Page 118 of Contentious

“We share equal blame for what happened.”

“That’s not true,” he said with another sigh. “It happened because of me accusing you of something horrendous.” When he thought about that now, he felt nothing but shame for the way he’d treated the mother of his nine children.

“In the beginning, maybe, but I share in the blame for the despicable way we handled the divorce and custody battle. I wish we had those years to do over.”

“As do I, but there’s no going back. We can only do our best to make the future better for ourselves and them.”

“You really think we have a prayer in hell of repairing our relationships with them?” she asked.

“As long as we’re still here, there’s hope.”

“Not if they won’t talk to us about anything other than work.”

“You’re right that it’ll take a lot of patience.”

“You’re pathologically impatient,” Kate said with a laugh.

“You’re not much better.”

“That’s fair.”

“If we give them some time to get used to the idea, perhaps it’ll start to become no big deal to them. It was already kind of like that at the hospital.”

“Only because they didn’t care about anything other than Carson when we were there.”

“Still, they saw us coming and going together, and no one had anything to say about it.”

“I’m sure they’ve had plenty to say about it to each other,” Kate said with a sigh.

That their children were extremely close was a point of pride to them, but they knew their bitter divorce had bonded the siblings in a shared trauma they had caused. “No doubt.”

“That awful night, when we were waiting to hear if our Carson would survive,” Kate said, “I looked over at Jackson at one point and noticed him staring at us with a bewildered expression, as if trying to make sense of it.”

“Keep in mind that it seemingly came out of nowhere for them, while that’s not how it happened for us.”

“I hate that we’ve hurt them. Again.”

“Are you… reconsidering things?” Corbin asked, hoping against hope that she wasn’t.

“No, no, nothing like that. I want to find a way back to them, and since TMZ forced us to go public before we were ready, they seem further from us than ever.”

“I want a way back, too, but they’re adults with their own lives, and we can’t force them to engage with us. I’ve been thinking a lot about how they’d have nothing to do with us if it wasn’t for the firms.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Of course it is, Katie. Think about your interactions with them. Is it ever anything more than business? Because mine aren’t. They give me the bare minimum required to do the job, and that’s it. I never see them outside the office or talk to them about anything that isn’t work-related. I was the last to know that Julian had fallen for Isla.”

“I think I found out after you did.”

“Which proves my point. I never see the girls. You never see the boys. Despite the fact that we each work with some of them, we’re alienated from our children. They’re rightfully pissed that we’re back together after everything we put them through. My dad read me the riot act when I drove him to the hospital. He said, ‘Haven’t you learned anything from the past?’”

“I think we’ve both learned a lot.”

“No question that with age comes wisdom, but that doesn’t erase the mistakes of the past, and we made a lot of them.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Kate asked.

Corbin thought about that for a long moment, trying to organize the thoughts that’d been running through his mind in the days since they’d nearly lost Carson. “We tackle it one-on-one with each of them. We show up. We give them our time, our attention and our love. We keep doing that over and over and over again, and hopefully, we begin to write a new story with them.”