by Robin Wells
I stare at Jessica. “You’ve been freaked out about me having a child ever since you started trying to get pregnant.”
“Zack, I’ve been thinking about it, and this might be the ideal solution for us. We’ll get Lily, and then we’ll have a child with a donor egg, and that child will be Lily’s half sister. We’ll be a complete family!”
Has she come unhinged? I raise my hands. “Whoa. This whole issue—it’s not about us. This is about Lily.”
“Well, sure, but it could work out in everyone’s best interests.”
“Not everyone’s. I don’t think it’s in Lily’s best interests, and it’s sure not in Quinn’s or Margaret’s.”
“Well, Quinn’s not a blood relation, and it sounds like Margaret’s too old and frail to care for her.” She reaches across the table and puts both of her hands on top of mine. “This could be perfect for us. A whole new beginning—new jobs and a new home in a new state with a new family!”
I straighten my spine and pull my hands into my lap. “Jessica, you can’t blithely dismiss the two people who’re the center of Lily’s world.” My tone is terser than I intend, but I can’t believe how self-absorbed she sounds. “Lily loves them. They’re her family.”
“She’ll learn to love us. Sounds like she’s already halfway in love with you.”
I’ve already thought about trying to get guardianship of Lily. How could it not have entered my mind? For half a minute, I even allowed myself to fantasize about it, so I know how appealing the concept is. I also know it’s wrong.
I shake my head. “I signed a contract stating I had no parental rights. Her mother made plans for Lily’s care in the event she died, and I need to honor those plans. Besides, Lily loves Quinn, and Quinn is wonderful with her. I can’t see putting Lily through any more upheaval.”
“She’s going through upheaval anyway. Why let her adjust to living with a stranger when she could be adjusting to living with her biological father?”
“Quinn’s not a stranger. She’s Lily’s godmother, and she’s known her all of her life. Quinn is already a mother figure to Lily.”
“I could be just as good a mother.”
I’m beginning to think that Jess has had some kind of breakdown or something. “Jess, you’re not looking at this from the child’s perspective.”
She bulldozes on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Brett says that courts usually favor blood relatives.”
“Brett seems to have a lot to say.”
“Is he right?” Jessica presses.
“In a regular guardianship case, if all other things are equal,” I concede, “but not in an anonymous donor situation. The chances of the donor contract being overruled are minute.”
“You could try.”
What part of this isn’t she getting? “It isn’t right, Jess—and not just because of the contract. The court always tries to do what’s in the child’s best interests, and in this case, that’s Lily staying with Quinn. That was the mother’s wish, and Quinn is the person Lily is most attached to.”
“Yes, but Margaret reached out to find you while she was the primary guardian.”
“Which I never would have known about if you hadn’t gone through my papers.”
Her mouth flattens. “That’s water under the bridge.”
To you, maybe. I don’t want to hold a grudge, but damn it, I don’t feel the same about Jessica. The whole incident has opened my eyes to some things I’ve avoided looking at. I blow out a hard sigh. Hell. I need to get over it.
“Margaret obviously wants you in Lily’s life,” Jessica says.
“Yes, and now I am.”
“What if Margaret wants you to have custody?”
Jess has always been persistent—it’s a quality I admire about her—but right now, it’s getting under my skin. “Even if that were the case, Lily belongs with Quinn. The mother’s wishes should take precedent.”
She opens her mouth as if she’s about to argue with me further, then closes it without saying a word. She toys with the paper napkin under her glass of iced tea. “I wonder if the will says who’s supposed to be Lily’s guardian if something happens to Quinn?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should find out, just so you know where things stand. Don’t wills get filed somewhere after they go through probate?”
“In Louisiana, it’s called succession instead of probate, but yeah, most wills are filed at the parish courthouse.”
“So you could easily take a look at it.”
“Yeah, if it’s been filed.” I tap my fingers on the table. It wouldn’t hurt to know exactly what Brooke specified.
The waitress brings our food, and the conversation drifts to Jessica’s family, but there’s a stilted, phony feeling between us. I’m acting like an attentive husband instead of really being one. I feel like Jess is pretending, too. Her voice sounds a little too peppy and she keeps giving me her selfie smile.
“Is something wrong with your po’boy?” the waitress asks as she passes our table.
“Nah. I just don’t have much appetite,” I say.
“What time will you be home tonight?” Jessica asks after the waitress whisks our half-full plates away.
“I’m supposed to meet Richard for a drink after work,” I tell her, naming a mutual friend who works at another firm. “He’s giving me some help on my pro bono case.”
“Can you cancel?”
I hesitate. “Why don’t I see if Karen can join him, and we’ll make it a double date for dinner?”
“Sure!” Jess agrees. “I haven’t seen Karen in ages.”
I’m relieved at the thought of not being alone with Jessica for the whole evening, then I feel bad about feeling relieved.
“It’ll give me a chance to tell her good-bye before we move,” Jessica says.
I don’t want to move. The thought jars me. I’ve never been as enthused about the idea of moving to Seattle as Jessica, but I’ve never outright admitted that I don’t want to leave New Orleans. You agreed to it, I remind myself. A good man keeps his word. It was something my father used to say, along with your word is who you are. Keeping my commitments is a cornerstone of my life.
And yet, everything is different now. When I agreed to move to Seattle, I didn’t know I had a young daughter in New Orleans.
And I didn’t know I had a wife who would betray my principles to get her own way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Margaret
“MA’AM? WE’RE GOING to move you to your room now.”
My eyelids feel as heavy as boardinghouse biscuits. It’s an enormous effort to open them just a sliver. When I do, I see a man in a short-sleeved aqua shirt beside me. My Henry had a shirt that color when Julia was a child, back in the sixties. He wore it to a crawfish boil we hosted on Mardi Gras; it was the month after Jackie Kennedy’s televised White House tour, because I remember talking to a friend about how elegant her taste was, and how . . .
“We’re going to lift you and put you on a gurney.”
I will my eyes to open again. This young man isn’t Henry, and his shirt doesn’t have buttons down the front. It’s some kind of medical attire.
“Am I in the hospital?” I croak.
“Yes. We just took you for an X-ray.”
“Am I in ICU?”
“You were, but you’re better now. You’re going to a post-ICU room.”
Better? I must have been really sick if this is better. I ache all over, and my hip feels even worse than it did after childbirth, when I tore a muscle while I was under the influence of “twilight sleep.” The nurse told me I’d writhed around and refused to cooperate when they were putting my legs into slings, but I don’t remember any of it. I just remember waking up and my hip hurting like the dickens, and . . .
“One, two, three.”
The man in the blue-green shirt and someone on the other side hoist me up, and the next thing I know, I’m being I’m shifted onto a gurney. I’m vaguely aware of being wheeled down a long hall and around several corners. I may or may not have had a little ride in an elevator. After more wheeling, I’m lifted and shifted again, this time onto a bed. I’m turned on my side, and the sheet beneath me is pulled away. My hip throbs.
“Mrs. Moore?” I open my eyes and see a middle-aged woman with glasses smiling at me. “My name is Wanda. I’m the charge nurse, and I’m going to be taking care of you this evening.”
My brain feels like a shaken snow globe—as if it’s filled with thick liquid, and all of my thoughts and memories are little pieces just drifting around. My eyelids close as she arranges the covers over me and a memory floats by.
I’m five or six years old, lying in my old iron bed in the Lafayette house, covered with outdoor-scented sheets and a quilt my grandmother made. My skin is itchy and spotted and I feel sick, so very, very sick. I’m freezing; I never knew a person could feel so cold. A doctor hovers over me, his stethoscope like ice on my chest. After a moment, he removes it and talks. His words are mostly a murmur, but I clearly hear the word measles. Mama walks him to the door, then comes back.
“I’m so c-c-cold.” My teeth are chattering. I’m afraid my upper and bottom teeth—I have some brand-new ones that feel too big for my mouth—will break against each other.
“Poor darling. You’re burning up with fever.” My mother pulls down the bedcovers, gently lifts my pajama top, and swabs a cold washcloth over my chest. “We have to cool you down so you won’t feel so chilled.”
I believe her, even though the cool cloth makes me flinch and shiver harder, and I don’t understand how getting cooler will make me warmer. But I know she loves me, and I trust that she knows things I don’t.
A woman’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Are you in pain?”
I can’t keep my eyes open for more than a second. It’s a nurse. “My hip hurts. Did I just have a baby?”
She gives a soft laugh. “No, ma’am. You had a heart attack, then fell and broke your hip.”
“Oh.” I don’t remember anything about that, but I remember something else, something about another hospital a long time ago.
I’m nine years old, and my mother is in the hospital. I don’t know what’s wrong and children aren’t allowed in patients’ rooms. All I know is that Mama hasn’t been herself lately—she lies down a lot and hasn’t played with me in a while—and Papa’s eyes are sad. Papa’s sister, Aunt Kathy, and her husband, Uncle Floyd, have come to help Papa take care of me and my little sister. They all whisper whenever they talk about Mama.
Everyone but Uncle Floyd. He has a loud voice, and I hear him say exploratory surgery while he’s talking on the telephone. I wander into the hallway where he’s sitting on the gossip bench, but he doesn’t notice me. “The doctors cut her open and took a look,” he says to whoever’s on the other end of the line, “then they just closed her up again.”
A panicky feeling jumps in my stomach, like channel mullet in Lake Pontchartrain. I tug on his jacket. “Are you talking about Mama?”
He looks at me, surprised. Aunt Kathy comes in the hall and whacks him on the shoulder. “I told you not to talk about certain subjects in front of certain little somebodies.”
He holds his hand over the telephone mouthpiece. “I didn’t know she was there!”
“Miss Margaret?” A familiar voice jerks me back to the present. I find myself gazing into a young woman’s concerned hazel eyes. “It’s Quinn.”
“Yes, I know, dear,” I say, although I couldn’t have come up with her name for love or money.
“Are you feeling better?”
“They say I am, but everything’s fuzzy.” My mind feels like a ball of yarn, and thinking is like trying to knit a sweater. Only thing is, I never learned to knit.
“That’s the pain meds,” the nurse says. She looks down at me from the other side of the bed. “You were given an extra-large dose before they took you to X-ray to check your lungs.”
“Are they worried about pneumonia?” Quinn asks.
“That, and congestive heart failure,” the nurse says.
I know about pneumonia—my aunt Kathy died of that. And heart failure . . . well, my father passed of a heart attack. “Am I dying?” I ask.
“No. You’re getting better,” the nurse says.
They won’t tell you truth. The worse off you are, the more likely it is they’ll lie about it. There are matters I need to settle. Now, if I can just remember what they are . . .
I pull my brows together and try to focus. Quinn is Brooke’s friend. Brooke is gone. “You’re caring for Lily,” I say, remembering. “And I found her father, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Has Lily met him?”
“Yes. We went for ice cream and then to the zoo together.”
“Good, good. How did Lily react to meeting him?”
“She—uh, I didn’t tell her he’s her father. She thinks he’s just a friend of mine.”
I frown.
Quinn continues on in a rush. “My friend Sarah is a psychologist—you met Sarah after Brooke died, remember? She was a close friend of Brooke’s, as well. Anyway, I talked to Sarah about this, and she thinks we should wait.”
The memory of seeing all my deceased family members fills my mind. “But she needs to know she has a blood relative. I may not have much time.”
“Oh, don’t say that!” Quinn’s voice is full of distress.
“I’m old, dear.” I pause. I’m trying to remember a conversation I had with a man in a white coat—my doctor. Was it just this morning? I believe it was. A sense of urgency rises inside me. I need to tell her this. “I asked my doctor when I would be well enough to care for Lily, and he said . . .” My throat grows thick, and it’s hard to force the next words out. I make myself do it. “He said I’ll probably never be strong enough for that. He said I should make alter . . . alternate plans.”
Quinn’s eyes are suddenly full of tears. She squeezes my hand. “I love Lily. I’ll care for her as if she were my very own.”
“I know, dear, but things can happen. I know all too well how . . .” The past is a swamp, and I feel like I’m sinking in it. “Lily needs to know her father.”
My thoughts are as muddy as marsh water. I need to be clearheaded to have this talk. I see the nurse writing something on the whiteboard across from my bed. “How long until this medicine wears off?” I call to her.
She turns to me. “The extra dose should clear in three or four more hours, but you’ll be on morphine for the next few days. We need to stay ahead of the pain, because the doctor thinks that’s what made your heart race in the ICU.”
“Oh, fiddle!”
“We’ll talk about everything later.” Quinn’s voice is gentle, and so is her touch on my hand. “I have a meeting scheduled with your doctor to discuss your treatment plan. For now, just rest and get better. Lily is fine.”
My sense of urgency battles with debilitating fatigue. Fatigue is winning. “All right,” I say, “but Lily needs to know.” My eyes are already closing, and I’m sinking into blissful oblivion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jessica
THE WINDOW DISPLAY of the decor shop, Verve!, looks like the exquisite Parisian apartment of someone with beaucoup more style than moi. I admire designs that combine unexpected elements with panache, but it’s not something I could ever pull together myself, so I’m intimidated as I open the door and step off the Magazine Street sidewalk.
The first thing I notice inside the shop is the scent. It’s exotic and earthy, like amber and black cardamom, and it strikes a note of wistfulness in my chest like a haunting piano chord. If I were to give it a name, I’d call it “Longing.” The place smells of beautifu
l things I don’t have, can’t fully understand, and will never be. It’s the kind of place that rattles every insecure bone in my body.
I know that on the outside, I appear to have it all together. I’ve worked hard to curate my image, but inside, it’s a different story. I’ve always wanted to be the best at everything, and, of course, that’s just not possible. I’m constantly judging myself against others. How am I doing? How do I compare? Do I measure up? I’m particularly uncomfortable when I feel like I’m competing in an arena that’s not one of my strengths. Like this.
The shop is unattended, so I walk around. The merchandise is a mix of new, vintage, and antique furnishings. Overhead, light fixtures twinkle—classic crystal chandeliers, Sputnik-shaped pendants, shaded ceiling lamps—and throughout the space, artwork and accessories highlight distinctive furniture groupings. The items are all striking and tasteful and arranged in beautiful vignettes. I appreciate and admire this complicated aesthetic, but I could never personally orchestrate it. Consequently, my decorating style defaults toward modern furnishings that are clearly designed to go together.
I’m practical when it comes to interior decor; why can’t I apply that same approach to other areas of my life, such as wanting to have a child? Probably because of the universal truth that Emily Dickinson so eloquently penned: “The Heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care.”
I cross the room and examine a midcentury lamp. I think it would go well with our living room furnishings, but I’m pretty sure Zack would be upset to learn I’ve been in Quinn’s shop. From the way he avoided my question about when I’ll meet Lily, I’m afraid he doesn’t want me involved in his child’s life—or, by extension, in Quinn’s life, or Miss Margaret’s.
I’m even more afraid of something else: that I’ve irrevocably broken our marriage.
Thinking about it makes me feel as if air is in short supply. I inhale deeply and search my mind for a more optimistic way to look at things. I’m usually able to spin things to a more positive perspective.
