Page 114 of Power Play

I told myself not to get angry, but it happened anyway. Anger like I’d never felt rose up in me and I stood up from my stool and walked to the far side of the room, away from her. Not that I was going to do anything, but I didn’t want her getting scared.

“Just one, really,” I said. “Why?”

“Why?” She swallowed. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened? Why didn’t you tell me when you came back? When you were bringing her over here? When I took her to the circus? When you asked me to babysit?”

My voice was climbing and I stopped to take a deep breath.

“Liam, I know how angry you must be,” she said calmly.

“You can’t. You can’t know how this feels.”

“Please let me explain. We met not too long after that thing happened with the other woman, Gayle. I knew exactly how upset you were. That someone would lie about something as serious as paternity. You said, had it been true, that would have been it for you, because family doesn’t leave family behind.”

“Exactly,” I snapped. “You knew how I felt about this! How could you?”

“If I had told you I was pregnant, what would you have done?”

“Married you,” I said. “Married you. Been a dad. Made a family. So fucking easy, Janice.”

She nodded. “I knew that. I knew that’s what you would have done. But I also knew you did not love me. Not in the way someone should who is thinking about marriage. And truthfully, I didn’t love you either. I was still trying to figure out who I was. We were never serious. But once I realized I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to keep her. I just decided, it would be easier to do this on my own. Make no demands-”

“Demands? Whose demands? My demand to know my daughter?”

“I’m being as honest as I can,” she said. “I didn’t want you to propose because you thought it was the right thing to do and I didn’t want to say yes because I was scared to raise her on my own. And I didn’t think I was strong enough to resist your tenacity. So I left.”

It’s exactly what would have happened. I would have pressured her and pressured her until she married me.

Did I love her? No. Would it have mattered?

“Then why did you come back?”

“Because I started to feel like I’d made a mistake. Becoming a mom does that. It makes you grow up really fast. I realized what I was doing by keeping her from you.”

“Janice!” I shouted, then immediately lowered my voice. “You’ve been back for almost a year. When were you going to tell me?”

“Every day,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Every day I was going to tell you. When I saw how great you were with her. When we joined you on those team events. I knew every day that keeping you from the truth was wrong. But that’s when the lie got bigger and bigger. When I knew that telling you would be sohorrible. That you might threaten me with lawyers and custody battles-”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Maybe not. But I couldn’t risk it. I’m so sorry, Liam. I know that’s not enough, but it’s all I have.”

I rubbed my forehead, still angry, but I got it too. I understood. Being my mom’s son had made me sympathetic to all sides of a story. It didn’t make her right, it just made her human.

I knew she was. I was sorry too. But my life was different now. I was different.

I finished my glass of bourbon and set it on the table. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said and she bristled. Yeah. This might be a tense conversation, but it needed to be had. I couldn’t make it easier. Not when it came to Tess.

“Is there any chance she’s someone else’s?”

She shook her head.

“Okay. Then we’re going to go in there and tell her the truth.”

“Now?” She asked.

“No time like the present. I think she knows. She overheard me talking to Kit and she’s smart. Smarter maybe than all of us.”

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