with his own mother. The world was a hard place, and Luke was too young to face the ugliness.