by Jess Bentley
She follows me back to the office, where I invite her in before I close the door behind us.
In private, there’s no point in either of us wearing masks. “What do you want?” I ask.
“I want Red Hall to be successful,” Gloria says innocently. “We all rise and fall together, right? As a team.”
“Gloria, I don’t have the patience for games right now.”
“Is it the hormones?” she asks, grimacing with mock sympathy. “I hear they can, you know… woo!” She twirls a finger around her temple and rolls her eyes. “Screw you right up.”
“What do you want from me to ensure you stay quiet about this?” I ask, mustering every grain of humility I’ve managed to collect over the years. It isn’t much.
Gloria, though, sighs and leans on the desk, looking thoughtful. You’d think I asked her what she wanted for Christmas—which, I suppose, I basically did.
“I want,” she says, slowly, deliberately, “more money, less responsibility. Some easy job where I can relax and look pretty.”
“That’s what you do now, Gloria,” I sneer.
That’s a mistake, and she narrows her eyes at me. “Double my pay. I never touch another rag or broom again, and I get to hire two hostesses to work under me. Don’t worry, I’ll still work—I’ll mingle with guests, take feedback, talk up whatever we’ve got going on. But I want more of a role here. And I want to be the go-to person for the bloggers and critics when they come in.”
She has no idea how close she is to losing a finger, sticking it in my cage like this. It takes everything I have not to fly off the handle right now. “I can’t afford two more hostesses if I’m paying you double,” I tell her.
Gloria’s eyes light up a little bit. We’re no longer arguing, we’re negotiating. She’s quiet for a long moment, and then shrugs. “All right. But I want to be our public face. I’d make a good figurehead for Red Hall, don’t you think?”
“It’s more stressful than you realize,” I tell her. “Are you sure you want that?”
“Um, please,” Gloria laughs. “Can I look good for cameras and smile and tell people we’re so pleased they’re here? Yes, Janie, I can do that. I’m not an idiot, you know. I’m just an opportunist.”
I know exactly what she is and I desperately want to tell her that. “Fine,” I say instead.
“Great! Believe me, Janie, this place is going to take off like a rocket with me leading the charge.” She walks around me, to the door, dismissing herself instead of waiting for me to let her go. The dynamic between us is forever altered.
At the door, she turns, smug in her victory over me. “I’ll give you a week to handle the press release between your mommy appointments. I’ll email you a head shot.”
“Oh, yes,” I tell her. “I definitely need a head shot for you.”
Gloria only winks at me. She doesn’t get the joke.
The final taste-teaser manages, somehow, to go off without a hitch and gain us even more praise in the local food blogs and columns. All night, Gloria flashes me smug looks while she flounces around the lounge, laughing and getting on with guests so loudly that I can hear her constantly. I know that she knows it, and that’s why she’s doing it.
Chester raises an eyebrow at me from the bar, again and again, his usual signal that I should rein her in, and he gets more and more exasperated as the evening wears on. He’s got to be wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
Maybe if I told him everything, he could help me come up with some kind of solution that doesn’t involve handing my pride over to Gloria on a silver platter. But that would be one more person who knows my secret and even though I trust Chester… the more people that know, the closer I am to that critical mass point when this thing explodes across the town.
It gets so much worse when the guests leave, and we’re ready to close down for the night. Chester starts delegating closing duties, which is his job, and which I trust him to do well. He gets around to Gloria, though, and she just smiles at him, and then at me.
Chester looks like he might break a bottle over her head. I would claim she fell, if he did.
But since he doesn’t, I swallow my pride and step in on her behalf. “It’s okay, Chester. Gloria, if you would… just reach out to a few of the bloggers from tonight and make sure they have all the right information, I’d really appreciate it.” It’s all I can say before I literally feel the bile rise in my throat and I’m fairly certain it has nothing to do with being pregnant.
Gloria flashes us both a smile. “Sure thing, Janie. I’ll do it from home. I have all their contact information.”
She waves at both of us, and then gathers her little clutch to leave.
The moment she’s gone, Chester is on me. “What the total fuck, Janie? Did she kidnap your mother? Is she holding her ransom? Is the stress finally getting to you?” He peers at me with concern, and waves his hands. “How many fingers am I holding up? You know what year it is? You remember Gloria? The social-climbing bitch we hate but have to work with because of reasons?”
I want to spill it all so that it makes sense. More than anything in the world, because I could use a hug right now and Chester would give me that.
Instead, though, I lie. “She… handled a press release for me last week and did a good job. I don’t like her, but she has a talent and I’m going to use it. So. That’s all.”
He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t say so. Instead he gives me a short nod and then turns away to deal with the extra work that he and the rest of the staff now have to deal with.
As if it’s bad enough keeping the secret from Jake, now I’m going to keep it from the only man in my life I actually consider a friend.
Great. Just great.
Sleep doesn’t come easy tonight. In fact, it doesn’t come at all. I call Sahara, thinking that she’ll be the ear I need, but before I can blurt out that I’m pregnant she apologizes because it’s summer finals and she is up to her tits with work and study.
“But I’ll call you after this is all done, okay?” she says, sympathetic but rushed. “I promise.”
“No problem,” I tell her, even though I want to beg her to stay up with me and listen to my bitching and moaning.
“I love you, though, okay?” she says, insistently. Something in my voice, I’m sure. Like the echo of my secret.
“Love you too. Kill those exams. I need you to come down here so we can be rich bitches together, okay?”
She laughs, and after a few more goodbyes she hangs up first.
I have a number I can call. One that I rarely use because every conversation is fraught with potential pitfalls and some of them neither of us are aware of until we stumble into them. But, then, I have it for situations exactly like this, right? A confidant who loves me and wants the best for me, but who’s as a safe distance. So I gather up my courage, and call.
It rings. I’m not sure what time it is over there. It’s too many rings to be a cell phone, so it’s probably a land line, and for all I know it’s waking up the whole house. It’s got to be at least morning over there, right?
By the eighth ring I’m about to hang up. Bad timing, and probably for the best.
But then, he answers in French, of course. “Oui, allô? Ici Michael Hall.”
“Daddy?” I ask. “It’s Janie. Um… can we talk for a bit?”
Chapter 71
Janie
I can’t bring myself to tell him everything right away, so we dance around the subject. Neither of us is entirely comfortable talking on the phone yet.
“So this taste… test event is going well?” he asks when I catch him up on the stuff that seems, at the moment, pointless to talk about.
I’m pacing my living room, struggling with every word. “Taste Teaser, we called it and… yeah, it’s going really well. There are some reviews on Red Hall’s Facebook page, links to the articles they’ve been writing. Have you… been following along?”
“Of course I have, Janie,” Dad says
, softly chiding me for thinking he might not. “I’ve seen all sorts of stuff lately. What was that with the guy you threw out?”
My eyes roll, and I groan. “Gloria…” I mutter.
“Who?”
“Uh… yeah, there was this guy causing trouble and I threw him out, and… this woman that works for me was the one that mentioned I was… you know…” I guess there’s some things it doesn’t matter how old you are—I can’t bring myself to talk about my period with my father.
“Ouch. Did you fire her?” he asks. At least he’s on my side.
“Uh, no… she’s a friend of a friend, so…”
“I gotcha,” he says. “Listen, Janie… I’m glad you called and I want to catch up, but did you really call just to let me know what’s going on?”
“Can I not?” I ask.
He sighs. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry. You’re sure there’s nothing else wrong, though? It’s just… we haven’t spent this much time on the phone, well… ever. If you need to talk to me, you know I’ll listen, right? Whatever it is.”
I hold my breath until there are spots in my vision. That’s probably bad for the baby. It’s certainly bad for me, but if I let it go, everything will come pouring out.
I need that to happen very badly, though, so I exhale and with it comes the story.
Dad doesn’t speak the whole time. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t judge me, or stop me, or laugh or even sigh meaningfully into the phone. At times I’m not even sure we’re still connected, but I keep talking anyway until it’s all out.
When it is, only then does he speak. “Wow, Janie. I… I’m sorry you’ve been through a rough time. Do you know what you’re going to do?”
I’m conditioned to think that question has specific subtext when I hear it from a man, and I bristle momentarily.
“I mean about the father,” he adds quickly. Maybe he’s been part of a conversation like this before.
I sink onto the couch and pull my knees up. They don’t go as far as they used to. I can’t wrap my arms around them comfortably anymore. It’s begun, and a petty sadness grips me in a moment of vulnerability; not normally enough to put me over or even register, but on top of everything else it’s that last flake of snow before the avalanche happens.
“I don’t know, Daddy,” I say, my voice tight. “He’s… not exactly a good man. I’m not even sure I want him to be a part of the baby’s life.”
“It sounded like you had a good thing for a minute,” Dad says. “Not that I’m defending him, mind you. It was awful, what he did. Thing is… sometimes people do things they can’t take back and… we don’t always have a choice. It sounds like you don’t have the full story yet. Maybe it’s exactly what it looks like, but maybe it isn’t.”
“Is there a difference between someone who does something shitty because they want to, and someone who does it because they need to impress their evil father?” I ask.
Dad’s quiet a moment. “What I mean,” he says more cautiously, “is that what’s done is done. The baby should have a choice in the matter, when it’s old enough to make that choice. You have to think about that now, while there’s time. We can all be terrible people under the wrong circumstances. That doesn’t mean we have to continue being terrible people, just that we have to find ways to make it better. To make ourselves better people.”
We’re no longer talking about me and Jake and the baby. Or at least, not only those things.
“Believe me, Janie,” he says, “not being able to reach out and hold your own children… it hurts. Jake may need a lot of work, a lot of growing up, but he doesn’t deserve that kind of pain. Not just for being misguided and caught up in someone else’s madness, you know?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“But listen,” he says, “whatever you decide to do, can I tell you something?”
“Sure.”
“I know this is scary, Janie,” he says, his voice warm and genuine. “And I wish the circumstances were better for you. Happier, and less complicated. But if I’m being honest… I’m overjoyed to hear that I’m going to be a grandfather. And I think you’ll make a wonderful mother no matter how this all plays out. I get that it’s painful right now, but is it okay if we just… be happy for a minute? No strings?”
My tears are hot, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I try to turn everything else off and, to my surprise… I do. For a glorious few minutes, I’m actually excited, and I can hear my dad’s happy tears over the phone and it seems, just for that short time, like I have a real, happy family.
By the time we hang up, I can’t believe how much better I feel. Yes, things are terrifying. Any day now I expect some kind of retribution from Jake or his father. Who knows when this story is going to blow up, or what people will say about it. But I have a baby on the way.
It finally hits me.
I’m going to be a mother.
I sit down at my computer, looking over the list of contacts that have received invites to the launch party. Most of them are form letters.
With shaky fingers, I add Jake Ferry to that list, and type out an email to him—professional, but warm. It’s merely an olive branch, that’s all. Not a promise. Not a request for clemency.
Just Simply an open hand. Hopefully that’s enough to get the ball rolling.
Chapter 72
Jake
I’ve managed to go almost two full days without coming under Reginald’s scrutiny, and it hasn’t been easy. He hates it when I turn down his requests to go to this or that event—a strip club where he assures me the girls give head in the champagne room is the most recent invitation—but doing it gives me a high that I can’t get anywhere else.
It also distracts me from the near-constant anger that’s been boiling under my skin since I found out Janie was pregnant and didn’t even bother to send me a text about it. Then again, why would she after what I did?
It’s all so mixed up that I can’t easily separate my anger at her from my anger at myself, and the net result is that I’m furious with the whole goddamn world and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hit the gym, I drink, I defy Reginald just because it feels good to do it, I even leaked a rumor to a few blogs that Reginald and Toia might be on the verge of divorce from his infidelity. Getting a picture of him with another woman at a gentleman’s club wasn’t even difficult—I can’t believe it doesn’t get more media attention.
Reginald suspects I had something to do with it, but I have an alibi for that night and after all, it’s not like he doesn’t have enemies, right?
After he was done rampaging and screaming at Toia like she had anything to do with it, he brings in his team of PR people to sort it out and it becomes the focus of his life for what I hope will be a few precious days without any of his bullshit weighing me down.
And then I let myself fall into a depression. I drive past the beach house, and rent a place up the coast. It’s basically a shack, but I don’t care, and I start thinking about what life would be like if I just turned my back on the Ferry family fortune altogether and lived like a bum on the beach.
Except, whether she likes it or not I’m a father now. I have to start thinking about how I’m going to provide a life for my child. Janie may not want my help. She made it pretty clear she doesn’t give a fuck about my money, but I’m not going to let my kid grow up without a father.
So I crawl halfway out of that hole, and start making plans. I can move a little money here and there. Reginald expects me to spend, but once the money is out of an account all he knows is that I spent it somewhere. He can’t tell when I turn around and get cash reimbursements from some of my own contacts. I handle their transaction fees so they don’t get fucked in the deal, and bit by bit I start to build a nest egg. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.
And then the email comes.
I’m at the beach still, sitting on the sand and wishing I could go back in time when my phone dings. I almost don’t check it, but I’ve got
twenty grand out right now being effectively laundered for me so Reginald won’t know where it actually went, and I check the message.
At first glance, it looks like one of those email blasts, inviting everyone to come to the Red Hall Hot Sauce Launch Event this Saturday night, almost a week from now. Except it’s addressed to me personally, and there’s no CC or BCC. It’s from Janie’s personal email.
Dear Jake, it reads. I’d like to personally invite you to the Red Hall launch party this Saturday at 8 p.m. I realize there has been a great deal of tension between us lately, but I believe we can set that aside in light of such an important event.
I stop reading for a moment. This isn’t an invitation to the launch party. Not really. One more face like mine won’t make a difference. My heart pounds, and the ache that’s been there for weeks now is suddenly acute again. I stare at the screen, not actually reading anymore, just wishing it said the things I most want her to say.
But I get it. The email is in code. There’s no telling whether I might forward it straight to the press, or if someone will intercept it. God knows I’ve worried my father has my email accounts hacked. If he did, he’d never say so—he’d just wait until the right moment, well after some critical intel comes across his lap. It could be years before I learn Reginald knew about my squirreling away money the whole time. There’s just no telling with that man.
If he is getting my emails, and if he does see this, it’ll tip him off that things are not going as smoothly between me and Janie as I’ve led him to believe. There’ll be consequences.
Then again, so what if there are?
I read over the rest of the email, but it’s more of the same and only confirms that what she’s really doing here is opening the door for me. And she’s doing it without my needing to introduce lawyers to the situation—which has crossed my mind.
That door is a chance for us. A chance for me to make all of this up to her. And I intend to take it.
