Page 11 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“Yes. I’m actually kind of good at it. Believe me, no one’s more surprised than me.” I wince as I realize I’m babbling. “Would you like some coffee?”

He nods and I wave him toward the table then busy myself pouring him a cup, carrying the cream and sugar over. Anything to keep moving, to put off whatever’s coming. I overfill my own cup and watch it slosh over the rim as I bring it to the table.

Then I sit across from him, which is as far away as I can get while still being able to look at him as much as I want. His hands are clenched tightly on the table as I study him studying me.

I still can’t believe he’s here. Emotions I can barely identify swamp me and I know that he can see everything I’m feeling. I don’t play poker because I don’t have the face for it. His gives away little. Or perhaps I’ve just forgotten how to read him.

I’m trying to think of an opening line. Something mild and nonconfrontational that will allow me to prepare myself, put up my shields. If I can just keep the conversation civil then maybe...

“Is Lauren James my daughter?”

Any hope of chitchat and working up to the hard stuff is blown out of the water.

Still I hesitate. Despite all the years I’ve had to prepare I’m not prepared at all.

His eyes are pinned to my face. I nod numbly.

“How could you not tell me?” He doesn’t raise his voice, but his anger is sharp and clear now. So is his pain.

“I wanted to. When I first found out I was pregnant I was too ashamed of what I’d done to you—leaving you at the altar like that—to say anything. And then my parents sent me to my aunt Velda’s to have her. They wanted me to put her up for adoption. Only I couldn’t... couldn’t do it.”

“And it never occurred to you that I would want to know her? Be a part of her life?” He runs a hand through his hair. His voice breaks.

“Of course it did.” This is an understatement. There were days, sometimes weeks, that I was desperate for him, for his love, which I’d destroyed, for his help, for any contact with him at all. “But I’d made such a mess of everything. And by the time I’d worked up the nerve, I heard you were marrying someone else and I... I knew I didn’t have the right to disrupt that, too.”

The bleak look on his face brings me to a halt. I swipe at the tears that are slipping down my cheeks and try to understand why this is happening now. “How did you find out?”

He takes a newspaper clipping from his pocket and lays it onthe kitchen table. It’s a brief piece about a book signing in Charlotte. It includes Lauren’s author photo and a caption that readsAuthor Lauren James to speak at Park Road Books as part of a tour of the Southeast to promote her latest novel.

“My wife saw the resemblance to my mother. And of course she knew about what happened at our wedding and that my former fiancée’s mother’s maiden name was Jameson. She turned out to be quite the amateur sleuth. She figured it out.”

“But that photo, that tour was almost fifteen years ago.” I put the clipping down, trying to understand what had changed, why this was happening.

“Yes. She put together a file on Lauren James, who grew up Lauren Jameson in the Outer Banks. Only she never mentioned it to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because no matter what I did to try to reassure her, she was convinced I was still in love with you. She lived in terror that you would show up one day and try to take me away from her and our children, break up our family.” He scrubs at his face. “I never once looked at another woman or said or did anything that might make her believe that. But she could never let go of the idea. She fed on it. She was... unstable.” He looks up at me. “Like...”

“My mother.” I say it quietly, but I can’t bring myself to tell him how much Aunt Velda told me about his marriage and his wife. About her unpredictable behavior. The institutions she’d been in and out of. That it was Jake who had been mother and father to their two sons. Staying quiet and keeping out of the way seemed the only choice, the only way to protect both Lauren and her father.

“What made her decide to tell you now?” I ask, still trying to sort it out. When Aunt Velda died ten years ago so did news of Jake. At the time I told myself it was better not to be privy to the details of his troubled marriage or his family life. That I hadto let go completely. I was careful never to Google or search for any sign of him. “What made her change her mind?”

“She didn’t.” His smile is a horrible twisted thing. “She died six months ago. She’d apparently been hoarding her sleeping pills until she had enough to go to sleep and not wake up. She used to call that a coward’s death, but I guess it became too attractive to resist.”

He falls silent and the regret and guilt are written all over his face. “I only found the clipping when I was cleaning out her things last week. It took about fifteen minutes to do the math and track you down. After all those years of being so careful not to, for fear of tipping her over the edge.”

I have the oddest feeling that both of us are going to cry. If I had any right at all I’d put my arms around him and offer comfort.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” he says. “Both of the women I chose to marry decided I didn’t deserve to know that I had a daughter.” Anger seethes under the sadness.

I take the jab. I deserve it and more. “I am sorry, Jake. I really am. I... I had to do what I thought was best for Lauren. I couldn’t put her in the middle of what was going on in your marriage and your life.” Nor did I want to add to his burden after the blow I’d already dealt him.

His smile breaks my heart. “You know what hurts the most?”

I wait in silence for his answer, because from the tone of his voice it sounds like everything hurts.

“That all this time Lauren’s assumed I didn’t give a rat’s ass about her. My child who is now an adult has spent her entire life believing I abandoned her.”

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