by Fran Louise
We weaved through the chaos in the room, but I was too distracted to take much notice. I kept one eye on Fueller, one eye on Elizabeth, and both eyes out for Stella. We were introduced to the designers and the head of the charity. I chatted with the organisers and made small talk with some of the more salubrious patrons of the charity. I resisted the urge to glance around; thankfully the conversation was restricted to a type of banal I was very familiar with, and required little effort on my part.
My phone was vibrating in my pocket on and off. I finally picked it up during a short lull in the proceedings. Fueller’s name flashed up on the screen. Confused, I glanced up at my friend to see a tight, sardonic expression in return. Trepidation fizzed low in my stomach. Looking down, I opened the message.
“Test positive,” it said. “Congratulations, you’re a dad.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Stella
If I’d had to isolate the sensation, I would have said that my heart was trying to escape from my chest. Really – trying to tear its way out through a set of intense, unyielding battering. Inside the backroom I could hear Jay growling at the man who’d arranged the interview.
“The evening’s over,” he was saying, and behind that the only marginally higher-pitched query from his wife. His fucking wife was here ... I couldn’t even allow myself to ponder on the implications of that. My photographer was in there, but I couldn’t hear him or anything else over the cacophony in the backstage area.
Then the door swooped open.
My heart leapt like a flea on a mattress as Jay came storming out. He looked like an angry god. His hair gleamed molten gold, his tuxedo stark against it. He clasped my arm. The surprise was so sharp that I let him propel me along the makeshift corridor without any resistance.
“You’re hurting me,” I said eventually, recovering my senses. I tried unsuccessfully to yank my arm out of his grip. “Jay!” I was shocked by his reaction. “Good God, why are you acting like this?”
He pushed me into an empty room and slammed a flimsy door behind us. I stared anxiously at the billowing marquee walls, half expecting them to collapse. Jay was everywhere, taking up the space and the air in front of me. He was lit with anger, white-hot with it. I couldn’t understand … was he angry because his wife had seen me?
“What the hell is going on here? How dare you act like that in front of everyone?” I shot the words at him, immediately on the offensive. I did not deal well with men who thought they could throw their weight around with me. “This is my job, Jay. You don’t interfere with that because you’re worried about your wife finding out about us. I had no idea you were the subject of the interview—”
“This has got nothing to do with the goddamn interview,” he said. It seemed like he was having problems controlling his breathing. “What are you even doing here?”
“I’m working,” I said. “Filling in for someone. Not that I have to justify that to you. What’s gotten into you?”
Gone were the soft smiles and bed-tousled hair of our last meeting. He glimmered, as sharp and glossy as a deadly blade. Heat palpated from him. Unwelcome physical attraction, chased by a furious stab of something raw and unfamiliar, washed over me.
Elizabeth Fitzsimmons. Finally I’d met her in the flesh, and she was beautiful. Tall and blond and impeccably dressed, she’d sat next to Jay all night like the perfect accessory.
Had I fallen for the oldest story in the book?
“I noticed your wife in there,” I said, unable to keep the angry accusation inside. “Was that a line, when you told me you were getting divorced?”
“No, it wasn’t a damned line,” he said, his voice still growling.
There was a pause. I could see something brewing in him, shifting behind his aurulent eyes like smoke. He said, “Was it a line when you told me Nina wasn’t my daughter?”
My heartbeat gradually slowed to a dull thud inside my ears as I stared at him, processing the words. I counted them, thrown by the switch in topics. In the end I could only come up with, “What?”
“You heard me.”
“What do you mean?” I said, confusion weakening my voice.
“Your daughter,” he said. “She’s mine.”
I paused only for a second. “You-”
“I got her tested, Stella,” he said, his tone so forceful it made me quake. He was glittering with anger, fizzing with it. “She’s mine. She’s my daughter.”
The walls billowed in the night breeze, the sounds of party music and laughter straining in the distance. I was floating in a parallel reality for a moment. “How did you…?” I couldn’t even process the logic behind what he was saying. “What do you mean, you got her tested?”
He shifted his weight. “Exactly what I said: I got her tested. It came back positive. She’s mine.”
It was the first time in my life I truly understood what it meant for a head to spin. Like someone had lifted up the ground and tossed it in the air, I had to reach out into the ether to steady myself. An arm looped around my waist; Jay’s, of course. He didn’t apply pressure. He was a formidable obstacle in my path without any effort on his part.
My hands fisted in his chest in instinctive reaction. I could smell him, smell that cologne. My body was already reacting, a mutinous thud starting up somewhere low.
“Let me go, Jay,” I said suddenly. My heart was stammering.
What the…? Was this true? It couldn’t be! I would have known. What kind of woman didn’t know who the father of her child was?
He cursed. He clasped my upper arms, holding me at a distance from him. Lowering his head, he met my gaze levelly. “I need you to listen to me, Stella. I have a friend, in Washington, who helps me out once in a while when I need information. I asked him to check my DNA against Nina’s—”
I gasped. My jaw felt unhinged.
“Just hear me out. He didn’t do anything illegal—”
“No! Take your hands off me,” I said, my voice resounding. I yanked from his grip, staggered back and hit the marquee tent. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” I could feel spots in front of my eyes. “You should have asked me.”
“I did,” he said, “several times.”
“You should have asked my permission to have her tested,” I said, my voice rising again. The betrayal clogged my throat. “How can you say that’s not illegal, what you did?”
“And why are you trying to hide this?” he asked. He became very still, his jaw like a weapon. “Are you in love with him, this guy in California? Is that what this is about?”
“No!” Denial billowed in me. “I’m not trying to hide anything!”
“How did you not know?”
“I-” Putting my face in my hands, I staggered about mentally. “Is this true?” I asked.
His jaw worked. “Of course it’s fucking true. Why would I lie?”
“You did a reputable test?”
“How could you just presume, knowing what you know, that I wasn’t the father?” he asked, ignoring my question.
“I didn’t know,” I threw back at him. My head was still spinning. “You don’t just walk up to a woman and tell her she mixed up the father of her child with someone else, Jay! Aaron and I had unprotected sex. You and I never did. Why would I presume it was you?”
The air between us was as thick and suffocating as a summer storm. Tension rippled in his expression, while inside my chest the denial was like ice cracking. His eyes seemed bruised. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but my whole body was reverberating from shock.
Nina was really Jay’s daughter?
Adapting to this new shift in the universe was like trying to squeeze the sky inside my skull. “I didn’t know,” I said. “Honestly … I didn’t know.”
He stepped aside. He looked as shocked as I felt.
“I can’t do this right now,” I said, and shoved past him. Grace seemed to have fled along with reason. “I’ll call you,” I told him, and stumbling out into the corridor, I turned, s
haking, and marched towards the exit.
#
I stared at Nina through the bars of her cot. On her tummy, she supported her torso like a yoga master. Her chubby arms quivered now and again under the weight of her large head, but otherwise she was sturdy and confident this morning. Eyes the colour of maple syrup stared back at me luminously. I’d seen those eyes before, under heavy brows and tousled bed hair, watching me with much heavier interest that Nina’s innocent regard.
“Stella … this isn’t necessarily bad news,” Monica said quietly, next to me.
My heartbeat skidded. I breathed carefully, trying not to succumb to the force of blunt shock. It didn’t seem to want to dissipate, this feeling.
“Did he call you?”
I shook my head. I glanced at my phone as an afterthought. I hadn’t actually checked this morning; I’d come home last night and buried myself in Julia’s tiny single bed, wishing I were eight years-old again and that someone would come and take care of it all for me.
Monica sighed. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t see why he’d lie.”
As if to illustrate the point, Nina broke into an effervescent smile. Two delicious dimples spiked her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with mischief. It was Jay at his most charming.
“You really can’t argue with those genes,” Monica said.
I got up and turned my back, approaching the window. The garden and facing apartments merged into a kaleidoscope of green and brown. “I can’t believe,” I said, having to focus just to annunciate the words, “that I went this long thinking Aaron was her father.” I paused, trying unsuccessfully to isolate anything out of the merging colours in front of me. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sweetie, there’s no point in beating yourself up about this. This is good news! You’ve been desperate to get Aaron out of your life; out of Nina’s life.”
I nodded.
Monica’s eyes were hesitant on me. “You really had no idea?”
“No, I told you. I just—” My voice trailed off. “No.”
“But you must have had unprotected sex with him,” Monica insisted.
“Well, I didn’t,” I said. “It must have been an accident. Another broken condom, or something—” Rage billowed out of my throat. “They’re supposed to have a ninety-eight percent effectiveness rate; I did a piece on sex education in single-sex schools in the tri-state area for my column last year, so I know what they tell these kids. Ninety-eight percent, my ass. They need to change the syllabus.”
Monica lifted her brows but otherwise didn’t comment. The rage having fizzled out as quickly as it had ignited, I sat down in a heap. Nina caught my attention, her pretty eyes roving the mobile above the cot. I took the moment to try and squeeze this new truth a little tighter into my brain again. Jay had been so angry last night. I couldn’t blame him, but the facts had pointed elsewhere; why would I question it?
“Why didn’t you get her tested when Jay asked you about this all those months ago?” The question dropped between us like a grenade. Monica’s expression was wary, concerned; possibly bewildered.
“Why would I?” I paused wildly. “If some guy pitched up tomorrow and told you that Brian wasn’t Julia’s father, would you get her tested?”
Monica formulated a few silent responses to that, moving her facial muscles in consternation. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Was I fucking him at the time?”
I laughed despite myself. Then I sat for a long time in the slow silence. Finally, I said, “I think I’ve messed up.” I frowned. “Does ‘messed up’ cover something like mistaking who the father of your child is? I feel it’s more like something you’d say if you missed a deadline. There must be another term for mistaking who the father of your child is.”
Monica was tactfully silent.
“Maybe Jay will know. Maybe his man in Washington can tell us.”
“You know you can stay as long as you need to,” she said after a bit, ignoring my random mutterings.
Gratitude welled up in me; I turned and gave her a tight smile. “I really appreciate it, Mon, but I have to go. You and Brian need your own space. This new place is closer to the office, and it’s not forever.”
“I know we’re all packed in here, but the kids love having you and Nina around.”
I was already distracted by the half-packed bags by the door. In truth, I badly needed some space. My head was spinning. I was making big noises about moving forward but I had the sensation of running wildly in circles inside my head.
“You won’t have anyone to sit Nina to give you time to look for your own place,” Monica said.
“I have to start getting back on my own two feet.”
“What about Jay?”
I stared at her. “What about him?”
“Well, can’t he help you out?”
I hit a mental speed bump. “Oh, God...” I groaned.
“He is Nina’s father. You were about to take Aaron to court to make him pay his way. Jay’s right here. I’m sure he can help out.”
Alarm erupted inside me like magma. Jay’s family owned half of New York so I knew he could afford it, but after everything he’d accused me of last night—and it had been accusation more than revelation—how could I feasibly ask him for child support the very next day? “We have to talk first,” I said.
Would he expect Nina to be brought up in the same lifestyle as he was used to? Where did that leave me, with my empty bank accounts and foreclosure plan?
“So call him,” she said.
I stiffened, every fibre of my being rejecting the suggestion. “He’s going to need a few days—at least—to calm down before we start discussing child support.” My voice was calm but my chest was tight. I threw a romper suit in the case. “We both need to get used to the idea.”
“Do you know what kind of role he wants to play in Nina’s life?”
Dark humour made me laugh abruptly. “No, he didn’t mention it.”
“He’s a decent guy, right?”
I kept packing. “I think so.”
“Do you love him?”
I stopped, agape. “No,” I said, half amused. “I barely know him.”
There was a beat before she spoke again. “Could you see yourself being in a relationship with him?”
I stopped packing. When I looked over at my best friend, I was surprised to see admonishment. “Who says he wants a relationship? Why are you asking this stuff? You read too many romance novels.”
“Well, he got Nina tested. Obviously he wants something.”
“He wants to stop someone from sending him crazy text messages,” I said, and turned back to the packing.
“What do you want?”
“I want my house back.”
I want my house on 45th Street. I wanted my daughter to be happy, and to have a life of opportunities ahead of her. I want the peace of knowing that both of us have a safe, welcoming house to come home to at night, a house that no one can take from us.
I want … someone to love us.
My stomach churned with a mix of hunger and anxiety. “He’s still married, you know.” I threw a glance at Monica. “His wife was there last night.”
Her jaw loosened.
The words just kept flowing from me. “I slept with him again, last week.”
“I knew it!”
I sat down. I folded the romper suit in my lap and patted it. “He told me he was getting a divorce.”
“Is he?”
“Obviously not, if he’s taking her out to fashion shows!”
“It could be for appearances,” Monica said. “You know what these society types are like.”
“No, I don’t.” I sighed. “Married is married; I don’t particularly appreciate being made the other woman without my knowledge or consent.”
“Listen—just don’t jump to any con
clusions. You need to know what his intentions are, Stella. Sooner rather than later. Once you know that, you can decide how you want to move on.”
“I know.” I nodded in agreement. “I’ll call him. As soon as I’ve got Nina settled in the new apartment, I’ll call him and arrange to meet.” I paused, swallowed. “He’ll have to meet Nina.”
Monica looked circumspect, her fingers playing with my daughter’s soft hair. “Maybe you should ask about the test results first,” she said, “just to make sure everything’s on the up and up. Talk things through.”
I nodded. We both stared at my daughter. Like a fuzzy picture that had come into focus, I couldn’t see anything but the Fitzsimmons genes staring back at me.
#
Jay’s apartment was on the Upper East Side, bound by the East River and Central Park. It was an old building with a distinguished awning at floor level, the entrance bordered on both sides by well-tended greenery. It was one of those imposing apartment blocks that I’d walked past a million times without registering. I looked up at the massive height of it and then back down at Nina in her pram with a tense sigh.
Last night I’d dreamed that Nina had grown up to be exactly like Elizabeth Fitzsimmons. I’d woken up covered in a film of sweat.
“Can I help you, miss?” A doorman was watching me, with part wariness, part polite concern. His gaze dropped to Nina and he smiled before looking back at me.
“Is this 995 Lexington?” I asked.
“It sure is,” he said, jovially. “Are you calling on someone here?”
I nodded. “Jay Fitzsimmons?”
“Come on through, miss.”
We walked into a dimly-lighted lobby. The floor was marbled, as were the walls, and the furniture was nicer than anything I’d ever owned. Nervous, I leaned down and fussed unnecessarily over Nina’s dress. Her trusting eyes were limpid on me, and I clutched at the burst of effortless love in my chest, holding it tight against uncertainty.
Monica had advised against bringing Nina here today. “Get the business end of the discussion out of the way first,” she’d said, but I needed Jay to meet his daughter before this went any further. He’d promised his wife would not be there, and I needed him to know we were talking about the future of a very real, very needy human being. If there was any doubt in his mind about that—any bravado or ego involved in this at all—I planned to quash it today.
