by Tara Leigh
When my phone rang a few minutes later, I pounced on it without even glancing at the screen. “Tell me everything,” I gritted.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do. For years.”
For a brief second, I had no idea who was on the other end of the line. And then recognition flooded my brain cells. “Mom?”
31
Tripp
Her voice was as crisp and cultured as I remembered, but just the slightest bit diluted, as if the passing years had worn away at her sharp tongue. “Yes, Tripp,” she said, releasing a small sigh. “As much as you wish it weren’t so, this is your mother.”
I debated hanging up, but something held me back. “Why are you calling?” I asked, pushing the words out through tight lips.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think you had no knowledge of social graces or etiquette. Since that’s not the case, I can only assume you are deliberately being rude.”
I almost smiled. Growing up wealthy and privileged, my mother had zero tolerance for bullshit. It was a trait I’d inherited. “If you need something, just call—”
“I’m in New York,” she interrupted.
It was the last thing I expected her to say. “You’re here, in New York?”
“Yes. I’m downstairs, in the lobby.”
“You’re downstairs,” I repeated, my tongue thick.
“Yes. Now if you would please tell the doorman to let me up, we may continue this conversation face-to-face.”
“I’m not here. I mean, there.”
“Remington Owen Montgomery, I didn’t come all this way for you to make a fool out of me.”
I stiffened at the sound of my full name. “First of all, don’t call me that. And second, I’m in Connecticut.”
“When are you coming back? I need to see you.”
There was something in my mother’s tone that kept me from hanging up outright. “I’ll be back later tonight.” Before she could say anything else, I added, “I’ll call you in a few hours, when I get back to town.”
After ending the call, I sat back in my seat, clutching the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white. What could be important enough to bring my mother back to Manhattan, a place she’d sworn never to return? Thumbing out a brief email to the lawyer I’d hired to look after my mother’s financial affairs, I nearly missed the Volvo SUV driving straight by me. I didn’t see who was in it, but there was a magnet from The Lowell School beside the license plate.
Tossing my phone on the passenger seat, I started the engine and made a u-turn as discretely as possible. The Volvo swung right at the end of the street, and I let two cars pass before making the turn myself. I managed to keep at least two cars between us for the next ten minutes, until they pulled into a sports complex. I circled the block once before parking on the other end of the lot.
When my phone started chirping again, I made sure to check the screen before answering. This time it was Lance. “What’d you find out?”
“I have an overseas contact working on getting me the actual birth certificate but according to paperwork filed with the school, she was born in Switzerland. Mother listed as Nina Chapman, father listed as James Chapman.”
That would make the girl Jolie’s half-sister.
Nina must have been pregnant when they left New York, I realized.
Lance continued running through the facts he’d been able to confirm. “The house was bought five years ago, when the girl was four. It’s in Nina Chapman’s name, but the mortgage is held by Jolie Chapman. Jolie and Nina have a joint checking account funded entirely by Jolie’s paychecks to take care of the bills. Taxes, utilities, school tuition, credit cards, car payments.” I heard the clicking of a computer mouse. “They have several joint savings and investment accounts.”
“Did you find out anything about Francis Hughes?”
“Well, I’ll say this. If his paper trail was a skeleton, the guy wouldn’t be walking around, that’s for sure.”
Nothing more than I’d come up with. I ran tense fingers through my hair. “Okay, keep digging. Thanks.”
I ended the call, realizing as I did that he’d never mentioned the name of Jolie’s half-sister. An extraneous detail, but I decided to call back and ask. Sometimes details turned out to be important.
“Oh, sorry about that.” There was a brief pause, the tapping of keys on a keyboard. “Ah. Here it is. Romy. Romy Chapman.”
The phone slipped from my suddenly numb hands. No. It couldn’t be.
That made no sense. Why would Nina name her daughter Romy?
My initials, with a y on the end.
Our inside joke. Mine and Jolie’s.
Not Nina’s.
All intentions of keeping a low profile flew from my mind as I got out of my car and strode through the front door. Off the main lobby, there were several turf fields filled with children. Three were occupied, two with boys and one with girls, each field watched over by a small crowd of adults.
Like always, my eyes were immediately drawn to Jolie. She was sitting in the third row of a set of aluminum risers, beside Nina. I stayed at the edge of the field, just out of Jolie’s eyesight, watching what looked like a scrimmage. There were at least a dozen girls chasing after a soccer ball, and three of them had dark braids. As I was trying to figure out which was Romy, one of them gave a perfect kick, the ball flying past the goalie’s hands into the net. “Way to go, Romy!” Jolie’s voice rang out as she stood up, clapping.
The girl who’d kicked the shot turned around, flashing a thumbs up as the smile on her face stole my heart. She was the spitting image of Jolie, but with slightly darker coloring. My coloring, I realized, her hair exactly the same shade as mine.
Out of nowhere, the ball came flying my way. Instinctively, I caught it and tossed it back onto the field. Romy was already running toward me, her eyes not meeting mine as she focused on the ball. Her gray eyes.
Suddenly, I was back at that baseball game. My lungs empty, my diaphragm paralyzed.
Know what you see, trust what you know.
I pivoted back toward Jolie, already feeling the sharp prick of her stare. Her cheeks were tinged pink, mouth slightly open, eyes a swirling mix of shock and horror. Nina was doing a better job of hiding her emotions, her face impassive as she avoided my gaze.
Folding my arms, I turned back toward the field. This time, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Romy. She was clearly the best player on the team, with a natural grace and skill that far outstripped her teammates..
Appearing beside me, Jolie’s quiet voice was a splash of acid on a gaping wound. “I never intended for you to find out this way.”
32
Jolie
I never intended for you to find out this way.
Even as the words left my mouth I hated the way they sounded. Pathetic. Patronizing.
Wholly inadequate.
The sight of Tripp—here in Connecticut, with Romy just a few feet away—locked a vice around my ribcage, expelling every last ounce of oxygen from my lungs and making the bones feel brittle and insignificant.
The shock of his being here at all was completely overshadowed by what he now knew. The lies I’d told. The secret I’d kept. The daughter I’d hidden.
A muscle in Tripp’s jaw twitched from restraint, rage lending a vibrating timbre to his voice. “It’s obvious you didn’t intend for me to find out at all.” His eyes were pure steel, his body so rigid he looked like a jungle predator poised to strike, only holding himself in check by the thinnest of margins. I was the prey, frozen in fear.
Shame clogged my veins, making me want to curl in on myself. “No. I did. I just . . .” I dragged trembling hands through my hair before starting again. I could barely breathe, and I had no idea what to say. There was no fixing this.
If only I had gotten to Connecticut earlier, as I’d intended. My meeting had run long and I’d missed my train. I would have taken a car service but the last time I had, the driver gave me the creeps. Buying a
car of my own was definitely on my To-Do list.
Arriving only a few minutes before Romy’s bus, there was no time to tell Nina that I’d reconnected with Tripp, or that I wanted to tell him about our daughter.
And now I was caught between them, choking on their mutual hatred and toxic outrage.
My eyes flicked to Romy as she landed a perfect kick toward the goal. “Tripp, she doesn’t know.”
“That I’m her father? Yeah, I got that. Loud and clear.”
Tripp’s bitterness electrified the air between us, a toxic cloud of hurt that made my skin throb. I wanted to ask what he was doing here, but my right to ask anything of him was on hold, if not permanently blocked.
However, there was no denying what he clearly already knew.
Romy was his daughter. Our daughter.
This situation was a bomb seconds from detonating. My plan for pulling the pin out—slowly, carefully—was now moot.
But somehow I had to contain the fallout. Whatever happened between me and Tripp and Nina, it was a distant second to making sure Romy was protected. That she would soon learn her entire life was a lie was inevitable . . . but I didn’t want it to happen on the side of a soccer field, in the half hour slice of time between practice and dinner. I had to convince Tripp to be patient, that we needed to come up with a plan based on what was best for Romy. “She doesn’t know I’m her mother, either.”
He finally spun to face me. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“So our daughter thinks your stepmother is her mother, and her father is dead.”
I hesitated, the truth of what I’d done, the lies I’d fed my beautiful baby girl, the lives I’d tainted, suddenly sinking in.
Everything clicked into place for Tripp, too.
His face tightened as the enormity of my deception, all I’d taken from him, registered. I watched his lips disappear as he pressed them tightly together, doing what he had to do to rein in the howl of outrage that was no doubt building inside his chest.
“Tripp, I—”
But I was speaking to air. He’d already spun on his heel and stalked off. I glanced at the field, hoping that Romy hadn’t seen the awkward exchange. With her running toward the ball in the opposite direction, I scurried after Tripp.
I entered the lobby just as he threw open the front doors with a resounding bang. “Wait, please!” I cried.
He reversed course, but whatever control he’d fought for inside was gone, his face a mask of fury. “How could you have done this?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” That, at least, was the truth.
“Sorry? That’s all you’ve got?” He shook his head slowly, just a few degrees of movement as if his muscles were too stiff to allow a normal range of motion. “Sorry doesn’t cut it in this situation.”
“I know. I know. I just . . .” Nothing I could say would make any of this okay. There was an angry buzzing in my head, like even my thoughts were furious with me and ready to sting.
“How old is she?”
“Tripp, I—”
“How old?”
“She’ll be ten this summer.”
“Nine and a half years? You’ve kept her from me for nine and a half years? How could you do that?” Tripp roughed agitated fingers through his hair, lacing them at the back of his neck and looking at me expectantly. Waiting for me to say something to make this right.
But I had nothing.
No excuses. No defenses. What I’d done was indefensible. Incomprehensible.
“You—you stole my daughter from me.” His voice was the consistency of broken glass, shredding my nerves like tissue paper. But worse, his eyes were glistening with unshed tears, tears that bled into me, tears that broke me. “Who doesn’t tell someone that they’re going to be a father? That they are a father? Who, Jolie?”
My breaths fought to keep pace with my pulse. Too fast, too shallow. I was dizzy. “I—”
“How do you not explode with that kind of information?” He glared at me, not realizing that I was barely clinging to consciousness. Or maybe not caring. Either way, I couldn’t blame him.
“Okay, I understand why you’re angry.” Tripp’s glare intensified, eyebrows climbing up his forehead. I hurried to throw out words like breadcrumbs, hoping they would form some sort of trail I could follow. “What I did to you—to Romy—is unforgivable. Unfathomable. I know that. I wasn’t thinking clearly. And when I read your text, ending things—”
“What?” The color drained from Tripp’s face, his angry flush erased.
“I know. It’s no excuse. I was hurt and confused and—”
“No, I don’t mean about that. Tell me exactly what my text said.”
I’d memorized it long ago, but saying it out loud . . . “You’re really going to make me repeat it?”
Tripp sighed, and parroted it back to me instead. “I am disgusted by what is happening right now, and what I allowed to happen between us. If you care for me at all, you will let me go. Never contact me again, I want nothing to do with you or your family.”
Even now, the words crushed my soul to bits. “See, you remember it, too.”
He shook his head. “No. That’s the text I got. From you.”
What the hell?
We were still staring at each other, wearing matching dumbfounded expressions, when the door behind me opened, releasing a stream of parents and soccer players, including Romy. “Jolie, there you are.” Hurt was etched into her frown. “Why didn’t you stay to watch me?”
I looked back and forth between father and daughter, my eyes tripping over their similarities. “Um—”
“Your sister spotted a friend and they didn’t want to disturb the team by talking on the sidelines,” Nina said, jumping in. “He was just leaving though. Isn’t that right, Jolie?”
Tripp scowled at Nina as if he was planning to run over her with his car. “Yeah, I have to get back to the city.”
Romy lit up. “That’s where we’re going, too. Jolie’s bringing me back to spend the weekend at her new—”
“Jolie, honey, I’m sure your sister’s friend needs to get going.”
Tripp’s jaw clenched at Nina’s intrusion. “Actually, I’m really not in a rush. Why don’t I give you guys a ride?”
“Absolutely not!” Nina shot back.
Romy took a step toward me as the enmity between them flared. One peek at Tripp and I knew he was in danger of exploding if we didn’t make some sort of concession in the next few moments.
I looked pleadingly at Nina, trying to convey our precarious position, but she was too busy glaring at Tripp. “Honey, just get in the car,” I said to Romy. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She walked toward the back of Nina’s Volvo. “Mom, pop the trunk so I can put my stuff in.”
Tripp’s wince was as pained as mine.
33
Tripp
Driving back to Nina’s house with Jolie at my side, neither of us made an attempt to pick up our conversation where we’d left off. There was so much that needed to be said, and cleared up. But I just didn’t have the stomach for it right now. Not when it felt like my insides had been ripped out of my chest and attached to the bumper, leaving a bloody trail on the asphalt as they dragged behind us.
I pulled into Nina’s driveway, parking in front of the garage and turning off the ignition. Jolie opened her door, glancing back at me with one leg stretched out the side. “Do you want to come in?”
Even now, my gaze roamed hungrily from her hip to her toes and back again, my mouth dry from desire for this woman I should hate. I wanted to grab Jolie by her wrist and pull her onto my lap. I wanted to kiss her until my anger was just a memory. Until all I could feel was love and lust and hope.
I wanted to turn back time, erase everything that had kept Jolie and me apart, everything that had kept me from being a part of my daughter’s life.
I wanted to strangle Nina and flee
with Jolie and Romy, restarting our lives as a family of three.
I want I want I want.
Instead, I swung my head to face her, my jaw clenched. “I think you and I both know that’s not a good idea.”
Jolie gave a dejected nod, regret stamped across her skin, then opened and closed her mouth several times without getting out another syllable. Finally, she managed a few words. “I’m going to talk to Nina for a few minutes, while Romy finishes getting ready. I know you won’t believe me, but I had planned to talk to her about you—about us—earlier today. It just . . . It just didn’t work out.”
The man that loved Jolie wanted to say something understanding, something that would wipe away her regret, clear the shadows from her eyes. But right now, I couldn’t be that guy. Right now, I wasn’t sure if I’d be that guy ever again. “You’re right,” I said quietly. “I don’t believe you.”
Jolie blanched as she exited the car, closing the door and entering the house through the garage.
Alone, my skull crashed back against the leather headrest, consumed by the enormity of her betrayal.
Jolie had stolen so much more than my heart.
She stole my child.
I was a father. Me . . . a dad.
Except my daughter didn’t know it.
What a fucking day.
Growing up, I hadn’t had the best relationship with my own father. I mean, he was a narcissistic scum bag, probably incapable of having a good relationship with anyone. But every kid at least deserved to know who their father was.
I cursed myself for not finding Jolie sooner. For taking that damn text at face value and spending nearly every day afterward pretending she didn’t exist. For keeping the truth of her father’s innocence to myself.
Out of spite.
What a colossal waste—of an entire goddamn decade.
I understood Nina’s motivations for hiding Romy from me. There was no getting around the fact that my father had basically destroyed her life, and led to her husband’s suicide.
