Common children hold the family together. But it happens that the child, whom the father of the family considers his, biologically has nothing to do with him. What to do – tell the truth or lie in order to preserve the relationship?
Lost in her thoughts, Anna Sergeevna walked slowly down the street. Suddenly, a large billboard rushed into her eyes, from which a happy family with a charming baby smiled. The advertising slogan was discordant with the joyful picture: “Definition of paternity. Anonymous at will ”. It’s strange: she was already walking this street this morning, but she didn’t notice the shield. No wonder, apparently, they say that it is natural for a person to pay attention to what is consonant with his state of mind: an hour ago, she found out without any genetic tests who is the father of her only grandson. It happened by chance, but Anna Sergeevna would give a lot so that this accident did not happen in her life.
… She remembered the day of birth of Alyoshka’s grandson literally by the clock. At first, she calmed her bewildered daughter-in-law: the waters had receded ten days earlier than the expected due date, and Dasha looked frightened. “Don’t worry, the baby is almost full-term, everything will be fine,” she admonished the young mother without five minutes. And then, waiting for a call from her son, who took his wife to the hospital, she was afraid to let go of the phone. When Maxim called and, crying with happiness, said that a strong, healthy baby was born, the birth went well and the mother and child were feeling great, Anna Sergeevna realized that a new, very important stage of her life had begun. Unlike most grandmothers, she did not dream of a granddaughter. She wanted a boy to be born without fail, similar to her son, the same blue-eyed, smiling and intelligent.
Alyoshka, as if overhearing the wish of his grandmother, grew up to be an unusually positive child. As a baby, he was completely problem-free: he ate, slept and looked at this big unfamiliar world with curiosity. But outwardly, the baby did not look like either his father or his mother. Maxim, laughing, sometimes joked that he still had to think about who they had, two blue-eyed blondes, a brown-eyed brunette was born. Like, it makes sense to take a closer look at Dasha’s entourage, if there is anyone similar to Alyoshka. This humorous assumption was the subject of universal amusement in the family, and Anna Sergeevna, in her worst nightmare, could not see what a huge grain of truth there is in this innocent joke.
… A week later, Alyoshka was supposed to be five years old, and the loving grandmother, having prepared dinner, went to the shopping center to get a present for her grandson. The other day, she looked after an excellent scooter there and was happy to anticipate how on the morning of her birthday she would roll her gift decorated with balloons into the room of the adored birthday boy. It was a very hot day, and she decided to stop by the cafe on the first floor of the mall for a refreshing drink. Sitting down with a misted glass at the table, she blissfully took the first sip – and almost choked on the icy drink. A couple of tables away from her sat a couple engaged in conversation. It was her daughter-in-law with a young man she didn’t know. Dasha was sitting half-turned, but her companion was facing Anna Sergeevna, and it was his face that caused the woman’s heartbeat. The man sitting opposite had the same eyes, nose, hair as her grandson – the resemblance was just a portrait! Anna Sergeevna literally lost control of herself, unable to take her eyes off the face of the stranger. He finally noticed that an elderly woman was staring at him from a nearby table, and looked inquiringly at her. Dasha caught this look, turned around – and was dumbfounded when she saw her mother-in-law. Anna Sergeevna silently nodded to her, rose heavily from the table and went to the exit, forgetting about the purpose of her visit to the shopping center. My head was noisy, it was difficult to breathe. Most of all, she now wanted to be alone in order to comprehend how to live with this discovery now.
Entering the apartment, she went to her room and fell face down on the bed. Surprisingly, her head was completely empty: it was not that she didn’t want to think about the situation, she couldn’t. The condition was strange: the woman was neither sleeping nor awake, as if she had fallen into suspended animation and lost track of time. How long it had passed when there was a knock on the door, Anna Sergeevna did not know. She understood who was knocking, but there was no strength to respond. As, however, and desires.
“Can?” – Dasha stood on the threshold of her room, not daring to enter. Anna Sergeevna raised her eyes to her. The daughter-in-law’s face was pale, and her voice trembled noticeably. Without waiting for an answer, she went deeper into the room and sat down on the arm of the chair. Silence hung in the room: one did not want to talk, and the other did not know where to start. The silence lasted for several minutes. Finally Dasha spoke quietly, looking somewhere past Anna Sergeevna: “Remember, when we got married, Maxim was not given a pass by his ex-girlfriend? She could not let him go and accept the fact that he was already married, which means that he was lost to her forever. Apparently, she loved Max very much and hoped to return. My husband, of course, convinced me that she was his past, which should not even be remembered, but the girl was not going to forget him. Somehow three months after the wedding, I secretly glanced at his page on the social network – and was stunned. His ex threw him a bunch of her very candid photos and wrote that, looking at them, he should remember everything that happened between them. There were so many intimate details that I felt bad! But the worst thing was not this, but the answer of Maxim. He wrote to her that he had not forgotten anything and that she still means a lot to him, but she should remain a delightful past, and his present is already different. I was just overwhelmed by resentment and indignation. How to understand that she still means a lot to him? And why did he then change his delightful past for a routine present? I was just numb from such revelations! Max came home late from work, I pretended to be asleep, and the next morning I had to leave for a couple of days on a business trip. On the way to the station, he kept asking why I was so gloomy and silent. I said that I hadn’t slept much and that I was not feeling well. I was tempted to ask what the correspondence I discovered meant, but how to admit that I had read it? So she left in complete ignorance of whom my husband really loves, me or his ex. Of course, I saw everything in the blackest color, and such resentment grew in my soul!
At the enterprise where I came to learn from experience, a young attractive employee was assigned to supervise my training. You saw him with me in the cafe today. The guy told me everything very clearly and showed it, but I could not perceive anything: my head was occupied by another. He saw that his efforts were in vain and asked what was the matter. I did not hide the reason: so suddenly I wanted to speak out to an unfamiliar person – it was impossible to share my misfortune with loved ones! He listened to me and invited me to his place. Let’s go, he says, listen to music, relieve tension. I perfectly understood what such an invitation meant, but I accepted it. I suddenly had a desire to take revenge on my husband, who, having married, could not figure out who he really loves.
In the morning, waking up in someone else’s apartment, I realized what I had done. Revenge, as it turned out, is not the best way to solve problems: I had no one before except Max, and after everything that happened, I was disgusted with myself. A day later, I left, having received only one headache from this spontaneous business trip. At home, I nevertheless decided to talk to my husband about the correspondence that unsettled me. He chided me for the fact that I climbed into his page without asking, but convinced me that he deliberately chose this tactic in dealing with his ex-girlfriend. She, he said, has a very unstable psyche, and she several times threatened to commit suicide if I stopped loving her. And Max tried to gradually reduce communication with her to nothing, fearing the unpredictable consequences of her possible nervous breakdown.
After hearing all this, I was ready to howl out of despair. What have I done? After all, that unfortunate night did not bring any peace of mind to me and did not add confidence in myself. But I did not dare to admit to my husband that I broke firewood in the heat of the moment. And soon she realized that she was pregnant. I prayed to God that my offense would not come back to haunt me all my life and the baby was born from Maxim. But the higher powers, apparently, were seriously offended for my cowardice and decided to punish me: barely looking at the newborn, I realized who his father was. They say that all babies are born on the same face, but my son was originally a copy of his biological dad. Naturally, I was not going to inform whom about the birth of a child. After that business trip, we never contacted him again, and I even forgot his name. But I couldn’t find the strength to tell my husband that this was not his child. Moreover, I saw how Max loves Alyoshka, how she becomes more and more attached to him every day. You will not believe how my soul was torn apart by jokes about who our son looks like! After all, not only Maxim, but it never even occurred to you that this was not his own child. Both of you were convinced that these were just inexplicable oddities of genetics.
Gradually, I began to calm down and less and less reflected on a topic that was painful for me. In the end, people are raising adopted children and love them like family, it just so happens that my husband does not know about it. It probably sounds cynical, but, from my point of view, this was the only way to keep the family happy. Moreover, there were still children in our plans with Max, and I reassured myself that my husband would definitely have a child of his own.
And yesterday we opened a network seminar at work, which was attended by colleagues from many regions. I was stunned to see that among the arrivals – and my longtime curator. If I had known that I would see him, under any pretext I would not have gone to work these days. I would have issued a sick leave – and we would not have met. But, alas, we crossed paths. He recognized me at once, but he did not try to “listen to music” again, he only asked me to show him the city. Today the seminar was only until lunchtime, and we went for a walk in the center. True, the walk quickly got tired because of the heat, and we went to the mall to sit in the cool and have a coffee. There you saw us. I immediately understood: you guessed that it was Alyoshka’s father. However, it’s hard not to guess here – they really look the same person. He talked a lot about his little daughter, she is three years old. And I listened and understood that he would never know that he also had a son.
Well, now you know everything. I am not trying to justify myself in your eyes – I know that there is no forgiveness for my lies. Well, it’s my own fault, and I’ll answer it myself. In this situation, I feel sorry for everyone except myself, but most of all – for Alyoshka. He loses both his father and his beloved grandmother, and one wrong step of his mother is to blame for everything. “
Dasha fell silent, still looking somewhere past Anna Sergeyevna. Silence fell again in the room. A large wall clock, released at the beginning of the last century, struck six o’clock with tension: Maxim and Alyoshka were soon to arrive. Anna Sergeevna, sighing, sat down on the bed, smoothed her hair and said: “Let’s go to the kitchen, the men will come soon, they need to be fed. Let our conversation remain between us. Alyoshka is my grandson, and his happiness, like that of his son, is the meaning of my life. God has already punished you for your offense, and I am not your judge. Only, please, do everything possible so that this colleague of yours from another city never appears in Maxim’s field of vision. Agree, he doesn’t need such discoveries. And one more thing: we have to try that jokes about the dissimilarity of Alyosha to his parents no longer sounded in our house – from now on I will not be able to take them indifferently. “
For the first time in the whole conversation, Dasha decided to look up at her mother-in-law. “Thank you for keeping my secret,” she said quietly. – I know that you are doing this not for my sake, but for the sake of your son, and it is not easy for you to come to terms with this situation. You rightly said that for my cowardice I have already been punished, and I will bear this cross all my life. And Alyoshka … Yes, outwardly he is of a different breed, but I really want him to inherit wisdom and kindness from you. This is the best inheritance I would like for my son. “