by Jamie Hill
The thud that rattled the back patio door made her jump. She chuckled, then set her cup down and went to the door. "Get a grip, Nat." The dark eyes peering through the glass made her smile. She unlocked the door and slid it open. "I forgot you were still out there. Sorry, Jake."
The golden Labrador Retriever nuzzled her knee in response, and headed directly for his food and water bowls. His dinner had been interrupted when the fighting broke out and Natalie sent him to the backyard. Jake was very protective of his family, but not so much toward Alex, who spent less time at home and therefore interacted with the dog the least. Jake had a tendency to growl at Alex, which irritated the hell out of the man. If Jake had seen Alex screaming at her like a madman, there would have been trouble. And nobody liked to see Gigi cry, even the dog. He was extremely protective of the children, especially Gigi, their only girl.
"Children," Natalie said thoughtfully as she sat down, absent-mindedly watching Jake eat. They technically couldn't be called children anymore, but they'd always be her babies.
Gillian, called 'Gigi' by everyone except her co-workers at the fancy new advertising agency where she was recently employed, had just turned twenty-three. David, who was twenty-two and living away at college, preferred to be called 'Dave'. Natalie smirked. Twelve hours of labor earned her the right to call him whatever she wanted. Most of the time it was 'David', but occasionally it was something worse. Matthew, at nineteen, was her baby. He hated being called that, but it didn't stop Natalie. She'd been called her mother's baby until well into her thirties, when her mom died. It was a tradition handed down.
In August, she and Alex had moved their baby into a dormitory room at the local university. He'd lived at home his first year of college but had grown increasingly anxious to get out on his own. The dorm was their compromise. He had a life-long friend as his roommate and a meal card to eat at the dining hall. Which basically meant Natalie and Alex saw him on Sundays, when the dining hall was closed. Matthew came home to eat and do his laundry.
She liked the fact that this last little chick hadn't ventured too far away from the nest. It was easier to keep tabs on him. Other parents had it worse. Some kids went hundreds of miles away to college. David was within two hours of home, and Gigi lived an hour away. Close enough for both of them to come home regularly. Natalie loved having her children close.
There I go with the 'children' business again. She'd probably always think of them as children. She finished her tea and looked around the kitchen. The presence of Halloween decorations indicated that she'd remained in mother mode, even though the kids were all but gone. She wasn't sure why she'd decorated for the holiday, except that she'd done it for the last twenty-some years, and now, it was a habit.
Natalie rinsed her cup and put it in the dishwasher, glancing at the clock. Barely nine p.m. She didn't know if Alex was coming home tonight or not, but she had to check on Gigi. Enough time had passed; her daughter should have made it back to Topeka by now. She picked up the phone, punching the memory button and the number two.
Gigi answered with a clipped tone. "I don't want to talk, Mother."
Ah, the wonders of Caller I.D. At least she answered, even if she did call me 'Mother'. "I know, I'm sorry. I just had to make sure you got home okay. You were pretty upset."
"You don't think I had a right to be?" Gigi demanded dramatically.
Natalie always said the girl should have studied theater. "Of course you do. I know you need some time to process the news, and get used to the idea."
"Then please don't call me again. Give me some space."
"All right. Like I said, I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."
"I did. I'm fine. I'm totally pissed, but I'm fine."
"I'm sorry, Gigi."
"Good night, Mother." Gigi disconnected the call.
Natalie sighed and hung up the phone.
Alex was right. It'd been too much for Gigi to process. He'd known she was going to be angry.
Natalie naively had held out hope that her daughter would understand. Too idealistic, she'd thought Gigi would take the news better. But how was a girl supposed to take the news that the man she'd grown up believing to be her father… actually was not?
* * *
Alex Jameson squinted up into the early morning sun. Entering the garage, he frowned when he found the inside door leading to his house locked. Unusual. They rarely locked it. He wondered if it was significant, a message Natalie was sending him. He dug his keys from his pocket and let himself in.
Jake barked once, and stopped when he saw Alex.
"Hey, pal." He patted the dog's head.
The dog trotted to his food bowl and looked up.
"Outside first." He opened the patio door and sent the beast out to do his morning business. It was early. Alex rubbed a hand over his chin. He needed to shower, shave and get to work.
Natalie appeared in the doorway, wrapped in her thick, velour robe. "Where have you been?"
He tossed his keys on the table and glanced at her. The distressed look on her face indicated she'd slept about as well as he had. "I got a motel room." He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice. After pouring himself a glass, he drank it as he stood staring out the kitchen window. "I didn't take any clothes. I need to get cleaned up for work, and pack a bag."
"Pack a bag! You can't mean that you're going back to the motel?"
He glanced at her guiltily. Their argument had gotten way out of control last night. He shouldn't be so mad at her. After all, he'd always known he wasn't Gigi's biological father. He'd just never wanted Gigi to know. That's Natalie's fault, dammit, and I'm angry at her for telling the secret we've shared for over twenty-three years. "I need some time to think this through," he finally told her. "I need a little space."
"You sound just like your daughter," she snapped at him, and mimicked snottily, "I need some space, don't call me." She trailed off, apparently realizing what she'd said.
The words knifed through his heart. She is my daughter. He damned Natalie again for making them both uneasy when the words were spoken aloud. "You talked to Gigi?"
She poured herself some juice. "For a minute. I wanted to make sure she got home okay. She didn't want to talk to me."
He nodded. They'd both realized she'd feel that way. Natalie was a good mother to check on her, anyway. Nobody could ever accuse Natalie of not being a good mother.
He glanced at the homemade Halloween decorations that graced the kitchen. His wife could remember which kid made what, and the year they did it. He was clueless about that stuff. They balanced each other out, one reason why their relationship had worked so well for all these years.
He stared out the window again, watching Jake tree a squirrel. That dog can entertain himself for hours. Probably a good thing, since the kids were all gone now.
He startled as Natalie moved in and wrapped her arms around him from behind. She pressed the side of her face against his back. "I missed you last night. It's quiet here by myself. Please don't go back to the motel."
Alex appreciated the warm press of her body against his back, and his own body's reaction to it. Even through her heavy robe, he felt her curves against him. He knew every one of them by heart. He probably knew her body better than he knew his own. It'd be so easy to turn around and sweep her into his arms. He'd brush her long, dark brown hair away from her neck and kiss the hollow there. He could have her naked and beneath him on their bed in two minutes flat, one minute if he went for the kitchen table instead of the bed. He smiled at the thought. Been there, done that, and it really wasn't that comfortable. His hand rubbed over hers for a moment. Then he pulled away and moved around her, walking toward the hall. "I'm going to shower and change before I pack."
She went to the bench by the table and dropped onto it. "I won't help you pack, but I'll make you breakfast."
"Toast will be fine." He trudged into their room. Her side of the bed was rumpled, his neat as a pin. For one more mo
ment, he thought about dragging her down with him and messing up both sides of the bed but good. Shaking his head, he peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower.
* * *
Natalie couldn't believe he was packing. Never, in their twenty-four and a half years of marriage, had either of them ever packed a bag and left. There'd been arguments, a few fights that lasted longer than the standard riff, and even one time when she'd accused him of having an affair. Eight months along with Matthew at the time, her pregnancy paranoia was at its peak. She never really thought he'd done anything with that annoying woman from his office, but she sure gave him hell about it.
She shook her head, not believing she'd remembered something so insignificant. Sometimes the stupidest things stuck in her mind. Alex had a knack for remembering facts and figures. Natalie could tell you the color of her fourth grade classroom. Pea green with yellow trim.
Now he was packing and leaving, over something he'd known about all along. She wasn't sure whether to be miserable or infuriated. Somehow, she was both.
He walked into the kitchen dressed for work, and set his overnight bag by the door.
She glanced at it. It wasn't very big, if that meant anything. Natalie stood and walked to the toaster. She pushed the button down and turned to look at him. "Don't go."
He got butter and jelly from the fridge, and set them on the counter. "I don't want to go through this again. I need to get to work."
"You need to work things out with your wife. Don't leave me like this."
"I'm not leaving you, Nat. I told you, I need some time to think."
"To think about what?" She grew agitated while he calmly buttered and spread jelly on his toast. "You've known for twenty-three years and nine months about Gigi's paternity. What exactly do you need to think about?"
He froze on the spot for a second, then slapped his hand down on the counter. "Of course I've known. My knowing has never been the problem. I told you I didn't want Gigi to know. I thought we had an understanding."
"I never understood that we were going to keep it from her forever. I thought we agreed to tell her when she was older, and better able to handle it."
He looked at her incredulously. "You think that time is now? Because I was thinking older like thirty or forty, or maybe never, I don't know. I've raised her like my daughter, Nat. I want her to be my daughter. She has been for twenty-three years. Now, in one night, you've taken that away from me."
Her eyes flashed with the fury she felt in her gut. "Well excuse me! But you're not the only one who lost something. It took years before I could even talk about this. You know what it was like for me." She turned away from him and put her face in her hands.
He stepped up behind her. "Damn right I know what it was like! I've been here for you every minute of these past twenty-four years. I know you were miserable. What I don't understand is why you'd want to make Gigi miserable, too."
She whirled back around and looked up at him. "I never, ever wanted Gigi to be miserable. I told you, I was trying to give her accurate information for her records. She's been having problems."
"What kind of problems? No one told me about anything."
"Blood in her urine. Not the kind of thing a girl discusses with her father."
He shook his head. "She had bouts of that as a kid and I was there for every minute of it. The pediatrician said it was bladder infections."
"Well, apparently her new doctor doesn't think so. He wants her to see a kidney specialist. I want this new guy to figure out what's wrong with her before things get worse."
"Oh, I think they've already gotten worse." He took one bite of toast and tossed the rest in the sink. "So now Gigi is suffering and I am, too."
"And you just have to drag me right along with you? You want me to suffer, too."
He looked at her one last time. "I guess I do. Goodbye, Nat." He picked up his bag and walked out.
Natalie didn't even bother to get dressed. She sobbed for an hour on the bed, then curled up in front of the TV for the rest of the day. There were plenty of things she needed to do, but nothing that couldn't wait. She granted herself one day to wallow. She ate cold pizza, frozen Girl Scout cookies and watched Lifetime, Television for Women movies one right after another.
By ten p.m. she felt worse than she had all day. Her stomach was upset—the two rolls of Thin Mints?— and her heart ached. All the women on TV had their problems solved in two hours or less counting commercials. They had some doozies, too. Natalie decided perhaps she didn't have the biggest problems in the world, but it felt that way to her.
She let Jake outside one last time for the evening, then he followed her to the bedroom. Since Matthew had left for college, Jake had taken to sleeping at the foot of Natalie and Alex's bed. Natalie didn't mind, but it bothered Alex to no end. He vowed he was not going to 'do it' with a dog in the room. Natalie figured that wouldn't be an issue now—for a while, anyway.
* * *
Alex looked warily at the phone on his desk, as if it were a snake that might spring up and bite him at any moment. He needed to call Natalie, but he'd been avoiding her for several days, and that was working for him. He sighed, not really wanting to think about her. Whenever he did, his heart ached and he longed to go find her and pull her into his arms. Then he'd start kissing her neck, and that sweet little cleft between her breasts… yeah, I'm a guy, and with guys it always comes back around to sex.
It was really about more than sex with him and Nat. She was his best friend, and had been since the day she locked her keys in that crappy car, and he had come to her rescue. He liked to think of it that way, at least. She probably would have managed okay without him. But he couldn't imagine his life if they hadn't met and become inseparable from that day forward.
He took a deep breath and picked up the phone receiver. He punched the speed dial button for home. God, I miss home. He waited.
"Hello?" Natalie answered suspiciously.
"Hi, Nat." He knew with Caller ID she'd figured it was him. But ever since the day she'd answered with a suggestive proposition and had found his secretary on the other end, she'd always said 'hello'.
"Hello," she repeated. She sounded tired and not very pleasant.
"I, uh, talked to Matt. He called me, I mean."
"At the motel?" She sounded horrified.
"No! Of course not. At the office, here. No one knows I'm at a motel."
"Oh, good."
Relief this time. "He has a rowing regatta on Saturday, in Wichita. He'll be gone all day."
"On his birthday? Drat! Are you going to watch?"
"I can't, I have appointments in the morning. I think my folks are going, though."
"Well, then, I'm not going. I can't spend a whole day with them. They'd see through me in a minute, and know something was wrong."
"Skip it. There's a regatta here in a few weeks. We can catch that one."
"So, he'll be gone all day. We can still celebrate his birthday that evening."
"Nat," he hesitated. "Matt wants to go out with his friends Saturday night. He wanted to know if we could celebrate his birthday on Sunday instead."
"So that's why he called you, the little rat! He was afraid to tell me. He knew how disappointed I'd be."
Alex sighed. "I don't see the big deal. We can have him all day Sunday, the others can come up—"
Her voice raised a notch, agitated. "The big deal is that we see him every Sunday! Call him back and remind him to bring his laundry like usual, so it can be exactly the same as every other damn Sunday."
"Oh good grief!" Alex exclaimed.
"And you know what else? If we celebrate Saturday, the other two come home on Saturday and spend the weekend. If we celebrate Sunday, they'll just come up for the day and then right back again. I'm getting cheated."
He bit back a chuckle. She usually wasn't so focused on herself. Matt's leaving and the events of this week had obviously put her in an emotional state. He thought of something not so humoro
us and it brought him back around to reality. "Do you think Gigi will show up at all?"
Natalie responded crisply. "I don't know. She's not speaking to me. Maybe you should call her."
Alex panicked. "I can't!"
"What, you're never going to speak to her again?"
"That's not what I meant." His heart sank. He really did want to speak to Gigi. He wanted to cradle her on his lap and comfort her, or give her a band-aid, or whatever it took to make her all better. But he suspected there was nothing he could do at this point. "I suppose I could call her."
"Fine. I'll call Matthew, the little weasel, and tell him we're expecting him all day on Sunday."
"Be nice to him, Nat. It's his birthday."
"I know that, for goodness sake. You don't have to remind me."
She sounded angrier than Alex had heard her in a long time. "I've got to run." The conversation was going nowhere, it was probably best to end it.
"Go ahead, run," she said bitterly. "It's what you do best these days."
"Excuse me?" Alex gripped the receiver firmly.
Her voice grew quiet. "I said to be here early Sunday, so your kids don't know you're living in a motel."
"Yeah. Well, bye, Nat."
She hung up without saying goodbye. Alex put the receiver down and stared at it. Natalie sounded more unhappy each time he spoke with her. He needed to get a handle on his life and turn this thing around before the damage became permanent.
The intercom on his desk buzzed. "Your ten o'clock is here, Alex," his secretary said.
"Just a minute, please," he replied, and picked up the phone again. If he didn't do this now, he might not have the courage to do it later. He hit the speed dial button for Gigi's home number. With any luck, she'd be at work. I'm a coward. Hadn't Nat almost said as much?
"You have reached 555-1254." His own voice on the answering machine startled him for a moment. They had all agreed it was safer to have a man's voice on the machine, so Gigi had asked him to record the message when he'd helped her move in. "We can't take your call right now. Leave a message after the beep and we'll get back to you." Beep.
