Will’s eyes widened. Did she think Younge’s craziness had caused his father to change his will? “This hasn’t changed anything. My father knows about my childhood already. There’s nothing new there.”
She nodded, but didn’t look convinced.
“Look,” Arun said, “we’re trying our hardest. But it would look good if you would try to put this story to bed, somehow.”
Will nodded. He’d been thinking about that, now that he had two weeks off to figure out how to best Younge at his own game. He still wasn’t sure about the paternity test, but he had some other ideas.
“I’m working on it,” was all he could say.
He clenched his fists. There had to be something he could do. This whole situation had taken him by shock at first. He’d gotten so fixated on whether to ask for a paternity test he hadn’t done any investigating of his own. Maybe his enforced vacation was a godsend. There had to be a way to discredit this fraud.
He followed Arun and Borami back to their table to greet his family.
“Will!” Georgiana said, jumping up. “Dance with me?”
He smiled at her. “I’d love to, sprout.”
“Will.” Mom’s wide smile worried him. “Who was that young lady you were dancing with first?”
“Oh.” Will was sure his blush would give everything away. “She’s Lizzy. I mean, Elizabeth. The bride’s sister.”
Dad looked thoughtful. “I think I met Jane’s father. He was introduced as Mr. Bennet.”
“Yes.”
“Then . . . her name is Lizzy Bennet? Any relation to . . .”
Apparently this conversation was going to be longer than he’d thought, so he dropped into the empty chair on the other side of his mom. “Yes. I didn’t discover it until recently, but she’s the same Lizzy Bennet from when I was little.”
Ana’s jaw dropped. “The girl who gave you a peanut butter sandwich?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
Mom stood up abruptly. “I want to talk to her.”
This was not a good idea. “Wait, Mom, no.”
“I’m not going to embarrass her or anything,” Mom promised. “I just want to thank her.” Before he could stop her, she was heading off across the room, Dad following slowly behind with his cane.
“Me, too!” And now Ana was on her way. Will followed quickly.
They all approached the table where Will had been sitting. The table was mostly empty except for Mr. Bennet and Ms. Gardiner, who sat separated by several chairs and studiously ignored each other. Elizabeth had just dropped into her seat, flushed and laughing, after a lively dance with her friends.
“Elizabeth Bennet?” Mom asked as she approached.
Elizabeth looked puzzled, but she stood up. “Yes?”
“I’m Anne Darcy. And I want to thank you.” She reached out and pulled a startled Elizabeth into a hug.
Elizabeth’s eyes met Will’s over his mother’s shoulder. She widened them, and he shrugged.
Finally, Mom sniffed and pulled away. “I’m sure you think me ridiculous, but . . . you were there for my boy before I could be. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
“Okay, Mom, way to be emotional,” Ana broke in. “You’re going to scare her away. And I want to hear what she thought of Will when he was a kid. Did he really have duct tape holding his shoes together? Because he says he did but―”
“Who are these people, Elizabeth?” Ms. Gardiner broke in.
“They’re the Darcys, Mother,” Elizabeth said. “Will’s family.”
Ms. Gardiner gave them a simpering smile. “Oh, the Darcys!” She drawled out their name to the point of ridiculousness. “So very pleased to meet you! Have you met my other daughters, Katie and Lydia? They’re dancing right now.” She indicated the dance floor. “So popular, you know. Everyone wants to dance with them.”
“Perhaps later,” Mom said. “We were really hoping to speak with Elizabeth.”
Mom sat down next to Elizabeth and said something quietly. Elizabeth smiled as Mom took her hand and squeezed it. Ana took that as invitation to sit on Elizabeth’s other side, leaving Will to sit next to her.
Ms. Gardiner frowned. “What would you want with her?”
“She and Will were friends!” Ana said. “They met every day in a park when they were kids.”
“Ah, so that’s where she escaped to,” Mr. Bennet said. “I always wondered.”
“Escaped,” Ms. Gardiner scoffed. “You say that as if she had reason to escape the house.”
“Perhaps she did,” he said. “After all, I escaped you around the same time, ended up all the way across the country.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, and Will could see her flush. He thought frantically of some way to get his family away so she wouldn’t be embarrassed further, but he had no ideas.
“Well . . .” Ana sounded uncertain. “They read books together.”
“That’s my Lizzy for you.” Mr. Bennet looked pleased.
Ms. Gardiner did not. “Oh, come off it. You and Lizzy with your little exclusive book club. I haven’t regretted divorcing you for a minute. You should have taken her with you.”
Elizabeth sucked in a quick breath, and Will saw her face go pale. He wished he were close enough to take her hand. But then, to his delight, he saw Mom give Elizabeth a look of sympathy and a quick squeeze to the hand.
Dad broke in. “I think we have a similar taste in books, Mr. Bennet. Elizabeth gave Will a copy of Around the World in 80 Days, an old favorite of mine.” He sat down next to Elizabeth’s father.
“Of mine as well. Read it a thousand times if I’ve read it once, mostly when I was a boy.” The two men continued their conversation, no longer audible over the music as they leaned close together.
Suddenly, two girls a few years younger than Elizabeth sauntered up to the table and dropped into empty seats near Ms. Gardiner.
“I’m so sweaty I can feel it running down my chest!” the younger one said with a giggle, peeling her dress away from her chest so that she could examine it.
“I can’t believe you danced with Antoine. He’s so disgusting!” the other girl said.
“I can. He’s great at grinding.”
“Oooh, Lydia,” Ms. Gardiner exclaimed. “What fun! You always know how to have a great time anywhere.”
Elizabeth leaned forward and hid her face in her hand. She looked utterly humiliated, and he thought perhaps this time, his rescue wouldn’t go amiss.
Time to distract his family. “Ana, ready for our dance?” Hopefully Mom, at least, would head back to their table, and maybe Dad would follow soon. This was a disaster. He wished he could take Lizzy away from all of this, but he didn’t think either of them wanted his family to stay at the table without them. Mom would get that Lizzy was embarrassed―she was good at picking up such things―and get Dad away as soon as she could.
Ana squealed and grabbed his hand, pulling him to the dance floor. After a few minutes, he was pleased to see his parents sitting back down at their table. He would love them to get to know Lizzy, but not like this.
When he looked at his table, Lizzy was no longer there. He caught sight of her on the dance floor with Charlotte later, though, laughing. Their eyes met, and she stopped laughing but gave him a bright smile. “Thank you,” she mouthed. He nodded back.
He danced with Ana for two dances, spinning and dipping her to keep her laughing. After a while, though, his energy waned and his attention wandered. And that’s when he noticed that Leonard had joined Dad, Arun, and Borami at the table. And they all looked very serious.
He swallowed. He hadn’t wanted to be CEO, not really. He hadn’t felt ready for it. But to be removed ignominiously because of some get-rich-quick scheme by a man who had certainly never been a father to him when he could so desperately have used one? It rankled.
A vacation, his father might call it, but he knew it was the closest he could get to being sent on “administrative leave pending investigation” when his father owned the comp
any. After all his hard work, all his late nights, the constant stress and nightmares? He’d spent weeks torn between keeping his father’s company alive and hurrying to his hospital bed to hope that his father, too, was still alive. And after all that, this was how it would end? Not if he had anything to do with it.
He shook his head to clear it. He was at his best friend’s wedding. He should enjoy his dance with Ana and not worry about what the future would bring, not today.
When they finished their second dance and Ana went back to the table where his parents sat, Will felt alone on the dance floor.
Then he remembered that Lizzy had wanted to talk to him, and he hurried back to the table to see what she wanted.
The table, luckily, had cleared off. Everybody had apparently gone off to either dance or circulate. Unfortunately, that also included Lizzy.
How stupid would he look if he sat alone at the empty table and waited for her? He stood by his chair for a minute, scanning the room, but couldn’t see her.
“Will!” came a breathless call from behind. Will whirled around to see Lizzy standing in front of her chair.
“Sorry,” she said, “didn’t mean to startle you. I saw you over here, and I thought it would be a good time to talk.” She looked sweaty and disheveled, and totally perfect. “I needed to move, after . . . you know.”
He touched her shoulder lightly. “I know. I’m sorry, Lizzy.”
She smiled slightly and they both sat down.
Lizzy pulled something out of her purse. “Here. I thought maybe there was a chance these would help.” She put two pictures in front of him.
The first picture was of him, as George, standing alone at the park. His hair was too long, and his face rather dirty. His t-shirt was stained, his jeans ripped at the knees, his shoes held together with duct tape. He looked . . . rather pathetic, really. Like an advertisement for one of those “Sponsor a Child” programs. Had he really looked that bad?
The second showed him wearing the same clothing, but he and Lizzy were sitting on their bench together, leaning in, arms around each other, wearing huge grins. He couldn’t help smiling.
He looked up at Lizzy. She was leaning close, very close, looking down at the pictures as well. He could smell her perfume, and he tried to take a deep breath without being too obvious. Clearly he’d failed, because she turned and gave him an impish grin.
“Remember these? Anyway, I don’t know if it will help, but I thought you could use these pictures, especially the one of you by yourself, to show that you weren’t being taken care of. So if he’s claiming that he’s your father and was taking care of you and all, this picture might disprove it. What do you think?”
Will nodded slowly. “It’s an idea, I guess. It’s just . . .”
“It’s not the greatest.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t show that he wasn’t around, just that we were really poor. But he hasn’t said anything contrary to that. He might just claim that times were tough but he was doing his best, something like that. And besides, it was taken at a park. Kids get dirty and their clothing stained and torn from playing at the park.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve had some ideas. I think we need to look into this guy first. Where did he come from? What made him fixate on me? There’s gotta be something. And, of course, there’s still the possibility of asking him to get a paternity test.”
She frowned. “Is it possible he actually is your father? Biologically, I mean?”
“Yeah.” Will ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s possible. I don’t know how he could know for sure, and maybe he’s not. But what if he is?”
“It would make everything else look true.”
Will nodded.
“You know,” Lizzy said thoughtfully, “surely it doesn’t matter as much what people know of your childhood as whether or not they think that you’ve fulfilled your obligations towards him, right? I mean, if you paid for his medical bills, the problem would probably go away.”
“Maybe, maybe not. It might just look like I didn’t do it until I was forced into it by the publicity. And anyway, it’s galling to think that he would get away with it.”
They both stared at the pictures silently for a few moments, thinking.
“Do you think he actually has medical bills?” Lizzy asked suddenly.
“You think he’s lying about them?” Will asked.
“Well, we already know he’s lying about your childhood. And quite possibly he’s lying about his certainty that he’s your father, too. I mean, at most he might think it possible, but it’s hardly certain. So since we’ve established that he’s a known liar . . .”
“He might be lying about the medical bills as well.”
“I’m hurt,” a third voice suddenly broke in. Will and Lizzy both looked up in surprise to see a strange man sitting down at the table across from them. “Accusing an old man with cancer of lying? I expected more of you, son.”
Lizzy glanced at Will, then quickly put the pictures back into her purse.
Will stared at him in shock as he recognized him. Chris Younge, in person. “You’re the man who is pretending to be my father.”
“Pretending, ha! I should have known that was how you’d try to spin it,” Younge said. “But no, it’s true. I absolutely am your biological father. And of course you and I both know what I meant to you.”
“Absolutely nothing, as we’ve never met,” Will said. “And I can’t imagine you were invited to this wedding, so it’s really time for you to leave.”
He stood up and was relieved when Younge stood up, too. The last thing he wanted to do was to start something during Charlie’s wedding. He started for the door to lead Younge out, and fortunately Younge continued to follow him.
“I’ve done the math,” Younge continued as they walked, “and I think about $500,000 should do me for my cancer treatments. At least for now.”
Will pushed open the door to the building. “You know, and I know, that―” but he was blinded by a flash, and then suddenly realized that the front of the building was mobbed with paparazzi. Younge had brought paparazzi with him . . . lots of them. He wanted a public confrontation, and Will, in his attempt to get Younge out of the reception hall, had just walked right into the trap.
They started yelling immediately. “Will, Will, have you and your father made up? Did you invite him to your friend’s wedding? Will you be paying for his cancer treatments now?” And many more things that he couldn’t hear or didn’t want to hear.
They were all around him, microphones thrust into his face. He felt trapped, and suddenly very, very warm. He couldn’t get enough air. He tried to back up, but Chris Younge clapped a hand on his back and grinned at the gathered crowd. No air. He needed to get out, needed to breathe.
“You all should be ashamed of yourselves!” a voice suddenly said right by his left ear. “This is a wedding, not a press conference! And you all are idiots if you believe this lying asshole over a good man. I knew Will when he was a boy named George, and I know he’s telling the truth and that man is lying. Now, we’re going back to the wedding, and if any of you set foot inside this door, I’m calling the police.” He felt his arm yanked backwards, and he half-tumbled through the open door to the building.
The door shut behind him, and he sank to the floor, still gasping and trying to get a deep breath.
Lizzy crouched in front of him, her concerned eyes meeting his. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, then finally got the breath he’d been longing for, and the relief as his lungs filled made him almost dizzy. He breathed slowly in and out, in and out, until he was ready to stand up again. As his breathing returned to normal, embarrassment kicked in.
“I can’t believe I did that.” Had he really almost passed out because of some loud reporters? And in front of Lizzy, no less? “Thanks for . . . well, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Those people are vultures.” She still looke
d concerned. “Will, what are you going to do?”
“I think it’s time to provide my side of the story. But I want to make sure I back it up as much as I can first.”
“Want help?” Her smile reminded him of their adventures together. Only this adventure would be the most important of them all.
“Yes, absolutely. But we’ll start tomorrow. For now, let’s go dance.”
Will took her hand to lead her to the dance floor. Her hand was so much smaller than his, but warm and soft. He took pleasure in the fact that she tightened her grip, holding his hand more than was strictly needed for the dance. And when they reached the floor, she fit perfectly against him.
Will let a small sigh escape as she rested her head on his shoulder. He tucked her close and rested his chin on the top of her head. For this moment, he would block out the rest of the world and enjoy the feel of the woman he loved in his arms.
Proving a Negative
October 2016
Will rolled over in bed, groaning at the sunlight streaming through the blinds. He groped blindly for his cell phone that was plugged in by his bed and thumbed it awake.
He sat bolt upright in bed. It was 9 a.m.? He hadn’t slept this late in years! Elizabeth was supposed to be here at 9:30.
There was no way he’d skip his shower or brushing his teeth before spending the day with Elizabeth, but he made it fast. He was just stepping out of the shower when he heard the doorbell ring.
Crap. She was early. He weighed the pros and cons of answering the door in a towel. It was common in romantic comedies, but he was pretty sure no self-respecting man would do so in real life. He threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and hoped she wouldn’t give up and think he’d left without her. A quick glance at his watch showed that it was barely 9:10 a.m.
He jogged down the hall and to the door.
“Dad!”
“Will,” Dad said, stepping inside. “I’m glad I caught you at home. After the other day at work and then what happened at the wedding, I thought we should really have a conversation, just the two of us.”
Will swallowed. Their last conversation hadn’t gone so well. Even if talking with Borami and Arun had made him realize what Dad had been up against, it still smarted that he’d been forced to take leave.
A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 24
