I can’t refuse an offer like that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
RYAN
I drop my duffel bag in the foyer of my house. It’s been a month since I’ve been here. Mail is piled up on the floor. The mailman just kept stuffing envelopes through the mail slot. I pick up the top layer of envelopes and drop them on the counter in the kitchen.
I flip the lights on. Everything is exactly as I left it with the exception of the thin layer of dust coating every surface. I never got around to calling a maid service before I left. I make a mental note to do that soon.
I open the fridge purely out of habit and nearly gag on the smell. I left a half-empty carton of milk on the shelf. Pinching my nose with one hand and picking up the container with the other, I pour it out into the garbage disposal.
I run hot water as the loud grinding of the disposal echoes through the house. Finally, the putrid smell dissipates. I open up a cabinet to grab a water glass and I see a brown glass bottle.
Alcohol.
I pour it down the drain and go on a hunt to find more bottles. There’s even vodka stashed under the sink behind the drain cleaner. I get rid of all of it. Every last drop.
I carry the recycling out to the curb and when I step inside the house again, a flash of white catches the corner of my eye. There’s a piece of paper on the end table in the sitting room.
I pick up the thick, letterpress card and realize that it’s Megan’s.
I’d forgotten about this.
I wander into the kitchen and sit on a bar stool, sipping from my glass of tap water and thumbing the card repeatedly. I pull my phone out of my pocket and type in the phone number.
It sits there on my screen and I stare at it so long my phone goes to sleep and locks itself again. I head upstairs to shower but I still can’t get it out of my mind.
At a quarter till eight that night, I finally hit the call button.
It rings five times and I nearly chicken out and hang up.
“Hello?” Megan’s voice sounds tired. I hear the sound of children yelling in the background. “Knock it off, will you? Mummy’s on the phone! Who is this?”
“It’s…it’s Ryan. Ryan Mackenzie. I was hoping we could maybe talk?”
Megan sighs and speaks louder. It seems the kids have increased the volume of their noise instead of decreasing it. “Sorry, who is this?”
“Ryan! Mackenzie!” I scream into the phone. My voice sounds strange echoing through the walls of my own house. It’s like the walls aren’t used to human presence after my long absence. “Your half brother!”
I hear the clicking of high heels on hardwood and the kids’ voices diminish. A door clicks shut and the sound of the children is a distant memory.
“Ryan. I’m so happy you called. So sorry that my banshee children nearly ruined things just now. How are you doing?”
I clear my throat. “Fine. How…how are you doing?”
“Well enough. I’m a bit tired. You know, working and raising kids isn’t as easy as you might think it is.” Sarcasm laces her voice and I laugh.
“Yeah, I’ve heard it’s nothing but beer and skittles.” I rub my hand over my hair. “You’re married, right?”
“I am. But he’s been out of town a lot. He’s a consultant, so he travels quite a bit.” There’s banging on the door of the room she’s locked herself into. Megan covers up the mouthpiece of the phone. “Would you lot bugger off! Go watch some telly or something!” There’s rustling as she uncovers the phone. “Sorry, they found me.”
“It’s alright. I was actually calling…I wanted to know if maybe you wanted to get some dinner sometime this week?”
Megan pauses. “I would absolutely love to.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief. This is a phone call I’ve put off for far too long.
We agree on a place and a time and I ring off.
As I get ready for an early bedtime that night, I still hear my sister’s children laughing in my memory. The sound isn’t as unpleasant as I would have guessed it to be.
Then a thought occurs to me right before I drift off to sleep.
I’m somebody’s uncle.
CHAPTER THIRTY
HAYLEY
I walk up the brick path to my parents’ front door. I pause with my fist hovering over the red door. I take a deep breath and just as I’m about to knock, my phone rings.
“Saved by the bell,” I breathe quietly. I answer. “Hello?”
“It’s your sister, don’t you look at your caller ID? Or did you erase my number in a fit of rage?”
“Very funny. I answered it before I got a good look at the screen. What’s up, Alison?” I pause but start talking again before she gets a chance to. “Oh no. No no no. Do not do this to me.” I know exactly why she’s calling, and I’m already upset about it.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” Alison protests.
“Don’t I, though? You’re not coming.” I hiss the words into the phone as I step away from the front door. The last thing I need is my dad coming out here to see me yelling at Alison.
“That’s right. There was an emergency at work and I have to go in. I owe you. Big time.”
A mosquito buzzes past my ear and I slap at it and miss. “You’re really going to leave me all alone here tonight?” I look up at the twilight late summer sky and notice the lightning bugs are already out in full force.
“Like I said, I owe you like fifty foot massages and ten pizzas. I’m sorry, Hays. Good luck with dad. I’ve gotta go.”
She hangs up before I get the chance to yell at her any more than I already have. “Gee, thanks. Bye, Alison,” I say sarcastically to a dead line.
Just as I’m hanging up, the door to the house opens behind me.
“Hayley,” my dad says.
I spin around and see his salt-and-pepper mustache and balding head. He’s dressed up for tonight in a dark button down shirt and those awful dad jeans with pleats. He’s wearing a braided leather belt. If Alison were here, she could make fun of him for all of it and he would think it was a wonderful joke.
I don’t think I can get away with fashion critiques with my father, so I keep them to myself.
“Hi, Dad,” I say, walking over to him and giving him a hug. I pull nervously at my t-shirt. I’m not showing quite yet, which is a good thing. I dread the day I have to tell my father I’m pregnant with an illegitimate child.
“It’s good to see you, sweetheart,” he says, returning my stiff hug. “I just heard that your sister isn’t going to make it.”
“Yeah, she just called me, too,” I say quickly, hoping to smooth over any awkwardness between us with more talking. “Dinner smells great!”
That’s a lie. I can’t smell any food out here. But it was the only thing I could think to say.
My Dad furrows his bushy, dark eyebrows and sniffs the air. “You must have a great sense of smell. I can’t smell a damn thing out here.”
“Probably because you’ve been smelling it all day,” I say. “As you’ve been cooking it.”
He laughs. “It’s a frozen pizza, Hayley. I’ve hardly been poring over recipe books all day long.” We stand on the stoop awkwardly. “Shall we go inside?” My dad finally asks.
“Sounds good to me,” I say. He holds the door open for me and I step inside my childhood home. It smells as familiar to me as the shampoo I’ve used my entire life.
The wood-paneled hallway walls are covered floor-to-ceiling in mismatched picture frames. Inside are images of me and Alison from babyhood to braces to college graduation. The blue carpet-covered staircase sits to the left, and to my right is the living room with the squashy, stained, beige sofas that I’ve spent hours lounging on. Usually I would read or play video games there.
Sometimes my dad would join us if we didn’t have friends over. He plays a mean game of Mario Kart.
“Something to drink?” Dad asks me as I put my purse down by the front door.
“Water is fine,�
� I say. I see that he’s set the dining room table for three people. I feel a surge of negativity as I think about his likely disappointment with Alison being gone tonight. He was probably looking forward to seeing her.
My dad pulls the pizza out of the oven and carefully slices it into eighths. “Hope you’re okay with paper plates,” he says, motioning to the table. “I don’t like to dirty up plates when your mother’s gone. Takes too long to fill the dishwasher and I run out of silverware before I run out of china.”
“It’s fine, Dad. Thanks,” I say as he serves up a steaming slice of veggie pizza. He puts the pan back into the warm oven and sits down next to me.
“Should I say grace?” he asks. Alison usually does this for all of us when Mom isn’t home.
“That’s fine,” I reply awkwardly.
He goes through the Lord’s Prayer but I can’t focus on that. I feel like a liar sitting here next to him. He doesn’t know about the baby. He probably doesn’t know about Ryan, either. Even if someone told him about the photo in the press, he would have ignored them. My father does not do any kind of tabloid journalism, even if he’s just hearing about it. He’s well-practiced in shutting off his brain to such noise.
“How’s work?” he asks, slicing up his pizza with a fork and knife.
“Work is great,” I lie. Work is actually hell on earth for me right now.
“Your final London deadline is coming up, isn’t it?”
I drop my fork with a clatter. “Who told you about London?”
My dad looks uncomfortable, like he knows he might have crossed a line and not realized it. “Alison told me you were there on assignment. And Jim told me the story’s being printed in about eight weeks.”
The pizza turns to sand in my mouth. Even hearing the story being mentioned makes me sick to my stomach. “Yeah, it goes to print in twelve weeks, actually.”
My dad has a strained look on his face like he’s trying to tap into a well of emotion that was long ago dried up. “I’m really…I’m proud of you, Hayley. Getting your first byline. I always knew that you’d do really well. You’ve always kept your head down and focused on your career. I admire that a lot.”
My heart flutters a little. Even though I’m an adult, my heart will always long to be acknowledged by my dad. “Thanks, Dad.”
We go back to eating our pizza in slightly more relaxed silence.
Now I have a question I need to ask him, though. “Dad?”
“Yes, Hays?”
I clear my throat. “Did you ever have a story you had to write that you just couldn’t write?”
“You mean like writer’s block?”
I tap my fingers on the worn wooden dining table. “No, I mean like you felt it conflicted with what your goals were in life. You thought maybe it was unethical to be writing it at all.”
My dad frowns and chews his pizza. He swallows and takes a sip out of his diet soda can. I stare at the gold ring on his finger. I don’t think he’s ever taken it off, not even to shower, since he married my mom thirty years ago. “There was a story once. It was my last story, actually. The guy who used to run things before Sandra was promoted. Remember him? You met him at a work picnic a time or two.”
My mind flashes to an old man with a pot belly and a comb over. “Yeah, I remember him,” I say with a grimace.
“Well, at the end he was getting a lot of pressure from the board to make ‘viral’ content, whatever that was. So he passed the message along to the staff. He was clear: write or die. And he handed me a story about an immigrant player’s family. Apparently his dad was a cocaine dealer or something. They wanted me to run a whole piece on it. While I did the research, I realized he and his wife and kids were undocumented.”
My eyes go wide. “Really? What did you do?”
“I kept it to myself and handed the story back with highly edited notes. I said I refused to write sensationalist pieces. And my boss told me I could either meet-“
“The deadline or greet the breadline?” I finish for him. “Yeah, Sandra says that, too.”
My dad sighs and shakes his head at the memory. “I walked out that day. But I already had my pension secured, and we have the house paid off. Not sure what I would have done if I had to feed you and Alison when you were babies. Might have been a different story entirely.” He looks out the front window. There are kids playing outside on their tricycles in the rapidly fading light of the sun. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” I say.
“You just have to follow your instincts, Hayley. It’s what makes you such a wonderful writer. They’ve never steered you wrong before.”
I gape at him. “You…you think I’m a wonderful writer?” I ask, totally shocked.
He nods. “Of course I do. You learned from the best.” He points at himself wearing a serious face. We both bust out laughing a moment later, and the sound carries us through the rest of dinner.
The tension between us has broken. My dad is proud of me and my work. I never knew that before. The rest of the evening is comfortable bliss.
I even let him beat me at Mario Kart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
HAYLEY
I’m neck-deep in writing the rest of my article. I glance at the clock. Less than an hour to polish it up.
I didn’t take my dad’s advice.
I wanted to. I wanted to so badly. But I couldn’t. Even he said he didn’t know what he would have done if he had two kids to support.
I have one kid to support soon enough.
I’m not taking a chance.
My eyes are starting to blur and my fingers are aching as I punch the keys of my mechanical keyboard. The sound is rapid-fire in the quiet, dark office. I’m just about the last person left. Everyone else is at home for Thanksgiving celebrations.
I rub my nearly seven-months-pregnant belly and sigh. I want nothing more than to be in my home with Chinese takeout right now.
“Hayley?”
I jump in surprise behind my keyboard and turn around to see Jim standing there holding his coffee mug.
I groan. “I’m almost done with this, I promise. I know you have to get the layout finalized before midnight.” I check the time. It’s seven past eleven at night. “Five more minutes.”
Jim taps on the mug with his fingers. “Mm,” he says.
I furrow my brow and look at him curiously. “What?” I ask him.
Jim looks around as if trying to make sure we won’t be overheard. “I read the draft.”
“Yeah, and?” I ask him. I don’t have time for this.
“And I think it’s not your best work.”
I groan. “I don’t have time for this, Jim. I can’t possibly rewrite it, and Sandra’s approved it -“
“Sandra isn’t here, is she?”
I’m confused. “What are you trying to say, Jim?”
Jim leans against the wall of my cubicle. “Hayley, your father didn’t go into this business for cheap sales and cheap personal shots at good people. He brought a passion to his work and a gentleness to how he handled the people he wrote about. I think you have that same gift.”
I exhale slowly. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that Sandra isn’t here. I’m saying that I’m your layout guy. I’m saying that you don’t have to publish this story the way it is. You can publish what you wanted to write about instead. And I can feign innocence. I can say that I made a mistake. That I pulled up the wrong draft.”
His words crawl into my head slowly. Then suddenly a cascading gush of possibility enters my head. “You’re saying I can publish the first draft.”
He nods. “It was good. I read it. It’s not sensationalism. It’s straight-forward reporting about a soccer team trying to find its new dynamic. It’s about people accepting who their teammates are. About embracing talents and gifts. It’s a good piece. You should publish that instead.”
I glance at the clock. “How long do I have to clean it up and get it to you?
”
Jim smiles. “I can get it formatted in five minutes. I need five more to get the file sent to the printer. So you have until ten till midnight. Will that work?”
“What are you still standing here for? I need to write!”
Jim smiles. “That’s the girl I know and love.”
I spin around in my chair and hastily pull up the old word processor file. The piece is rough and I have to add another thousand words to it to meet print length. I have forty minutes to do this.
I know that I can.
If I have any chance at getting Ryan back, I have to pull this off.
For me. For him. For us.
For our baby.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HAYLEY
I call in sick to work the next day so I can make this trip into a long weekend. Alison lends me a thousand dollars and I use it to buy a plane ticket. I’ll pay her back someday; I can’t eat into my savings right now, though. I need that money for Monday morning when Sandra undoubtedly fires me on the spot.
At La Guardia airport, the terminals are packed for Thanksgiving weekend. Paper cutouts of turkeys and cornucopias are taped to the walls, and the flight attendants and airline staff are all wearing Pilgrim hats.
I run into the bathroom to pee for the fifth time today.
Pregnancy is no joke when it comes to the bladder.
I’m jogging to catch my flight when I fly by a newsstand.
I see my story headline on the front cover next to a close-up of Ryan’s face. We couldn’t change the cover image without Sandra getting immediately suspicious. We had to keep it the same.
I look at his face and appreciate that this is why Sandra chose him as a subject. If the image of his rugged, five o’clock shadow face and sparkling green eyes doesn’t sell magazines, nothing will. I feel a little flutter of anticipation as I stare at it.
“Final boarding call for flight ten ninety-seven to Heathrow. Paging Hayley Childs to gate forty-two B. Gate forty-two B. Paging Hayley Childs.”
I grab the magazine with Ryan’s face on it and throw a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Sorry! Gotta run!” I say to the alarmed shopkeeper.
Dirty Baller: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 11
