Legacy of Lies

by Tara Leigh

  Waiting in the hall, watching Jolie cover Romy with a blanket and drop a light kiss on her cheek, words and emotions rioted inside my head, stampeding down my throat to choke me. I wasn’t scared of much, but being a father . . . Fuck. Everything about it was terrifying.

  The vastness of it swept over me, making my issues with Jolie seem insignificant by comparison. We were a couple bickering at the mouth of the Grand Canyon, at the edge of the sea. What we needed to do was look down, look out. Appreciate the gift right in front of our eyes.

  But appreciating a beautiful vista was a far cry from nurturing a child. Could I do it?

  Fatherhood wasn’t like creating an app, where you could play around with the damn thing all you wanted before going live. And even then, if there were problems, you just issued an update. Problem solved.

  Fatherhood wasn’t like trading, either. If you crashed and burned, you couldn’t borrow money to get back in the game, hoping to make it back on your next bet.

  Yesterday I’d learned that my own father didn’t have much chance of making it through the month.

  And I didn’t care.

  Hell of a role model. I had no roadmap, no cue cards. No clue how to be a good dad. But I knew the kind I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be distant or disparaging. I didn’t want to bully or berate.

  If I died, I’d want my kid to give a fuck.

  Then again, if it was up to Nina, I’d never have the chance to really be Romy’s dad. That woman had stolen the life Jolie and I could have created, together.

  For my entire life, I’d been Remington Montgomery’s son. But in an instant, all that had changed. I was Romy’s father. Period.

  And I was desperate to hear her call me Dad.

  The first step toward making that happen was proving it. Not to me—I had no doubt Romy was my daughter. A judge, however, would need more than my word.

  By the time Jolie faced me again, I was holding out a box to her.

  Her brows pushed together in confusion, then hurt when she realized what the box contained.

  A DNA testing kit.

  “You don’t believe—”

  “I do. Of course I do. But no matter what happens with Nina, I need to establish legal rights as Romy’s father. According to my lawyer, this is a necessary first step.”

  My doubts multiplied with each passing second Jolie stared at the kit.

  Ally or enemy.

  Finally, she took it. A ragged exhale of relief emptied my lungs as Jolie slid her thumb beneath the seal, swabbing the inside of Romy’s cheek without even waking her.

  She covered the swab with the plastic sheath and dropped it into the box, pressing it against my chest as she squeezed past me.

  With one last look at Romy, I backed out of the room and closed the door softly behind me. Jolie was leaning against the breakfast bar, her arms crossed. “Thanks again for—”

  “Oh no. I’m not going anywhere yet.”

  A long blink preceded Jolie’s huff of resignation. “Fine. Can I get you something to drink?”

  I nodded and she rounded the counter, opening the refrigerator and peering into it. “Uh . . . I’ve got wine, water, or juice boxes.”

  My mouth went dry as the white interior light set off the flawless shine of her skin. I would have been happy to guzzle anything, but alcohol had the greatest chance of slaying at least one or two of the demons crowded inside my skull. “Wine would be great.”

  Setting the bottle on the counter, Jolie grabbed a corkscrew from a drawer and set it beside the wine, staring at it for a moment as a sigh trembled from her lips. When she looked back up at me, the strain pulling at her features had eased and her eyes were glistening. “Tonight was amazing, Tripp. I just—” Tears spilled over Jolie’s lower lashes, streaking down her face. “Is this what we would have had if . . . if—”

  My heart struggled to keep an even beat as I pressed my palms over the curve of her jaw, swiping beneath her eyes with my thumbs.

  But there were too many tears. They overflowed my efforts, sliding down my wrists like rain. With another muttered curse, I drew her head against my chest, smoothing Jolie’s honey mane over her shaking shoulders.

  I was filled with a desperate desire to absorb all her pain, all her guilt. But I couldn’t, because I was carrying so much of my own. “I know, Jolie. I know.”

  We stood like that for a long while, our arms wrapped around each other. Her cheek to my chest, my chin resting on her head. Trying not to choke on our mutual regrets.

  When her grasp eventually loosened, I looked down at the woman I’d fallen in love with long ago. Glimmers of hope and want and need sparkled from within the depths of Jolie’s gaze, bright enough to light the winter sky. Hope filtered through me, a slice of sunlight lighting up the darkness in my soul.

  Something inside me broke, shearing completely away. A boulder of resentment I could no longer carry.

  I swore softly, backing Jolie up against the wall of cabinets, my hands plunging into her thick mane of hair. Lowering my head, her lips trembled a breath from mine. “What we had tonight—is that what you want?”

  Her long wet lashes fluttered against the crest of her cheekbones. “More than anything.”

  “Then you’ll have it. I swear on my life you will.”

  The barest beginnings of a smile trembled at the corners of her mouth. “No. Not me. Us.”

  I started with a scatter of feather-light kisses at her temples, then across her forehead and at the tip of her nose. Jolie lifted her chin, her lips slightly parted, tongue peeking out. I could already taste her, even from an inch away. “So, you’re finally ready to admit there’s an us?”

  Her breathy laugh, low and quiet, whispered across my lips. “There’s always been an us.”

  The truth we were finally willing to admit thickened the air between us, pushing us closer together until not even a breath separated our mouths.

  This girl? She held my heart in her hands. A heart that beat for her, belonged to her. A heart that had only ever been hers.

  Closing the gap, I sucked on the plush softness of Jolie’s lower lip. So sweet it should have been a sin. Hot hands wound around my neck, pulling me closer. A groan slipped from my mouth and into hers. When it came to Jolie, close is all I’d ever wanted to be.

  Eventually I dragged myself away from her with a shudder, gripping the edge of the counter behind me like a crevice in the face of a rock wall. There was still so much we had to discuss, so much we had to do.

  Jolie brought a finger up to her already swollen lips, as if she needed reassurance that I hadn’t swallowed them whole, and then spun around to pull two goblets off a shelf.

  I opened the bottle, pouring the wine with a heavy hand and following Jolie into her living room. I handed her one of the glasses as we sat down on the couch, Jolie swinging her legs over mine.

  Drumming my fingers on her thigh, I tried to wrestle my chaotic thoughts into some kind of order. She was quiet, but I could feel her attention on me. After taking a sip, I put my glass on the table. Deciding to skip over the your father is very sick part of my conversation with my mother, I got right to what really mattered. “All of our parents are at fault for that damn text. But it wasn’t my father, or his lawyers, who came up with the idea.”

  Her eyes rounded. “What? Who?”

  Reading my expression, Jolie brought a hand up to her mouth and pressed her thumb against her lower lip. “No. She wouldn’t.”

  I grunted a disparaging sound. “I’m not sure of much anymore, Jolie. But,” reaching for her hand, I softened my tone, “I do believe my mother on this. Keeping us apart, the text, everything . . . Nina wasn’t just a participant—it was her idea.”

  “I just—I can’t believe Nina would be so cruel, so calculating,” she eventually wheezed.

  A quiet fury, thick and dark and defiant, slipped through my veins. After all this time, Jolie and I had finally excavated the towering trash heap of our past. We’d hit rock. Tru
th.

  Gnarled and ugly, at least it was solid. A foundation to build on, together.

  “No matter who came up with the idea, it doesn’t excuse everyone else for their complicity.” It galled me that I hadn’t figured out the deception earlier. Years ago. It was so obvious now. My parents would have done anything to keep their fraudulent lives intact. Neither would have batted an eye at torpedoing a teenaged relationship that had become inconvenient.

  “I don’t believe it. I won’t.” A tremor vibrated through Jolie’s bones, and she pushed away from me, her eyes a roiling cobalt sea of confusion and condemnation.

  I opened my mouth to offer an apology, or attempt to talk through the situation, but Jolie put her hand on my chest, her breathing heavy. “Tripp, after I read that text, I threw my phone at my father. Told him he had ruined everything. Yelling that I hated him, that I was ashamed to be his daughter. He tried to hold me, tried to tell me he was sorry, but I pushed him away.” The words tumbled from her mouth, one on top of the other, like the tears dropping onto her cheekbones. “If Nina had been involved, she would have stopped me. Stopped my father from leaving the room.”

  My brain connected the remaining dots. To Jolie, that text was inextricably linked to her father’s suicide.

  I wrapped my hands around her ribcage, kneading the tense muscles lining her spine as she continued talking. “I didn’t even notice that my father left the room. By the time someone thought to look for him, it was too late.”

  “Shhh,” I whispered against the nape of Jolie’s neck, the pain radiating from her trembling body corroding my flesh like a leaking battery.

  “It’s my fault,” she cried. “He did what he did because of me, because I overreacted to something that wasn’t even real.”

  “No, Jolie. No. Nothing you could have said would have made a bit of difference. If anything, it was my shit of a DNA donor who pushed your father into a corner, dumping his own crimes on whomever was most likely to take the fall.”

  My chest squeezed, my heart aching with regret as I looked at this beautiful, broken girl who had been raised like a princess only to have everything she knew to be true stripped from her. Everything but her beauty. It was the most superficial of all things, and yet Jolie had leveraged it into a successful career. She was tough, and surprisingly scrappy for a girl raised in the rarified air of the Upper East Side.

  Gripping her head in my hands, I lifted her away from me and waited until her wet eyes met mine. “Jolie, there is so much blame to go around in this situation, it’s impossible to know where to start. But we’re going to figure it out, together.”

  Hope . . . I could finally feel it.

  42

  Jolie

  It didn’t seem possible that Nina could have come up with the scheme to push Tripp and me apart. And yet it did. It made complete sense.

  Tripp and I talked until just before dawn, the sky a murky gray smudge clinging to the horizon, and I sent him home while my clothes were still on. Barely.

  I woke up the next morning, determined to set everything right. I’d been blind to Nina’s ulterior motives. I’d let my own daughter slip away from me, and had hidden her from her father. But my mistakes could still be fixed. And I was going to fix them, beginning today.

  Romy and I spent the day wandering around Chelsea and Soho, buying art and taking selfies. Eating croissants for breakfast and sharing a hot pretzel for lunch. Enjoying New York City and each other.

  It was a perfect morning, and I ruthlessly shoved aside all thoughts of Nina and the conversation we should have had years ago so as not to spoil it. But once Tripp picked us up for the drive back to Connecticut, I could no longer hold my apprehension at bay. It wound through me like a rattlesnake—a dangerous triple threat with its venomous bite, powerful body, and menacing rattle.

  There was no escaping it.

  As if sensing my unease, Tripp kept Romy distracted with a steady stream of music, random trivia, and a rousing game of I Spy.

  Pulling into Nina’s driveway, he turned around to Romy. “Did you know that the first Frisbee was made in Connecticut from an empty pie tin—what do you say we go throw one around in the yard for a bit?”

  Nina’s forced smile faded the second I walked inside alone. She walked to the wet bar just off her kitchen and pulled out a chilled bottle. “I cannot believe you brought that man to my home—again,” she hissed, opening it efficiently and pouring a single glass.

  “That man is Romy’s father.”

  She recoiled, judgment radiating from her harsh stare. “An unfortunate circumstance I refuse to burden her with.”

  “As unfortunate as my falling in love with a Montgomery?” I could barely edge the words around the block of ice bisecting my collarbone.

  Her eyes narrowed, knowing I was going somewhere with my question, but not exactly sure where. “Love?” she spat derisively. “It was ages ago, and you were both so young. What you had was puppy love, at best.”

  “What we had was ours. You had no right to ruin it.”

  “Don’t be so naive. Of course I did. You and Tripp were going to keep us all in the public eye, exactly the place we needed to avoid.”

  My hands curled into fists at my side, nails digging into my palms. “How could you hold me in your arms, comfort me after Tripp dumped me—when it was all your doing?” I struggled to wrap my head around that level of duplicity.

  Nina picked up her wine glass, taking a sip as she stared at me over the rim. “I tried to be friends with Tripp’s mother, did you know that? Lily with her first-wives clique and her came-over-on-the-Mayflower attitude, not to mention the ginormous stick up her ass. But not to worry, Lily Montgomery put me firmly in my place. Flat out told me I was just a temporary Chapman. Meanwhile her husband was cheating on her left and right—not to mention making your father absolutely miserable. You remember that, right? He was working like a dog and barely had time for either of us anymore. I told him to cut ties with the Montgomerys—to start his own company or retire altogether. We could have had a good life . . .”

  She sidestepped my question, but I was too mad to care. “A good life? My father took his life after I accused him of being the reason Tripp broke up with me.”

  “That was your fault. You never should have said those things to him.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know.” Regret clogged my lungs, making it hard to breathe. “But I was a teenager, Nina. I was upset, and like a typical teen, I lashed out at the person who loved me the most. Clearly, at the worst time possible.” I paused, trying to get my emotions under some sort of control. “You never should have done what you did—but at the very least, you should have come clean once you saw my reaction.”

  “Are you saying I’m to blame for your father’s death?” The question was a shrill accusation.

  Was I? “No, of course not.” Ultimately, that terrible choice had been his, and his alone. And playing the blame game now wasn’t going to earn me any points when it came to what truly mattered: Romy. “All I’m saying is that your lie snowballed into so many others. We can’t go back in time, but the lying has to stop.”

  “I won’t deny that the situation with your father got out of control. But don’t try to claim the moral high ground, Jolie. You left Romy and me behind to jet set all over the world.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  Her glare turned disparaging. “We always have choices. And your choice was to leave me with your baby. Don’t you dare try to take her away from me now.”

  Truth was a bitter blow. “I’m not trying to take her away from you, Nina. Not at all. But what choice did Tripp have? Until recently, he didn’t even know Romy existed.”

  She scoffed. “And that’s exactly how it should have stayed.”

  “No. Tripp is the love of my life. And I won’t give him up just because of some ridiculous feud.” I blinked back tears. “All of us have made mistakes, Nina. Not all of them can be fixed, but this one can. We can tell Romy th
e truth. She can have a father.”

  “Love of my life? Please, spare me your starry-eyed stupidity. I want you to leave, Jolie. And don’t ever bring that man back here. He is not welcome in Romy’s life.”

  “That’s not your call to make.”

  “Not my call?” Her outrage echoed within the kitchen. “I am her mother.”

  In my mind, I knew Nina wouldn’t be happy about telling Romy the truth, but I’d hoped we could hash out a plan, in whatever way would be least disruptive to her life. I had no intention of taking Romy away from Nina, or minimizing Nina’s role in Romy’s life.

  I just wanted to have a role, too. One that wasn’t built on lies.

  And Tripp deserved to be a father, in every sense of the word. There was no denying that Nina and I had conspired to keep him away from Romy. It was wrong then, and perpetuating the lie wasn’t going to make it right. We needed to fix it. Not just for Tripp, but for Romy. She deserved the truth.

  I swallowed my frustration, injecting a pleading tone to my voice. “Nina, you’re the only mother Romy has ever known, and she’s lucky to have you. But,” I raised my hands, “Tripp and I have roles to play in her life, too.”

  Nina’s face was a mask of barely contained outrage. “I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.”

  I pointed toward the window, where Tripp and Romy were zigzagging across the lawn, the Frisbee soaring back and forth between them. “Look at them, Nina. That little girl thinks her father is dead, and he’s right there, playing with her. How can we keep lying to her?”

  My stepmother’s head didn’t turn. “Easy. It’s better for her to mourn a good man in heaven than worship the devil here on earth.”

  “Nina,” I pleaded. “I just can’t—”

  “So don’t,” she interjected. “You don’t have to do anything at all. I have the adoption papers that you signed, remember? Legally, Romy is my daughter. Your involvement in her life is purely at my discretion.”

  Panic swelled like a rising tide. Nina was right. I had legally signed over all my parental rights in Switzerland when Romy was still an infant. And I’d listed her father as unknown on her birth certificate. Did that lie take away my legal standing? “Don’t do this, Nina. We can figure things out—all of us—together.”