Secret Keeper

by Harlan, Christopher

  “Great. Thank you, Dylan.”

  I don’t answer. A cab finally pulls to the curb. As soon as it stops completely, I take her not-so-gently by the arm and push her into the backseat. “Take her wherever she needs to go. And you,” I say, looking pointedly at her. “No more of this, you understand me?”

  “Just tell him I was kidding about the press.”

  I slam the cab door and watch it pull away. What the hell did I just witness? Less than a half hour ago, I was upstairs getting laid off and celebrating the pregnancy of my former boss’ wife. Now, I’m showing a woman who’s possibly pregnant with my (maybe) current boss’ baby into a cab. My head is spinning.

  As soon as their cab is just a speck in the distant New York traffic I take a huge, deep breath. My heart is still racing. I don’t know what I just stumbled upon, but something tells me it’s going to be like dog shit—easy to step in, but hard to get off of you. I have to think about how to handle this whole thing.

  Graham gave me the rest of the day off for obvious reasons. They’re getting their things in order for the move and, as of right now, I’m gainfully unemployed. I still have to talk to Chandler, but now this whole thing with his fiancé and his supposed mistress just threw a giant wrench in that plan. I know more than I should, and he may see that knowledge as a liability, not an asset. I look down at my watch.

  I need to think. And I do my best thinking in one place and one place only—when I’m hanging out with my nonna. It’s been a crazy morning and I could use a break, but before I go I need to tell Graham about this situation. He’ll know what to do. He knows these people better than I do.

  I grab my cell and dial. He picks up right away.

  “Hey. Everything alright? You see Chandler yet?”

  I can’t help but smile. I always smile when I’m this stressed out. I have a weird sense of humor. “Funny story.”

  7

  Penelope

  It isn’t often in life you get to throw a rare, seventeenth century antique glass carafe across a room at someone’s head.

  Barely missing Chandler’s face, it just shattered into more pieces than I could count after exploding against the wall and its shards falling to the carpet. I feel like that carafe right now—I feel like my life’s been shattered into a thousand pieces for no good reason.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he bellows.

  I didn’t tell him what happened yet. I thought greeting him with a flying blunt object would make my point better than any words I could come up with. I’m not sure he’s put two and two together yet. I don’t answer him, I just turn around and storm off. I’m not just angry, I feel a rage that I’ve never really felt before. It’s like all the love and feelings I’d built up just spilled out of me over the last few hours, drop by drop, as I sat in our apartment thinking that there is another woman out there pregnant with my fiancé’s child.

  I feel like a fool.

  This is how the rest of the next hour goes: I scream. He asks what’s wrong even though I suspect he knows exactly what’s wrong. I tell him. Not only do I tell him that I know, I tell him how I know—I give him all the details about that crazy bitch showing up at our home earlier today, screaming and carrying on right where everyone could hear about our dirty laundry. He doesn’t react at all like I thought he would.

  “Interesting,” he says.

  Not ‘I’m so sorry’, not ‘It isn’t true’, and not ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’ Instead, I get an ‘interesting’ from him, and my entire image of the man I thought I loved is shattered. A part of me—although a very small part—wanted to stay in the denial I’ve clearly been in for our entire relationship. That version of me wanted to think that maybe, just maybe, this whole thing was explainable—that Teresa was some mentally ill stalker who saw Chandler in Financial Times magazine, thought he was good looking, and contacted him somehow. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got at myself for even allowing such silly thoughts like that to enter my mind.

  “Interesting?” I ask. “What the fuck does that mean, Chandler? I just told you a woman came here harassing me, pounding on our door, claiming that you’re the father of her unborn child, and your response is ‘interesting’?”

  “Listen, it was a one-time thing. The pregnancy can be taken care of, don’t worry. This doesn’t need to interrupt our plans.”

  Every syllable he’s saying is like an arrow in my heart. I feel like one of those women in a serial killer documentary—Ted Bundy’s girlfriend; John Wayne Gacy’s wife; BTK’s children. I feel like all the people who’ve ever discovered that not only is the person they love not who they believed, but that they’re also a complete monster.

  I don’t even know how to respond. “Taken care of? Doesn’t have to change things between us? Have you lost your mind, Chandler? I don’t even know who I’m talking to right now.”

  “Yes, you do, Penelope. You know who I am, who my father is, and who I’m going to be once this acquisition of my company is finalized. You’ve always known who I am and what I want out of life, and this is just a little hiccup along the way. You think that my business became what it is without obstacles a hundred times bigger than this coming at me along the way? No way. We’ll be fine. I just need to figure out what to do here.”

  Oh. My. God. “What to do? You mean, besides not fucking other women and getting them pregnant?”

  “That isn’t what I meant. This doesn’t need to change anything.”

  “You’re a complete psychopath, Chandler. You act like I should expect this.”

  Once I realize that I’m about five seconds from taking a kitchen knife and ending up on the six o’clock news for murder, I get up and leave. He tries to stop me. He yells and calls to me as I put on my shoes and walk out. But unless he’s prepared to grab me and tie me up, there’s no way I’m staying here right now.

  “I’m leaving you. Take this meaningless thing back!” He didn’t even notice that I’m not wearing my engagement ring. Of course he doesn’t notice—I don’t even think he knows me. I took it off hours ago, and I’ve been holding it in my pocket this entire time, thinking about what I want to do with it. I remember when he surprised me with it—I remember that I was so happy that I cried. Now I’m crying for a different reason.

  I throw my ring across the room. He doesn’t react. Instead, I watch my two-carat platinum princess cut ring bounce off of his chest and fall onto the floor. “We’re done. It’s over.”

  “Penelope,” he says to me. “You’re being irrational. We can work this out.”

  “I think we moved past the ‘working it out’ phase of our issues when that bitch got a positive pregnancy test result. Listen to me, you bastard. We. Are. Done!”

  As the door slams behind me, I finally let it all go—the emotion I was battling not to show him, and I let the tears flow down my face like a waterfall.

  8

  Dylan

  Later that day

  If there’s anything that can solve problems better than an early pasta dinner with my nonna, I don’t know what it is.

  The woman is nothing short of magical in the kitchen. She can take simple dishes that everyone makes and just add some of that “Grandma magic” to them. If she could bottle whatever it is that makes them taste better than everyone else’s, she wouldn’t be struggling with her bills right now.

  It took a little over an hour to get here from the city, but as soon as I walked into her apartment the smell of sauce filled my lungs and took all of the stress of my day away. I try to pretend like I’m not feeling some stress from my day, but she can read me like a book.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks as she rolls out the dessert that I have definitely been saving room for.

  “What makes you think something is wrong, Nonna?”

  “Because I know you, and I can tell.”

  That’s about as good an answer as any, and she’s right, she knows me too well. She raised me longer than my actual parents ever did, and she
was there through thick and thin. Still, I don’t really want to get into office politics with her over the dinner table. I’m not even sure what I’d say.

  “If I said ‘nothing’, then you’d know I was lying, right?”

  “I’d know you were lying no matter what you said.”

  I smile. “Fair enough. So I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to respect my answer.”

  “Alright.”

  “I kind of lost my job today, and I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m still processing.”

  “What?” she asks, shocked. “Why? You were doing so well. What did you do?”

  “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it,” I say.

  “Are you kidding me? You can’t just drop a bomb like that and not expect your nonna to have some follow up questions.”

  She’s right. I can tell her what happened, without all the Chandler and pregnant woman drama, so that’s just what I do. I tell her about Graham and Soraya moving, about their new baby, and about the potential that I might get another job right away. That last part seems to ease her mind a little bit. But of course, being Nonna, she has some questions.

  “Did you speak to this man? This Chandler?”

  “No,” I answer. “Tomorrow—Graham called and arranged it.”

  “Well, all you have to do is show him how good you are at your job, and I’m sure he’ll hire you on the spot.”

  This is why I come here. They say no woman will ever love you like your mom, and that’s true enough. But for those of us without moms, no one will ever love us like our grandmother. With just a few words, I feel better.

  We finish dessert, and just before I leave Nonna gives me a hug and pulls me in close to her. “You remember what’s next week, right? I didn’t want to bring it up during dinner and upset you. We were having such a nice time.”

  “Right,” I tell her. “I forgot.” I didn’t forget, I just didn’t want to talk about it. How could I forget that next week is the anniversary of Pop’s death? I’ve been doing everything I can to keep it out of my mind. “I’ll be there, of course.”

  “I know. He would have been so proud of you, Dylan.”

  My Pop was like a dad and a best friend all wrapped into one man. He taught me how to be tough when I need to be and gentle when I need to be. Basically, he taught me how to be a man, and the thought of next week just reminds me that he’s not here anymore.

  “Goodnight, Nonna. I’ll let you know how it goes with the job, okay?”

  “Fingers crossed. Goodnight, Dylan.”

  I head back to the city, exhausted from the day I just had, and for the day I know that I’m going to have tomorrow.

  * * *

  Here’s how much of a baller my boss is—his corporation bought an entire co-op building—the one he and I live in—and he rented out over half of the available units to his closest friends and business associates. That way all major decisions on the co-op board are stacked in his favor.

  Someone like me, who Graham once euphemistically referred to as coming from ‘humble beginnings’, could never afford a place in this building. But after he decided that I was going to be his PA, he let me live in one of the smaller apartments so that he could always have access to me—one of the many perks of this gig. And by ‘small’ we’re talking the size of the first floor of most people’s houses. He told me that if I couldn’t afford the place on my own one day soon, then I either wasn’t handling my money correctly, or I didn’t deserve it.

  I agree with him about both points. I’ve been saving the very generous salary that Graham’s been paying me for a while now and I have a nice little nest egg squirreled away. What I end up doing with it is anyone’s guess.

  On the way back from dinner with Nonna, Graham texted that he wants to see me—that he has some information about what happened earlier. I’m not looking forward to that meeting at all, but I can’t say no. What I can do—scratch that, what I need to do—is get some coffee in me right now. I’m going to need it.

  I pass a few diners, a Starbucks, and probably three or more Dunkin Donuts on the way home, but none of those places has the best coffee around. The place I’m going has the worst name and the best coffee around.

  I see the sign now.

  ‘Jorge’s Cafe’ is right there, barely visible to the naked eye the place is so small, but it’s hands down the best place around for a high-quality caffeine buzz. Jorge is a second-generation Cuban who serves the best Cuban espresso and coffee—excuse me, café, in all of Manhattan. It’s just what I need to wake me up.

  I’ve always had a passion for coffee. It sounds stupid, but I can’t go a day without at least three cups of the strongest I can find. That’s how I met Jorge. I’ve tried just about every coffee place worth trying in this magnificent city, and nothing compares to the espresso this man has dripping out of his machines. Long before I met Jorge, I had dreams of opening up my own coffee place.

  That was before the industry started blowing up. But ever since getting back from the military, I’ve wanted to have my own place and hire all veterans to work with me. Veterans like Jorge.

  I walk through the door and see Jorge, as always, serving all of the customers himself. The place seats maybe fifteen people, but on weekends there’s a line around the block just to get in. Jorge’s father was a Cuban immigrant who fled the Castro regime in 1970. The man literally paddled his way from Havana to Miami, bringing his wife and their recipe for Cuban espresso. Now, his son is quietly making a killing with that very same recipe in the heart of Manhattan.

  “Jorge!” I yell as soon as I walk in.

  “Dylan, my friend. You look like hell, man.”

  “Thanks,” I joke. “I feel like it too. Got a sticky situation on my hands across the street.”

  “More of your rich people drama?” he asks.

  “What else.”

  “You think you would have learned by now—there’s always going to be sticky situations with those kinds of people. Best thing you can do is just get out of the way and do as much damage control as possible.”

  “You speak the truth.”

  “And you know what I’m going to say, right?”

  “That none of this would be happening if I quit my job and opened up a coffee chain with you. I know that song, Jorge, you’ve been singing it for a while now. I know all the lyrics.”

  Jorge and I have been toying with the idea of opening our own place together—a bunch of our own places, actually. Coffee varieties from around the world, including Jorge’s killer Cuban brew front and center on the menu. He never lets me forget that he’s willing to make that move whenever I am.

  “Right now, I’ll focus on that damage control you mentioned.”

  As I watch Jorge get my double shot of Cuban espresso ready, I glance to my left and barely believe my eyes. They have to be deceiving me, because I sure as hell can’t be looking over at her right now. Except I am.

  That’s Penelope! I really can’t believe this is happening right now. I came in for some caffeine, but it feels like my body is producing its own right now.

  There are a few ways I could play this scenario out, and I play them each in my head as I take down the double shot of bitter and sweet. By the time it’s down my throat, I know what I need to do. I have to approach her. But before I get a chance to walk over, Jorge puts my espresso down in front of me. It smells amazing.

  “Jorge, how long has that woman been in here?”

  “That one?” he asks, hooking his thumb in Penelope’s direction. I grab his arm and lower it so she doesn’t notice us staring at her.

  “Yes, that one. Make it less obvious, Jesus.”

  “Why, you like her or something?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Jorge laughs. “Hermano, it’s always like that. And you have good taste, too, that chick is smoking hot.”

  He’s not lying. Penelope is ridiculous looking—the kind of beautiful you never really understand until you see
it in person, and even then, you’re not sure if you’re dreaming or not. “You’re not wrong.”

  “Like I said, man, you like her.”

  “I can’t,” I tell him. “I don’t even know her. Not really.”

  “You don’t have to know someone like that to like them, and especially not to be attracted to them. You have blood in your veins? Then you’ll be attracted to her. Oh, and she’s been here for hours, man. Literal hours.”

  Jorge speaks the truth. He usually does. But how hot she is isn’t the issue right now. I should probably just drink my espresso as fast as I can and walk away, meet with Graham and forget I saw her here. I shouldn’t approach her, and I damn sure shouldn’t engage her in a conversation about everything that happened this morning. Here’s what I should do—talk to Graham, see how he thinks I should play this, and then go from there.

  Yeah, that would be the intelligent thing to do. But it’s not really my brain that’s running my body at the moment. This might be career suicide, but I decide to go up to her. I down my espresso and walk over.

  Here goes nothing. Here goes everything.

  9

  Penelope

  Oh my God, it’s him.

  Dylan is his name—I could never forget it. In fact, I’ve never forgotten anything about the first time we met, even though it was months ago and maybe lasted two minutes. Now he’s standing over me and my empty cup of coffee, and all I can feel is embarrassment at what he had to witness before. I don’t like my dirty laundry airing out in front of other people, and that particular laundry was about as dirty as it gets.

  “Hey.”