The result?
As Livi had put it, the outcome was a huge disastrous mess.
Sound familiar?
While I wouldn’t say my life had become a disastrous mess like Max’s—no mythological creature would be stealing my best friends away because of a lie—the white lie I had blurted to my parents when I’d initially told them I was pregnant had morphed into a monster of its own.
A little monster.
Nothing too deadly, but still problematic all the same.
I wasn’t ready yet to tell Judith and Joe and everyone else the truth until I’d spoken to Grayson first, but I did need to talk to my parents.
Did I think my parents were going to disown me?
Not at all.
They’d be disappointed that I lied—a disappointment that would hurt more than all the owies in the world combined.
And I didn’t even want to dwell on what their opinion would be when it came to my one-night stand with a masked stranger—the reason I had blurted out the lie to begin with.
I inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and slowly released it. Then climbed out of the car.
Mom was busy weeding when I entered the yard through the side gate. Dad was sitting on a deck chair, reading a book.
Mom pushed herself to her feet and brushed her dirty hands against her green and brown tie-dyed skirt—not that you could see the dirt among the swirl of colors. “Hey, sweetheart.”
I hugged her, even though it came at a cost.
She examined the brown smudge, now residing on my light-pink maternity top. “Oh, darn it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom.” It was nothing compared to what I was about to share with them. “I have something I need to tell you and Dad.”
There are two sentences that should probably be banned from the English language (or any language). The first one is when you tell your girlfriend or boyfriend, “We should talk.”
That one rarely ends well.
The second one is when you’re pregnant and announce to your parents you have something you need to tell them.
Mom’s face paled, and she pressed her hand over her heart. “Is something wrong with the baby?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. But you might want to sit down.”
She shared a glance with Dad, then did as I suggested.
Okay. Here goes.
“Stephen and I weren’t seeing a fertility specialist before he died.” The words rushed out so fast, if they’d been solid and with wheels, they would have won the Daytona 500.
Mom’s eyebrows crinkled together, and her gaze dropped to my stomach. “So how did you freeze his sperm if you weren’t seeing a specialist?”
“That’s the thing. We didn’t. We had just started trying to get pregnant, but then…well, you know what happened.”
This time Mom’s eyebrows shot up her forehead, giving her an owlish appearance. “Are you telling us that you got pregnant, thanks to a sperm donor? But why did you tell us that it was Stephen’s baby?”
For a second, the idea of letting her believe that didn’t sound half bad. Plenty of women chose to have a baby via IVF—like Hannah—because they were in the right place in their life for having a child, but they hadn’t found a partner they wanted to settle down with.
My parents were liberals. They would have stood behind me if that had been my choice.
That story certainly was the more favorable option than the truth—that I’d had a one-night stand with a stranger.
But while it was one thing to blurt in a moment of panic that Stephen was Love Bug’s father, it was another to tell them I was pregnant due to an anonymous sperm donor.
“Love Bug wasn’t conceived via a sperm donor or in vitro. There was definitely a man involved. It just wasn’t Stephen.”
Dad’s expression?
Imagine for a second a father who’d forgotten his child was thirty years old, and in his eyes, she was still sporting pigtails and scraped knees.
Yep, that was the expression.
“What man?” His voice rolled in like thunder over the desert.
“Remember how I spent the weekend in Lake Tahoe with Brittany and her family just before Christmas?”
Mom and Dad nodded in unison.
“I went to the Jingle Balls ball with them. It was the charity event that raised money for testicular cancer awareness.”
They nodded again, this time with the universal sign for “Go on.”
“Well, I met a man that night.” I pinched my lower lip between my teeth, hoping I wouldn’t have to spell out the rest of what happened.
“Have you told him about the baby? What was his reaction?” Mom’s questions tumbled out in a big rush, making it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
I swallowed. “I haven’t told him. Not yet, anyway.”
“But you are going to tell him?” Dad asked.
“Well, I’m going to try to. All I know is that his name is Grayson, and he lives in Chicago.”
Mom and Dad stared at me for a long moment as if I’d just told them that I was moving to Antarctica to live with a colony of penguins.
Although given I was about to tell a near stranger I was knocked up with his baby, the Antarctica option didn’t sound so bad.
“Let me get this straight,” Dad said, frowning. “You had sex with a man, and you had no idea who he was?”
Mom didn’t say anything. She just slowly shook her head in a never-ending loop.
“And you let us believe that Stephen was the baby’s father? You let Judith and Joe believe the baby is their grandson?”
With each word, my stomach felt as though someone were turning it into a piece of origami artwork.
A dove soiled with black ink.
I tried drawing air into my lungs—and failed. “I stupidly told you Stephen was the father because I knew you would be disappointed that I got pregnant from a one-night stand. And I didn’t want my baby to suffer from that stigma. I hadn’t counted on Mom talking to Judith. They were never supposed to find out I was pregnant. And when I saw how happy they were when they showed up, I didn’t have it in me to break their hearts by telling them the truth.
“I can’t take back what I did when it comes to the lie I let them believe, but I might be able to find the father. Brittany knows his grandmother. I was…I was wondering if you think it’s a good idea. That I contact him.”
I thought it was a good idea. Chloe and Ava definitely felt it was a good idea. I just wanted to know if my parents were also on board with my decision.
“He has the right to know,” Dad grumbled. “And he also has the responsibility to support his child. The last I heard, it takes two to make a baby.”
“Well, most of the time, it takes two,” Mom said. “Assuming the baby wasn’t created in a fertility clinic…like we thought our grandson had been.”
I flinched. “I’m sorry I lied to you about who the father is. I…I just didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“Disappoint us?”
“Because I got pregnant from a one-night stand.”
Their silence was hardly reassuring on that front.
I swallowed. “I made a mistake. And I promise I’ll fix it.”
That move to Antarctica? It was beginning to sound better and better.
Mom’s eyes went round, and she began pacing. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
“What?” I asked.
“Judith called me today.” Mom stopped pacing long to give me the exciting news. “She and Joe sold their house. They’re moving to San Francisco. To be closer to their grandson.”
“No, no, no. They can’t do that.” Now Mom wasn’t the only one who was pacing.
Except, we were walking at a ninety-degree angle to each other—participants in the Olympics’ synchronized pacing event.
And our duet was expected to win a gold medal.
Mom stopped abruptly. “When are you going to tell them?”
I followed suit. “Soon. I
just need time to figure out how best to do it. I don’t want to hurt either Judith or Joe. But I will tell them. I promise. But I don’t want you to say anything to her. This is my mess, and I need to be the one who cleans it up.”
She studied me for a moment, then gave me a brief nod. “Okay, I trust you to do what’s right for you and everyone else.”
“But preferably before they actually move to San Francisco,” Dad said. “They need to cancel their plans.”
Mom took the seat next to him. “Judith is from the Bay Area. She’s been wanting to move back here for a while. They finally decided to make the move now that Joe is retired. You said the baby’s father lives in Chicago?”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Are you planning to move there if he decides to be part of his kid’s life?”
“No, this is my home. And I have a job I love here.” And friends whom I adored.
The idea of moving away left me feeling as though I’d been transformed into a giant snow cone.
On top of that, I didn’t even know him all that well. He was just a stranger I’d had sex with. Great sex, mind you, but you couldn’t base a long-term relationship on that.
A small, relieved smile spread on Mom’s face at my answer. She didn’t want to be separated from her grandson any more than Judith wanted to be separated from hers.
Only in Judith’s case, there was no grandchild.
The sensation of a warm breeze filled me at Mom’s reaction. While she wasn’t thrilled with how her grandson had been conceived, she wasn’t going to ignore him because Stephen wasn’t his father.
The next morning, Brittany returned my call as I walked through the school parking lot to the front entrance. After leaving my parents, I’d phoned her and told her I needed to talk to Grayson’s grandmother.
Naturally, she had asked why, but I wasn’t ready to tell her the truth. Not yet. The next person who needed to hear it was Grayson.
And he needed to hear it from me and not his grandmother.
“Did she give you Grayson’s number?” were the first words out of my mouth when I answered the phone.
“And hi to you, too,” she said on a laugh. “I take it pregnancy has tampered with your politeness gene. No, ‘How’s it going, Sis?’ ”
“Hi, Brittany, how’s your day been?” There was no missing the mocking in my tone.
She snorted. “I’m good. But not as good as Lucinda Mathews is right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would seem that she and her husband are at a spiritual nudist retreat in Argentina.” Brittany laughed. “Who knew those two had it in them to do something like that? I know I wouldn’t have the guts to do it.”
That made two of us.
“When are they coming back?”
“Not for another month.”
“A month!”
Curious glances turned in my direction. I flashed them an It’s-all-right, nothing-to-see-here smile. “Is there any way I can contact her before then?” I asked, keeping my tone more neutral this time.
“I’ve left a message with her personal assistant, but that’s all I can do until she returns. Unless it’s an emergency, her assistant has been given strict orders not to contact her. And by emergency, we’re talking the world is about to end, or Chris Hemsworth has been spotted at another nudist retreat. And if the latter is the case, please get her reservations ASAP at the retreat.” Brittany chuckled. “I want to be like her when I’m her age.”
Despite the panic spinning inside me like a dog chasing his tail, I couldn’t help but laugh at her comment. “I’ll be sure to tell your husband that.”
“You do that.” She laughed again. Her tone then changed to something a little more serious. “You’re not going to give me a hint why you want to talk to Grayson?”
“Nope.”
“But I’m your sister. The girl who changed your diapers when you were a baby.”
“You changed my diaper once. You were three years old, and you put the diaper on my head.” Or so went the family legend.
“But at least I figured it out before Emilia was born.” Her daughter was probably thankful for that.
Not one to give up so easily, Brittany said, “I really am curious why you want to talk to Grayson. It can’t be about your fundraiser because he lives in Chicago. And you left early from the…” Her words came to an abrupt standstill, and I could imagine her standing in her kitchen, eyes widening as she started slotting together pieces of the puzzle.
“Oh. You didn’t leave early because being in Lake Tahoe was too much for you, did you?” Her voice was free of judgment. It held a wince from knowing how hard it had been for me to return to the area where Stephen had died.
In the seconds that my brain spun like a wheel stuck in the mud, rendering me speechless, Brittany found that final piece of the puzzle.
“You had s-e-x with Grayson?” she said in a hushed tone.
I burst out laughing and pulled open the door to the school. “You don’t need to spell out the word. I can guarantee your daughter doesn’t know what it means.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Crickets chirped merrily in the background.
“Ohmygod!” She pretty much shrieked at my nonanswer. I was certain cats in her neighborhood wailed in protest at the noise. “He’s the father of your baby, not Stephen.”
But it wasn’t a shriek of dismay.
Not at all.
“Are you doing a happy dance?” It certainly sounded that way.
“I might be.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought it was odd that you would decide to become pregnant with your husband’s sperm when he was dead. Plus, you had only recently come off the pill before he died. You hadn’t been trying long enough to worry about fertility clinics.”
Busted.
“How do you know when I stopped using the pill?”
“I’m your sister. Of course, I know these things.”
Did her comment come as a surprise?
Nope. Even when we were kids, it was scary how many times she knew my secrets without me saying anything.
I used to think she was a witch.
Or a fairy.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I was one step away from pleading my case.
“Do Mom and Dad know?”
“I told them last night.”
“What about Stephen’s parents? Mom told me how excited they’ve been ever since finding out you’re pregnant with their grandchild—who isn’t really their grandchild.”
I quickly caught Brittany up on the conversation with Mom.
“Oh, crap,” she said once I was finished.
“You’ve got that right.…I have to go now, Brit. Class starts in a few minutes. Just promise me you won’t say anything to Grayson’s grandmother about why I want to talk to him. He needs to hear it from me and no one else.”
“All right. Let me know if you need anything, sis. And let me know if Lucinda gets a hold of you once she returns to Lake Tahoe.”
And if she didn’t? Then I’d have to consider the option of having Ava’s husband track Grayson down. But I didn’t want to go that route yet.
We ended the call as the first bell rang. Several minutes later, the initial wave of kids strolled noisily into the classroom.
Livi approached my desk, holding a manila envelope. “Daddy asked me to give these to you.”
“Thanks.” I took them from her and pulled out the three tickets for that night’s game. It was the Rock’s first playoff game against the Vancouver Canucks. Chloe and her boyfriend, Landon, were joining me for it.
A scribbled note was stuck on the top ticket:
Hope to see you tonight after the game.
To the average person, the note looked innocuous. But to me, innuendo clung to each letter like whipped cream, and I smiled in anticipation.
My lady bits weren’t quite so subtle.
I mentally cursed them f
or flashing the image of a hot and sweaty and equally satisfied Logan in my head.
30
Kiera
“This is our row.” Landon strode down the row of plastic arena seats, an excited Chloe in tow. We found our chairs and sat, my best friend sandwiched between us.
When Logan said he could get us tickets for the game, I hadn’t expected such great seats. We were only five rows from the ice, between the players’ bench and one of the goals.
The teams were warming up on the ice. As luck would have it, the Rock players were skating at our end, so I could easily make out their faces.
Cue the sighing lady bits.
A group of kids who could have been in second and third grade flocked around the plexiglass, hoping their idols would notice them. Three of them held up poster boards, but I couldn’t see what was written on them.
Logan skated past them and waved. That got the kids excited. They cheered, elevating their banners higher.
And those lady bits?
They swooned.
“Daddy!”
Logan waved at someone to my left, in the direction where the cheering had come from. Livi was skipping toward me, followed by Stacy and a good-looking man who I assumed was Livi’s stepfather.
My gaze flicked briefly to the ice again. Logan was back to shooting pucks at the goal.
“Hi, Mrs. A.” Livi didn’t sound all that surprised to see me.
While the lack of surprise might’ve been true for Livi, the same couldn’t be said for either Stacy or me if Stacy’s expression was any indication.
“Hi, Kiera,” Stacy said. “Wow. What a coincidence that we’re sitting together? What are the odds of that happening?”
Her initial shock at seeing me had passed, and the friendly smile I was familiar with took its place. The three of them sat next to us.
Like me, Stacy was wearing a Rock jersey, but her baby bump was hidden under the fabric. My bump looked like I was either pregnant or had smuggled in a small bag of popcorn.
I smiled at her. “Probably not that much of a coincidence if Logan gave you your tickets.”
Her eyes widened to the size of pucks. “Logan gave you tickets?”
Decidedly with Luck (By The Bay Book 6) Page 20
