“Yeah.”
“Wanted to make sure she understood you’re doing your best.”
Thomas wrapped his hands around his mug, staring into the dark liquid. “Sometimes I wonder if my best is enough. Maria thought it wasn’t. That’s why she left.”
It was the first time Thomas had directly mentioned his wife’s departure. Marcus said nothing, recognizing the need some people had to fill silence with confessions.
“We met in high school,” Thomas continued. “Got married too young. Had Ethan before we were ready. I thought we’d figure it out, you know? People do. But Maria, she wanted more than I could give her. More money, more excitement, more everything. And one day she just packed a bag and left. Didn’t even say goodbye to the kids properly. Just… gone.”
“That’s rough,” Marcus said, meaning it.
“The worst part is that Ethan remembers everything. He asks why she left, if it was his fault, if she’s coming back, and I don’t have good answers. How do you tell your son that his mother chose leaving over staying? That sometimes people give up when things get hard?”
Marcus thought about his own mother, a woman so destroyed by addiction and poverty that she’d eventually surrendered him and his sister to the system. He thought about the foster homes, the brief moments of stability shattered by adults who couldn’t handle the responsibility of broken children.
“You tell him the truth,” Marcus finally said. “That his mother had problems that had nothing to do with him. That her leaving was about her weakness, not his worth. And you make sure he knows that you’re not going anywhere.”
Thomas looked at him with surprise. “That’s… actually good advice.”
“Had a lot of time to think about it,” Marcus said wryly. “My mother left, too. Different circumstances, but same result. Took me thirty years to understand it wasn’t my fault.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, two men bonded by the shared experience of being abandoned and the determination not to repeat that pattern with the next generation.