by Stuart, Amie
Nobody wanted more wine.
I slowly shook my head, as if I understood her troubles, but we both knew better. Next I grimaced and shrugged for good show, and then went all in, “It must be really difficult since you ran off and left your daughter…and your husband.”
“Rene,” Aunt Delaney shrieked.
“Holy Jesus,” Aunt Jessa spoke up from my left side.
I cannot tell a lie. I stood there smiling, practically shaking with glee. Toni looked like she wanted to puke, and Kellie, who’d turned from her spot on the floor, stared up at me with her mouth hanging open and big fat tears welling up in her eyes.
“Is that true?” Kellie asked, turning back to Toni.
“Is he your husband?” I asked. “Or just your baby daddy?”
In my peripheral vision I saw Aunt Betti struggling to her feet. “Rene, shut up!”
“What the hell?” This from Aunt Jessa again, along with a string of muttered curse words that would’ve had Uncle Zack shoving the swear jar at her.
I tuned out the movement behind me, the slam of the French doors, Aunt Susie’s red-faced anger, Gram’s confused frown, Aunt Jessa’s swearing, Kellie’s now tear-stained, snot-covered face, and focused on Toni, who looked like I’d kicked her in the stomach. Too bad. I wasn’t done. “How does that feel?” I stepped a little closer, and Kellie scooted out of my way. “Does that feel good? Just running off and leaving your kid while you go do what-the-fuck-ever you want? Did you enjoy yourself? Did you have fun? While your kid grew up with no mom. You stupid bitch!”
“Rene, go to your room.” Gram grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward the stairs.
“You had a kid?” Kellie finally choked out.
“She had a kid,” I echoed.
“Rene!” A red-faced Aunt Betti now stood where I’d been standing just a moment ago, her arms raised as she pointed toward the stairs.
“You had a kid,” Kellie said again. By now she was on her feet, too.
Aunt Susie hadn’t moved. She just stood there with her jaw hanging open shaking her head. I was strong enough to slow my Gram down, so we hadn’t reached the stairs yet, but I didn’t want to hurt her. Delaney was gone. Which meant she’d probably gone to get my dad. Good! He needed to know about this.
“I gave her away!” Toni stood and reached for Kellie, still stammering, “I gave her away…I gave her away to a nice—”
“That’s a lie,” I yelled. Gram shook my arm and hissed at me to be quiet, but we were way past that. Somewhere on the middle of this-is-so-fucked-up-landia. “You’re a liar! And I can fucking prove it!” With one hard jerk, I was free of my Gram, and crossed to stand at the end of the couch.
“Rene, for the love of God.” Aunt Jessa shook her head. The expression on her face could only be called you’re so lucky you’re not my kid, because I’d beat the crap out of you if you were.
“This is important, Aunt Jessa.”
“Yeah, no shit,” she shot back.
She opened her mouth to speak again, but I beat her to the punch. “Nichole.” Hands on my hips, I said, “Her name is Nichole.” Then I turned to Toni. “Isn’t that right?”
She nodded shakily, tears running down her face.
“See!” I waved a hand in Gram’s direction. I knew she was mad at me, but trust me, I was madder. “I told you. I told you she had a kid. Her name is Nichole, she lives in New Orleans with her dad, I guess, and she’s a Saints fan.” While I spoke I laid eyes on every person in that living room. “Oh yeah, and she looks just like you,” I said turning back to Toni. “Like, dead ringer.”
Toni crumpled on the couch, fists in front of her face while she cried like a big fat fucking baby.
Now I was done.
I WANTED TO die. All I could hear as Rene ran upstairs were her words echoing in my head: Nichole lived in New Orleans with some man…and she looks just like me.
I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. I wanted to pack my bags, run to Louisiana, and snatch my baby back. I wanted to hug her and never again let her out of my sight. I wanted to run upstairs and demand to know what else Rene knew. I wanted to see these pictures of my baby girl and that man. Was it her father? I doubted it. I didn’t see my stepmother, for all her awful ways, giving Nichole to my rapist. Teenage boys from affluent families didn’t become single fathers. Which begged the question, what happened to Nichole? What had my family done with her? What had happened to my baby? Who in God’s name had they given her to? And who was the man in the photos?
Last but most certainly not least, how had Rene even found out about Nichole? Tim had promised me he wouldn’t tell a soul, and he was the only one who knew. I knew only one thing. I knew it in my guts, in my bones, in my soul: Tim hadn’t told. Which still left the question of how unanswered.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
Susie pushed glass of wine into my hand then and disappeared only to return a minute later with a handful of the pretty purple napkins that Betti had brought over. She handed half to Kellie and half to me. Mine were soaked the minute they hit my face.
The very pregnant Jessa stood up and said, “I need wine. Don’t judge me, because if my doctor was here, she’d tell me to have some damn wine and calm down.” She kept talking as she disappeared into the kitchen, “because I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I do know that four or five ounces of wine won’t kill me. However, they might just save Rene’s damn life. Ho-lee shit.”
“I don’t even know what to say right now,” Betti said from across the room. She shook her head, her eyebrows drawn together and face pinched.
That was fine by me, because I was at a complete loss for words; I didn’t even know where to begin. All I could do was try to catch my tears as they fell. “I should explain,” I said, even though I felt at a complete loss.
Just then Delaney stepped through the French doors with Tim hot on her heels. If anything, I felt even more embarrassed as he dragged me to my feet and wrapped his arms around me.
“So that’s why you were so nice to me,” Kellie said when she finally calmed down enough to speak.
“No, no, no, no—” I shook my head for emphasis, “—absolutely not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The disbelief in her eyes crushed my soul. I didn’t blame her. Right now I didn’t even believe me. “I didn’t know you were adopted when I met you.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons for whatever you did,” Tim’s mother said.
If anything, that made me feel worse. Of course I’d had my reasons. I just couldn’t figure out quite how to voice them.
“What can I do?” Tim murmured. “Tell me what you need.”
I sniffed and patted at my face a little bit more with the soggy napkins.
“Is all of this true?” Susie asked.
My eyes on the pocket of Tim’s T-shirt, I pressed my lips together and nodded. I couldn’t say the words.
“Then Tim, I think you need to start with Rene. Find out what she knows,” Susie said with a nod.
I nodded in agreement and added, “please.” I needed to know whatever she knew, but I couldn’t look at her right now.
“Are you sure?” Tim asked.
“Yes,” I choked out, pushing him away with a nod. “Find out if it’s—” Nichole.
“We’ll take good care of her,” Delaney said.
With a nod and one last squeeze, he released me and headed for the stairs to deal with his daughter.
“I’m sorry,” Delaney said, stepping closer. “I think this is partly my fault. I told Rene she needed to get to know you better, but I didn’t know she’d do something so stupid and awful.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tim’s mom said.
“That’s why you asked me about being adopted,” Kellie said.
“They forced me to sign the paperwork.” My mouth was dry so talking was almost painful, but the cup in my hand was now empty. I cleared my throat and tried again, “I was raped, I got pregnant, I was
sent to a place for girls…like me—”
“Unwed mothers,” Kellie added for me. Her face was pinched and so pale her freckles stood out.
“I didn’t even know they still had places like that,” Susie said.
“It was run by nuns.” I scowled at the floor. “I suppose, for the right price, the church will cover up anything, because I wasn’t the only girl there.
“A few days after Nichole was born,” I continued, “my father and stepmother came to my room with one of the nuns. They forced me to sign some paperwork. My father said he’d be back for me in a few days. Except he never came back.” Finally, I looked at Kellie, hoping she, of all people, would understand. “So I ran away. I didn’t know what else to do.” Unable to hold back another round of tears, I just stood there and let them fall while I waited for these women, these strangers, to judge me. Other than Kellie, I couldn’t even look at them.
“Jesus Christ,” Jessa said softly. “I think I’m going to need more wine.” She took my empty cup and disappeared into the kitchen.
“How old were you?” Maggie asked.
“Fifteen,” I said. “Sixteen, when she was born.”
Her sigh seemed to echo around the room, as Jessa returned and pressed a half-full cup into my hand. From upstairs came the sound of yelling. Yet another thing I was responsible for. I took a large sip, letting the alcohol burn its way down my throat as some sort of penance.
“My Lord, you were just a baby,” Betti finally spoke up from behind me.
“I was on my way to Louisiana when I broke down here. I kept writing the state but said they couldn’t find any record of Nichole’s adoption. And then after I talked to Kellie—” I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and forced myself to keep talking even though my voice shook, “—I got so scared.”
“That she’d ended up in a family like mine?” Kellie said, finishing for me.
“The more you talked, the more scared I got.”
“I’m sorry.” Kellie pushed herself from the floor to the couch.
“It’s not your fault. You have nothing to be sorry for. I should have been honest with you…but I was afraid you’d hate me. And then when I left—” I shook my head just as another wave of tears hit me, “—after Tim asked me to move in with him, when I left, I couldn’t even bring myself to cross the state line.” I was a coward.
“That’s a lot of baggage to carry,” Betti said. “I’m not sure I could’ve gone back either.”
Delaney, Susie, and Maggie agreed with her, while Jessa just shook her head.
“I’m sorry to be the voice of dissent, and I realize that this is just my opinion, but you can’t move forward if you don’t handle your shit.” She grimaced and shrugged as though she were a little embarrassed. I’m not sure what she had to be embarrassed about. “Trust me. I speak from experience.”
“And from the sound of it,” Susie said, glancing ceiling ward, “you can’t move forward until you know whatever it is that Rene knows.”
IT TOOK EVERYTHING Tim had to not charge up the stairs and kick in his daughter’s bedroom door. Just rip it off its hinges and take a belt to her. What the hell had she been thinking? What the hell had she done? How? How had she even found Toni’s daughter?
Why?
That question was easiest answer. She’d publicly humiliated Toni to try and get rid of her. That was the thought that echoed through Tim’s skull as he stood outside his daughter’s bedroom door clenching and unclenching his hands and forcing himself to breathe.
He had never, not in thirteen years, used a belt on her. A swat with his hand when she was little, but that was it. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d spanked her. He also couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this mad.
Breathe!
He grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Rene lay stretched out on the bed, her mouth pursed and her jaw set as she stared up at the ceiling. He watched her, his chest rising and falling with deliberate slowness. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he finally ground out hoarsely, a part of him surprised that he could even form a damn sentence.
She rolled her eyes but stayed silent as he circled the bed. He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from snatching her up and shaking her.
“Well? I want an answer, Rene, and I want it now.”
Finally, she said, “Aunt Delaney said that I should get to know your girlfriend, so I did.”
“What the fuck did you do? Exactly.” He took a seat in Rene’s green paisley chair. “And don’t leave out any details.”
Tim listened, increasingly horrified as Rene talked about going through Toni’s things and then getting on the Internet to find out stuff about Toni and Nichole.
“When I couldn’t find anything on Toni, I started looking for her kid.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “How was I supposed to know she’d run off and left her husband or whatever?”
He pulled her upright into a sitting position, leaned down until they were almost nose to nose, and then yelled, “What the hell made you think that was okay?” He released her and stood upright so that he was looming over her and still yelling. “What made you think any of that was okay? You had no right to go through Toni’s things. You had no right to talk about what you found on that fucking Internet. Jesus fucking Christ, Rene do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He yelled so loudly his voice cracked and broke; the walls practically shook from the force of it. “Why do you hate her so fucking much that you had to publicly humiliate her in front of her friend, your Gram, and your aunts?”
Rene glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Because she’s just like my mom.”
Tim shook his head and fell back into the chair again, scrubbing at his face and frustration. “She’s nothing like your mother, Rene. Nothing!”
“How would you know?” She sneered at him, her head bobbing a bit as she spoke. “You’re all pussy whipped.”
“Do you even know how badly I want to take a belt your ass right now?” he said, looking up at her.
“Yes, sir.”
If anything, that fact she knew and understood the depth and breadth of his anger only made him angrier.
“But I stand by what I did what I said. She ran off and left her kid just like mom.”
In that moment his heart broke, just shattered like it had done the day Charlene had left him. Fists clenched at his sides, Tim forced himself to keep breathing while from downstairs came the sound of Toni’s crying. While his daughter stared at him and waited for him to pass judgment and mete out her punishment. Except he couldn’t. Not because she didn’t deserve to be punished. But because, just like that, all his anger was gone. Yes, he was still mad at Rene for publicly humiliating Toni, but not the rest of it. “First, I love you. You’re my daughter and I will always love you. But I also love Toni, and you are just going to have to come to terms with that, sweetheart. Will she be your stepmom one day? I don’t know.” He shook his head. If they ever did get married, it’d be a while. In part because Toni just had so much baggage to unpack, and if he was honest, he and Rene obviously had plenty of their own baggage to deal with as well. “But she’s not leaving. At least, not today, and not because of your stupid-ass stunt.
“Now, here’s what you don’t know,” he said before he filled her in on some of the ugly gory details surrounding Toni’s daughter’s birth. He spared Rene nothing. He wanted to hurt her, give her just a taste of her own medicine, but he also wanted her to understand the enormity of what she’d done. If nothing else, she needed to understand that her actions had and would have very serious and far-reaching consequences. By the time he finally finished talking, she looked as bad as he felt. “Where’s your laptop?”
“Why?” She was white as the walls of her room, except for her very red cheeks. She frowned, obviously concerned about his plans for her and her computer.
He hadn’t decided on her punishment yet and frankly, didn’t even know where to begi
n.
“Because I need you to show me the girl you found. And I need you to show her to me now.” He watched in fascination as Rene opened her laptop and proceeded to show him the girl’s Facebook page. It was cluttered with sparkly graphics, silly jokes, and pictures of her and her friends, and yes, a blonde-haired man who appeared to be her father. At least, judging from the number of photos. But he didn’t want to speculate. Not yet. “Is that all?”
“No,” she said solemnly, then added, “did Toni really not know what happened to her daughter?”
Good! She felt bad. A bonus side-effect of her sharing all this evidence with him. Could he say with absolute certainty that this Nichole was Toni’s long-lost baby girl? No, mostly because it wasn’t his place to say, but if he were a betting man, he’d bet large. The hair, the eyes—especially the eyes—the tall, willowy build were all the same. Toni didn’t smile enough for him to say if their smiles were the same; a thought that punched him in the chest. He’d give anything to see her smile and laugh like the girl the photos. “Toni really didn’t know what happened to her daughter.”
“Shit,” she said softly. Rene opened a second browser, typed something, and sat back as a different page full of photos loaded.
“Don’t say anything else. Because I don’t want to hear it.” He took the laptop from her and scrolled up and down the page.
“You can click to make them bigger,” Rene said.
He did, clicking back and forth multiple times as he took in even more photos of Nichole alone and with her friends, with the man from her Facebook page, with an older gentleman, and sketches. Lots and lots of sketches, mixed with some watercolors and photographs that Nichole had probably taken, judging by the notes that accompanied each post. He unplugged the laptop cord and stood, turning to his daughter. “Don’t you dare leave this room.”
DOWNSTAIRS, TONI SAT on the couch with Kellie on one side and his mom on the other. Good, at least she seemed to have calmed down some.
