Kids, Who'd Have Them!

Kids, who'd have them.

"Dad .... Why didn't you tell me that I wasn't your biological child?"

That was my ten year old doing what he did, asking the question that was in his mind then and there. Nat, Nathan I loved that about him.

My twelve year old, Dan, sniggered. He, Dan only asked anything after thinking about it for days.

And there you have it, all in one question from a ten year old, a life ruined, destroyed. My wife, Carol, dropped her knife and fork on the plate, the knife rolling off and onto the tablecloth leaving a greasy brown stain behind. Looking at her face it might not be the only place a brown stain had appeared.

I sat and looked at Carol with the look I had of, 'you want to take this one?'. For once she looked away from me and got up saying she had better clean the mess up before it was a permanent stain.

I suppose that one, maybe the only one good point from Nat asking the question was that he moved on to something else more or less immediately.

Dan laughed, and being the older of the two answered in a off hand way.

"Oh you only just got to do the blood type thing then. I did that years ago, I did think about asking when I did it,"

They both asked if they could leave the table. I nodded, not sure if I wanted them to be there in a minute.

Carol and I had been together for fifteen years, ten married, it wasn't a shotgun wedding. We were just ... lucky that she fell on honeymoon.

I thought. But did she? Was we? I'm not feeling lucky at the moment.

You want to tell me anything I asked Carol when she came back with a cloth. She played the innocent asking "about what?".

My question of was it was only the once, she ignored me, jumping up too soon for me to finish what I was going to say, but I did anyway.

'It had to be twice, one for each kid, but was it only once a year, a month, ... a week, I won't say a day, but that might explain why I don't get very much sex. So what is it, and more importantly who is it or is there, has there, been too many to keep count of?'

I thought I'd seen Carol mad before, but the look on her face just then told me different.

Eventually, after a long evening of denial and trying to keep the kids out of earshot I gave up.

Both Carol and I had made Nat sit down the next morning and tell us how he thought that he wasn't my child, how could he know our blood types to compare to come up with this stupid assumption.

Oh he didn't have to think, he had it all worked out.

It was on the emergency bracelets that the kids had given us at Christmas a few years ago, Grandma had helped of course, her that knew everything it seemed. But I do remember having to go and find out my blood type, and having to be surprised when we were given them for Christmas.

So that explains that.

Carol made a hasty retreat from my questioning look.

The day dragged on with me at work not getting a lot done, and what I did needing redoing tomorrow. I have no idea about Carol's day, I just hope that it was as uncomfortable for her as it was for me.

Dinner with the kids came and went with no more unexpected or awkward conversations. Just a bad feeling around the table.

Kids in bed left us to ... have our talk. Because there had to be 'that' talk didn't there.

At first she denied all knowledge of anything about it, but she quickly capitulated, seeing, after my next statement that we would have to get the kids DNA tested, would blow that out of the water.

Even she didn't think I might believe a miracle birth had happened with her.

It was only the once came out again, but it was twice I pointed out, yes it was, but only once for each of them, and it was only sex came back at me as if that was a good answer.

My request to know who it was, was met with silence. She didn't want to tell me, she wouldn't tell me and told me flat that I didn't need to know, it was in the past, it was all over and had been for a while.

That didn't wash for me, no I wanted, needed to know and I told her.

That night, in bed, she had the audacity to think that I was going to let her have sex with me. If I could have become hard I might have ... I might have thought that I would pound her into submission, but it wouldn't have happened like that, and we both knew it.

I rolled away from her and told her that tomorrow night, one of us would be sleeping in one of the boys rooms, they could be in the same room.

That didn't go down well. I couldn't do that, she told me. I said watch me. But then the boys will know that we are having troubles, she came back with.

I sorted the rooms out the next evening, moving some of my things into my new room, I had to wait for the weekend, but the boys helped me move the rest treating it as a game it seemed. Carol was hiding most of the time as we worked, I heard her on the phone and wasn't surprised when her brother Ian and wife Janet, knocked at the front door not long after.

I was polite, it wasn't up to me to explain what was going on, I let her, Carol, tell them what was going on to make me move out of 'our' bedroom. Let her have that conversation.

It was Janet that came to talk to me first, with her saying, asking why I couldn't let it go, it was a long time ago, it was in her eyes such an easy way of looking at it. Not in my eyes was it easy to think about it, and time wasn't the point, the point was that she had done it, and more than once. Janet couldn't see that I still had my doubts about whether it had stopped or was it still going on.

Then when she had left the room Ian took her place.

He was more reticent, wasn't as comfortable talking to me about such a personal matter. I had no such concerns holding back nothing of my thoughts. He looked shocked when I told him that I wasn't going to sleep with such a slut ever again. When he told me I couldn't talk about his sister like that I asked him what he thought she was, what would he call Janet if she had produced two, not one but two children that were not his, but let him bring them up as his.

He didn't have any answer to that and went away.

It took me a month, a month of anger, a month of feeling both highs and lows, the highs were of thoughts of beating someone up, or killing them. It changed from it being Carol to a faceless man and back again.

The kids had the full picture now, I probably shouldn't have been so clear in how I felt when they were around me, but it's in the past now.

It's funny how people think I should forget and forgive Carol and not do the same to me, I was under extreme pressure, she had been on her back or knees having a whale of a time, I liked not to think of at the time but did anyway.

You can call me whatever you want, heartless was the main one, stupid came in second and third was just mutterings I couldn't understand.

I left Carol, and the boys. I couldn't think of them as 'my' boys anymore.

I found a small place, it was about the size of a single garage, I had to give the architect his or her due, they had it all so neatly arranged, but I could touch the side walls with my fingertips arms outstretched if I wanted.

It was the pits, but it became home.

Carol went to court to try to get me to pay her, something, anything it seemed.

It didn't go down well when I told the judge, magistrate, whatever he was that I would not under any circumstances pay her a penny while I drew breath. Let the father of the boys pay, and when she told us who it was I would be be seeing him in court for back payments for forking out all these years.

Carol was shocked that I said it in court, she'd heard it from me when she wanted me to go back and be a father to 'my' boys again, that they missed me. I laughed and asked yet again. "Who was he?"

I was threatened by Ian, the judge and others that had to stick their heads into this that I would regret it. They maybe right, but there wasn't anyway I was staying with her and 'Her' boys.

The judge had my wages deducted, I quit.

He threatened jail time, but I just told him that at least I would have a roof over my head and three meals and health care, all on his behalf.

I don't think he could actually have me imprisoned, not having any representation didn't help, I had nobody to ask about anything and didn't care.

Carol stopped her battle with me so it went away, I lived in the garage as I named it and went back to work.

I don't think I must be like a lot of men, my love of the kids, it had been, or I thought of it as, was all encompassing, but it turned out it wasn't.

I can't tell you why, or how it happened, but that love turned into nothing. I didn't care about them, and I know that they had been mine for all those years, but all of a sudden, a click of the fingers, it disappeared.

They meant nothing to me anymore, like their mother I suppose. She definitely didn't show up in my list of friends, close or seven times removed.

I went to work, it was about all I did now, work. I worked more hours than in the past, what else did I have to do?

I would occasionally go out with workmates, friends from when I was part of a couple had told me plainly by siding with Carol that they didn't approve of how I reacted and stayed away from me.

I lived with knowing that I had done what was good for me.

Life moved on over the next few years, I dated nobody, I had been burned before and wasn't in the mood to be burned again.

Seven years on I was accosted by this tall thin lad on my return to the garage.

I paid the lad no attention until he spoke, and as I was the only person about had to look at him. He asked if he could talk to me, it was only when he called me Dad, that I recognised him as Dan. My ex son.

I was polite, I invited him in, offered a drink, but he held up one of those drink things everyone has these days.

I wasn't expecting to say anything and wasn't surprised when he started to talk. It was a script in his head he was reading from, he had thought long and hard about what he was going to say to me. I remembered that about him, always thought before saying anything.

He gave me a quick rundown of how him, his brother Nat, him and his mother had coped over the last years. Nothing to in depth, thankfully.

I took the bull by the horns. He was here, but not saying or asking anything, so I did. I asked him why he was here? It took a while for him to respond, but when did he was looking at his shoes.

He wanted my advice, he said that he had nobody to ask for advice of such a personal nature.

I asked him what was wrong with asking Ian. His head shot up with a look of confusion which morphed into a smile as he took a breath and said that he thought I knew.

I was lost at that point and asked what he meant, he scoffed and stated that I really didn't know did I. He was right, I was completely in the dark about what he was going on about.

It was Nat that worked it out he said, they knew that I had left Carol, of course they had, but at first they didn't know the reason for it.

But Carol had to tell them at one point how I had taken the news, I had the idea that they, the two boys were making her life hard. She told them the reason, that I wasn't their father, someone else was, but again she wouldn't say who.

Although they were both young they let me be, thinking that I would come around and see them again. But Dan and Nat kept an eye out, and a couple of years ago worked out who the mystery man was.

Big drum roll. It was Uncle Ian, Carols brother. I had lots of thoughts about who it was over the years, but this news, that it was Ian was the furthest answer I had ever thought of. Ian, her brother. Then Dan said that they were still carrying on with each other, so that was part of why he was here today.

Dan had got a girl pregnant, he wanted my advice.

I didn't think I was the person to be asking, told him that, but he said that I was the only father he and Nat had and they still thought of me as their father, even though they knew the truth now, they would never see or call him, Ian, father or dad. That was reserved for me.

That bit of news sat me back in my chair I can tell you. How did it make me feel? I couldn't tell you to be honest, the two pieces of news he had brought me today had made my mind go numb.

I asked if he could come back another day, I had to think. I told him the truth that my mind wasn't in a state to make any sense of it.

I'd sat and thought about all the options, what had I missed, how had I missed that or why had I missed it completely. There wasn't any answer that I could come up with. But then my brain reminded me that Dan had a problem that he needed some help with. As if I was the font of all knowledge, look where I was.

He came back at the weekend with Nat his brother, my other son that wasn't mine.

He explained how he and a girl had ended up having sex, I knew that experience, it had happened to me when I was young. They had liked it, what the hell is there NOT to like, it's sex, it's supposed to be good.

Anyway, they carried on meeting up and having sex, and the eventual end came last month. Or there about.

Her family were pushing them to get married, and I could see why, but Dan wasn't sure if he was in love with her or if it was just the sex he was in love with. I knew that feeling as well, vaguely.

What did I think was the right thing to do he asked again.

I made the suggestion that if he wasn't sure about love, to move in together, not get married until they both agreed that they were in love and it wasn't just the sex, but quickly added that if they did that, move in together, he would have sex on tap, if she was willing to. If that after a while they felt it better to split than he wouldn't have to go through the process of divorcing her, they could just go different ways. But I did reinforce my view of him having to accept that he was a dad soon, and he would be for evermore. He would have to commit himself to paying some of the way for his son or daughter.

Dan sat thinking about what I had said, Nat was nodding and saying that was the way to go, live with her and see, he added that her family were wealthy and that they had bedrooms to spare and they should move in there, no need to look for somewhere to live, and he added that her mum would do the cooking and washing for him. That last bit was said with a smile.

Then, Nat being the one who said things before thinking it through told me something that Dan hadn't.

Mum's getting married again, in a month's time.

Once again I was floored. It didn't matter to me, but I had to ask if he, this man knew about her cheating on me. No, don't be silly, mum made us swear not to say anything about that, was what they both agreed on happening. They left later leaving me to have deep thoughts about my ex wife again.

Dan came back with a girl a fortnight later, Trudy, they seemed happy together, I knew why Dan was, sex on tap, well it would have been if it was me in my younger days. Trudy looked like she was more than keen on him, but when the baby came things might change.

I will admit thinking later after they had left that if I was only thirty years younger, Trudy would have been one I would have liked to bed, but I'm old as her father probably.

I made a decision that I'm still not sure if I did the right thing, but it's too late now, I did it.

I snuck in the back of the church as Carols wedding started. I couldn't believe she was going to have a church wedding again, but it made life easier for me that day.

Nobody took any notice of me sat at the back until the vicar asked that question.

"Does anybody know of a reason why they shouldn't get married?"

Well I did, stood up and strolled to the front with the vicar looking like it had never happened before.

I asked if he, the groom, knew that his future wife was having sex with her brother, I hadn't and wouldn't have married her if I had.

Can you imagine how that went down?

All hell broke out. I left as quickly and as quietly as I could as it all went off around me.

Dan, Trudy and Nat came to see me that evening.

They couldn't believe that I had done that, both boys were upset about how the police were now involved, how it seemed that their mum might be in big trouble, not to forget about Ian, and his wife.

Trudy hugged me when they left after they saw I wasn't apologetic about it, she promised me to look after both boys and would make sure that they came back to see me in the future. But not just yet.

So, Carol didn't get remarried, her and Ian were taken to court on Incest charges. I wasn't interested in what they were having to do as a punishment. I was just glad they had a reckoning, I was hap ... content that they, she, Carol and Ian had some pain as I had.

Will I get married again? Who knows what will happen in the future, but it's not on the horizon, I haven't had a date in ... years, not one that meant anything.