Chapter 7 - The Family We Chose
The old Adrian Mercer would have called the school superintendent, threatened legal action, and arranged a new position before Elena finished packing.
I did none of those things.
Instead, I asked, “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Can I come?”
“To Ohio?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the boys asked whether I was staying.”
Elena folded a sweater into Liam’s duffel bag.
“You have a company in New York.”
“I have airplanes.”
“That is the most billionaire answer you could have given.”
“I meant I can travel.”
“You cannot become a father by appearing between board meetings.”
“No. But I can restructure the board meetings.”
She stopped packing.
“Adrian, what are you proposing?”
“Nothing permanent yet. I’m asking permission to visit. I’ll stay at a hotel. I won’t interfere with your work or your home.”
“You don’t even know where home is.”
“Then show me.”
The next morning, we traveled to Westbridge, Ohio, a small town outside Columbus. Elena and the boys had lived there for most of their lives.
Her home was half of a faded blue duplex with a porch that leaned slightly to the left. A retired mechanic named Frank lived next door, and an elderly widow named Mrs. Keating occupied the other half.
Both emerged before we finished unloading.
Frank hugged each boy and then regarded me suspiciously.
“So you’re the suit.”
“I suppose I am.”
“You hurt Elena?”
“Not intentionally.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“No,” Elena interrupted. “He didn’t.”
Mrs. Keating pushed past him and gave me a casserole.
“You’re too thin,” she announced.
“I’ve never been told that.”
“Rich people surround themselves with liars.”
Within ten minutes, the entire neighborhood knew the quadruplets’ father had arrived.
These people did not treat the boys as potential heirs. They treated them as children who left bicycles in driveways and tracked mud across clean floors.
For the first time, I understood what Elena meant by normal.
I stayed at a modest hotel seven miles away. Each morning, I drove to the duplex for breakfast. I learned to make pancakes without burning them and discovered that packing four school lunches required more negotiation than a corporate merger.
Leo wanted turkey without cheese.
Liam wanted cheese without turkey.
Luke insisted his sandwich be cut into four perfect squares.
Logan claimed he hated bread on Tuesdays.
After school, I helped with homework and attended soccer practice. The boys were on the same team, which caused constant confusion for the coach.
I returned to New York twice a week for work. The board initially resisted my revised schedule, but the company continued to function. That realization was both humbling and freeing.
Three weeks passed.
Then six.
Elena found a temporary teaching position at a community learning center. I quietly offered the center a donation and then withdrew it before submitting the paperwork. I realized that helping without her knowledge would repeat my mother’s pattern on a kinder scale.
Control disguised as generosity was still control.
Instead, I volunteered.
The center director assigned me to repaint a classroom.
I ruined a pair of Italian shoes and had never felt more useful.
One evening, Elena found me on her porch repairing a loose step with Frank.
“You know we could hire someone,” she said.
Frank snorted.
“He doesn’t know that. I told him all billionaires repair porches.”
“I believed him for almost ten minutes,” I said.
Elena laughed.
It was the same unrestrained laugh I remembered from college. Hearing it again felt like a locked room opening.
After Frank went home, Elena sat beside me on the porch.
“You’re different here,” she said.
“I’m worse at almost everything here.”
“That may be why.”
We watched the boys chase fireflies across the yard.
“I used to imagine this,” I admitted.
“What?”
“A small house. Children making too much noise. You laughing at me because I can’t fix something.”
“You never mentioned a small house.”
“I was afraid you would think I wasn’t ambitious.”
“I would have thought you were human.”
“I wasn’t encouraged to be one.”
She grew quiet.
“How is Victoria?”
“She pleaded guilty to fraud and obstruction. Sentencing is next month.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena watched Logan place a firefly inside a jar.
“If you refuse because you need distance, that is healthy. If you refuse because you want her to suffer, she is still controlling you.”
I looked at her.
“How did you become so wise?”
“Raising four boys forces rapid spiritual development.”
The following week, I visited my mother at the detention center.
She sat behind a glass partition.
“I’m living in Ohio part of the week,” I told her.
“I know.”
“How?”
“My attorney brings newspapers.”
“You should stop reading them.”
A faint smile appeared.
“How are the boys?”
“Happy.”
“And Elena?”
“Building her life.”
“Do you hate me?”
I considered the question.
“I hate what you did.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No.”
She placed her hand against the glass.
“I thought if I controlled every danger, you would never suffer as your father did.”
“You became the danger.”
“I know.”
I did not forgive her that day.
But I stopped waiting for her pain to heal mine.
When I returned to Ohio, I found the boys building a cardboard castle in the living room. They had drawn five stick figures above the entrance.
Four small ones and one tall one.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the tall figure.
“You,” Liam said.
Leo shook his head.
“It’s Dad.”
The room became silent.
Elena stood in the kitchen doorway.
I crouched beside them.
“You can call me Adrian for as long as you want.”
“We voted,” Logan explained.
“Was it unanimous?”
“Three to one,” Luke said.
“Who voted against?”
Luke raised his hand.
“I wanted Captain Dad.”
I laughed, although tears blurred my vision.
“Dad is good.”
That night, after the boys fell asleep, Elena and I stood on the porch.
“They chose that,” she said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t encourage them.”
“I know.”
“And it doesn’t mean you can take them.”
“I would never try.”
She searched my face for the ambition and entitlement she had learned to fear.
Whatever she saw made her step closer.
Our first kiss in six years was tentative and brief. It was not the kiss of two people recovering a lost relationship.
It was the beginning of a new one.
When she pulled away, she rested her forehead against mine.
“Slowly,” she whispered.
“As slowly as you need.”
A car door slammed across the street.
A photographer lifted a camera.
The flash shattered the quiet.
By morning, our kiss was online beneath a headline announcing that Elena had “won” the Mercer heir.
She stared at the article for a long time.
Then she closed the laptop.
“I’m tired of strangers writing our story,” she said.
“So am I.”
May you like
This time, however, we would decide how it ended.
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