by Wendy Wax
“Friends tell the truth even when it’s painful,” Mackenzie said.
Serena nodded but stayed mercifully out of the conversation.
“I couldn’t do it. I was so afraid of losing your friendship that I . . .” Emma swallowed. “I was sitting here working up the nerve to tell you tomorrow. It’s why I invited you both here. I never told Serena, either. I was going to confess that Zoe was Adam’s daughter. Then once you’d had a chance to absorb it and hopefully come to terms with how it happened, I was going to change my will and all the paperwork so that Zoe would be yours, Mackenzie. And Adam’s, too.”
“And you were planning to let me know this at some point, too, right?” Adam asked curtly.
“Of course. I just wanted the chance to apologize and explain to Mackenzie first.”
“And what about me?”
Emma’s knees trembled at the sound of Zoe’s voice. The blood began to whoosh through her veins at the sight of Zoe stepping out from behind Serena and Adam. Her heart began to pound as Zoe came forward pausing only briefly beside Adam, where Emma was forced to look at both of their angry faces, their expressions far too similar to ever deny again.
“When exactly were you planning to explain all of this to me?” Zoe cried. “On my twenty-first birthday? Right before I walked down the aisle and we had to decide who would escort me? Or never?”
“Zoe, honey!” Emma stepped forward, but Zoe had already turned and begun striding out of the bedroom. She sprinted across the upstairs hall. Before Emma could get close enough to stop her, she’d stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. The last sound Emma registered was the lock clicking into place.
Thirty-eight
Unable to lie in bed staring blindly at the ceiling a moment longer, Mackenzie paced the confines of her bedroom as the hurt and anger rose like a tide within her. She clung to the anger as best she could, a life raft bobbing on a sea of hurt that threatened to pull her under. She held on to their betrayal, replaying Emma’s big lie that made a mockery not only of Mackenzie’s marriage, but of the friendship that had meant so much to her. She nursed her fury at Serena, who should have kept her damned suspicions to herself and her big Georgia Goodbody mouth shut.
Adam’s daughter was in the next room. The child whose very existence had fueled her envy of Emma, the girl she’d come to love and sworn to protect was not her godchild but her husband’s daughter. Adam and Emma’s daughter. She had no idea who she was angriest with, whose actions had hurt the most. As if it were some awful contest in which there could only be one winner. Adam had slept with Emma.
She turned and paced to the opposite wall then back to the window. What would have happened if Emma had said something all those years ago? What would Adam have done if he’d discovered he’d impregnated two women, best friends at that? Now there was a screenplay with Oscar potential.
Thoughts pierced her at every step, sharp as arrows dipped in poison. Would this have hurt less if she and Adam had had a child? Would the betrayal have seemed smaller? She couldn’t imagine it would have softened the blow. Because despite the technicality of their breakup, Emma should never have slept with him. Hysterical laughter bubbled at how quickly her subconscious had gone to work trying to pin this whole thing on Emma. Because how else could she forgive Adam, who had not banged on the door to beg forgiveness or to offer comfort?
Hot tears scalded her cheeks, the struggle to banish them useless as wishes. Her insides were wrung so tight she could barely breathe even after all these hours.
A lifetime later, Mackenzie stood at her bedroom window, staring nearly unseeing as the sun began its climb over Pilot Knob, when a knock sounded on the door.
“Open up, Mac.” Adam’s voice reached her through the solid wood. “It’s me.”
Tired of this room and her own garbled thoughts, she opened the door. His clothes were rumpled, his hair disheveled. One cheek carried the imprint of the family room sofa’s tweed fabric. The fact that he had obviously slept while she’d spent the night aflame in hurt and anger stoked those flames higher.
She stepped back to let him enter, but could no more have touched him than she would have touched a coiled rattler. Nor could she stop her mind from forming images of him and Emma locked in an embrace. Emma. Who had never been a head taller than everyone in her class, who’d never been forced to design her own clothes to camouflage a too-tall, too-boardlike body. Had Adam preferred her? Would he have ended up with Emma if Mackenzie hadn’t been pregnant?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it sounds so . . . insufficient. And it’s such a cliché. But I never meant to hurt you.” He ran a hand through his hair, sending it in even more directions. She’d never seen him this unkempt or at such a loss for words. His face seemed altered and it wasn’t just because she was seeing it through the blur of tears and haze of anger.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you slept with my best friend. Isn’t that the biggest cliché of all?”
“Yeah.” Adam sank down on the bed, dropped his head in his hands. “I am sorry, Mac. I wish to hell it had never happened. But she should have told me.” He turned weary eyes to hers. “I’ve never felt the way you do about children; I barely know Zoe. I’ve spent more time with her this week than I have her whole life.” His voice broke. “I would never have turned my back on my own flesh and blood.”
Flesh and blood. His flesh and blood. The words hit her anew. Zoe was Adam’s flesh and blood, she carried his DNA, not hers. Not theirs. She could try all she wanted not to picture him with Emma, but trying to block the image didn’t make the truth any less true. She thought about Emma’s words, her explanation for her actions. No matter how you looked at it, having sex and making a baby took two participants.
“She had no right to keep this from me,” Adam said. “How do you think I feel?”
He reached for her hand, but she didn’t reach back. Anger thrummed through her veins.
“I don’t actually give a shit how you feel right now,” Mackenzie said. “For the first time in my life, I don’t give a good Goddamn how you feel.”
He stiffened. His eyes clouded with emotions she had no desire to identify. “We’re going to have to talk about this, Mac. We’re going to have to figure this out.”
Questions swirled in her mind, but she was far too raw and too tired to discuss them with anyone, let alone come up with answers. “Not now we’re not,” she said. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“I think we should head back to the city,” Adam said. “To get some distance and a little perspective.”
“We?” She had to hold her hands tight to her sides not to reach out and slap him. “What makes you think there’s still a ‘we’? I’ll decide if we’re a ‘we’ or not!”
“Got it.” Adam stood and started stuffing things into his bag. In five minutes he was packed. “Are you coming or staying?”
She didn’t want to go anywhere with him. But she didn’t want to stay here even more. “Get out. I’ll come down when I’m ready.”
Mackenzie packed then showered and dressed trying to imagine what on earth would come next. She walked past Emma’s open door, which she ignored, slid a note under Zoe’s, which was closed. There’d been no sign of Serena, for which she was grateful.
Adam carried their bags out to the rental car while Nadia hugged her good-bye. “Maybe you stay. Work things better,” the nurse said, her eyes downcast.
“Not right now.” There was no room on her life raft for the oversized emotions that swamped her. Desperate to stay afloat, she attempted to throw those feelings overboard along with her vows to hold tight to her friendship with Emma and Serena and to be there for Zoe.
As she walked out the door and across the front porch, she knew only that if she stayed a moment longer, she, her life raft, and her marriage could break apart on the rocks of reality and go under.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Serena said, taking the stairs two at a time and walking through Emma’s open bedroom door without pausing to knock. She found Emma staring out the window, her back illuminated against a sky in the process of turning from sunny to cloudy as if intent on matching their moods.
Emma turned, her face as tear streaked and angry as Serena’s had been when she’d spied it in the mirror that morning. “I was planning to tell everyone today,” Emma said. “I can’t imagine why you felt the need to hurl all those accusations around.”
“And you’ve convinced yourself that that would have gone better somehow? That you would have sat everyone down and explained everything and no one would have been upset with you?”
She watched Emma closely. “I mean, you could have called the cancer card. And maybe the coma one, too. But I don’t think anybody was going to give you a pass on this one, Em. Because you had no right to keep this secret and you know it.”
Emma didn’t respond or even move. It didn’t matter. Serena had spent the entire night stewing at the injustice of it all, and she didn’t plan to leave until she’d had her say.
“I wish to hell you had made the announcement. Because then everybody wouldn’t be pissed off at me. I’m just the shmuck who noticed the resemblance,” Serena said. “I didn’t actually do anything to you, Mackenzie, Zoe, or Adam.”
Emma just stood there and listened. Serena couldn’t have stopped herself if she’d wanted to.
“Despite my dating track record, I’m not actually the one who slept with one of my best friend’s boyfriends then kept it, and my pregnancy by him, a secret for seventeen years.” She paused, allowing this to sink in. “Come to think of it, I’m not the one who invited my friend, whose husband fathered my child, to be my child’s fairy godmother, either. Even though she’d lost her own child and I knew it must be killing her every time she played with mine.”
It was a direct hit, one that drew tears. Still Emma didn’t speak or attempt to defend herself.
“How could you call me a best friend and never share something this important? Who knows? Maybe I could have helped. At the very least, I wouldn’t have tipped your hand if I’d known there was a hand to tip.” She shoved away the impossibility of the choice Emma had been forced to make. She did not want to put herself in Emma’s shoes, did not want to think about what would have happened if Emma had told Adam she was pregnant and he’d married Emma instead of Mackenzie. “When you pushed Mackenzie away so she wouldn’t discover your secret, you pushed me away, too. You were my best friends and you just shoved me right out of both of your lives.”
Serena drew a deep and somewhat shaky breath. She’d spent much of her adult life on her own, but she’d never felt quite so alone as she had when she’d lost Emma and Mackenzie. “Then you named me Zoe’s guardian as, what, a smokescreen? So Adam and Mackenzie would never know?” She took another step into the room. Emma’s eyes followed her. “Did you ever stop and think for even one second what all of this might do to us?”
“Of course I did,” Emma said. “I thought about it all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
“Sometimes there’s no good way to tell a thing. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have an obligation to tell it.” Serena shook her head. “From what I can see, you’re lucky Zoe doesn’t have a Gran to swoop in and take her away from you.”
“That’s enough,” Emma said, but her voice carried no weight.
“You can try and tell yourself this is my fault for spilling the secret a few hours ahead of time all you want. But if you’re lucky enough to get your daughter to listen to you, I wouldn’t waste any time trying to justify anything. I’d use it to apologize. Because you owe everybody, especially your daughter, a big-ass apology. And then you better pray like hell that she’s willing to accept it.”
Emma watched Serena turn and stalk out of the room. From her spot at the window she watched her climb into the passenger seat of the Jeep. As Nadia backed the vehicle down the drive Serena’s words echoed in Emma’s head, ugly and harsh. And worst of all, true.
Her heart felt tight, as she forced herself to examine her actions and motives. First she’d told herself she was keeping silent about Adam’s paternity to protect Mackenzie and then Zoe. But what if she’d only been protecting herself? Making sure she and her reputation weren’t open for attack? Trying not to lose a friendship she’d given up the right to? And what about her daughter’s rights? At what point should she have told Zoe the truth?
She crossed the hall and knocked on Zoe’s door.
“Zoe?” She swallowed. “Zoe, honey. Please open the door. I need to talk to you. I . . . I want to explain.”
There was no answer. Emma knocked again.
Only Zoe wouldn’t open the door or even respond.
Emma sank down the wall next to Zoe’s door and pulled her knees up to her chest. With her chin tucked against them she gave in and cried.
She was still crying in her room that night as she fell into what could only be called a troubled sleep in which she was chasing after something elusive just out of reach, ahead in the fog.
You know how I feel about Gone with the Wind references, darling. I wish you’d stick with those fish dreams. They’re so much more interesting and nowhere near so melodramatic.
Gran. Thank God. Where have you been?
I’ve been hoping you’d buck up and take care of things. It’s not like you to be such a wuss.
Even in her dream, Emma flinched.
I used to give you twenty-four hours to get over things and not a minute more. You can’t give Zoe too long to stew. That won’t do either of you any good.
But it’s so much worse than I was expecting. Zoe won’t speak to me. Serena and Mackenzie have fled. And Adam . . . honestly he was the last person I ever considered in this. Because I knew he never wanted to be a father. I don’t know what I was thinking.
There, there. Her grandmother’s voice gentled. There are no easy answers. You’ve been outed, which was your ultimate goal. Now you have to do whatever it takes to reassure Zoe—all she really wants is to know that you love her and will be there for her.
And the others?
That’s a little dicier. But groveling coupled with a well-thought-out grand gesture can sometimes be effective.
Emma was gifted with a flash of her grandmother’s smile.
That’s what your grandfather was doing when I got pregnant with your father.
Emma woke hours later to a ringing telephone. When she finally answered, it was her father. In her half-dream state she imagined he’d been summoned by her grandmother’s revelation of the circumstances that had led to his conception.
“Hello, kitten. How are you?” Hearing his pet name for her launched a fresh flood of tears. She sat up in bed. “Daddy.” The word slipped out. Rex Michaels was vain and too self absorbed for fatherhood, but as a child Emma had loved him madly and wanted nothing more than to please him. He’d had much of his mother’s joie de vivre with none of the sense of responsibility, but his neglect had been more benign than Eve’s. She commanded the tears to stop. “Where are you calling from?”
“I’m in Cannes. We just arrived yesterday morning.”
“We?” Emma swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Yes, Gerald and I have taken a house here for the rest of the summer.”
“Oh, rig
ht.” Emma walked to the window seat and settled into a corner of it so that she could see out over the cove. Shafts of midday sun peered from behind the clouds as if struggling to come back out.
“I know I’m a little late given the flight and the time difference, but I wondered if I might wish Zoe a happy birthday. And congratulate you on producing such a marvelous child. She was quite fierce and protective of you when you were in the hospital, you know. She’s very like you.”
“I’m afraid she’s not here right now,” Emma lied. “But I’ll be glad to tell her you called when I, um, see her.”
“That would be nice, darling. I’ll find something suitable here and send it to her when I have the chance.”
“As long as it’s not a part in a film like Eve offered,” Emma replied.
“The Scorsese thing?” Rex’s voice was tinged with amusement.
“Yes,” she replied. “And there’s nothing funny about it. Zoe is not doing a feature film anytime soon and especially not with Eve. She called in the paparazzi personally at the birthday lunch she set up at Le Cirque to announce it. It was a complete ambush.”
Rex sighed. “Yes, well. You know Eve. She’s always been a master strategist and not one to admit defeat. Far more cunning than me, as I discovered the first time she stopped letting me win at chess shortly after we were married.” There was an oddly fond chuckle at the memory.
“I guess a leopard never changes its spots,” Emma said.
“No, but in this case I believe she’s attempting to cover them up.” Rex hesitated briefly before continuing. “I’ve finally left her, you see. We’re getting divorced. After all these years your old father is officially coming out of the closet.”
