Page 31 of Beside the Rolling Waves
“Rodney. You got my message?”
“I did. What’s going on?”
“Some woman named Stella Coker has filed a suit alleging that her three-and-a-half-year-old son was fathered by you, and she wants money.”
So, it wasn’t a baby. The kid was the right age. On the one hand, his heart hurt, because he might have a son who thought he was unwanted. Who thought he didn’t have a dad. Or who thought his dad was some deadbeat who went around making babies and then abandoning them.
Maybe all of that was true. But he hadn’t done it intentionally. And he knew what the results of having sex were. It wasn’t like he was naïve about that. At the time, he’d assumed that because Stella was with so many other men, she took precautions. He should have too. He’d thought about STDs after the fact, but it wasn’t like he had ever done anything like that before, and he didn’t have a stash of condoms.
He’d stopped before he became the kind of guy who did.
“Rodney. Why aren’t you telling me that this woman couldn’t possibly be the mother of your child?”
His lawyer knew he walked the straight and narrow. And he had probably been expecting an outright denial and anger at the idea that someone would be so bold.
“Because it could be true.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally his lawyer sighed, like he had to accept the inevitable. Or maybe like he was disappointed in Rodney. He couldn’t possibly be more disappointed in Rodney than he was in himself.
“She claims she has a DNA test and the baby is definitely yours.”
He wouldn’t know how she would have been able to match his DNA, because he hadn’t given her any. But he could understand why she would need one. He wasn’t the only man she had slept with in the months he’d been there. Far from it.
“How much is she asking for?”
His lawyer relayed what the terms were, and they were in the millions. Of course.
Probably Stella hadn’t realized that he was rich until just recently. She saw him as a meal ticket.
“Tell her I’ll pay, but I want full custody of the child. Everything. She signs off.”
Even as he said that, he felt bad. The child was probably attached to his mother, and that would upend his world. He didn’t want to do that, but he also couldn’t imagine Stella as a loving, caring mother. Just the fact that she was asking for millions told him that she was out for his money and not for the best interest of the child. Maybe he could be wrong.
“Am I allowed to get in touch with her?”
“No. Don’t talk to her at all.”
He pressed his lips together, not liking that answer but knowing that that was probably the way it needed to be.
“Do me a favor. Do some digging. Find out what she’s like. Is she a good mom? Does she take care of him? Is he attached to her? Or is someone else watching him all the time?”
“I’m already on it. I assumed you were going to be fighting this. But regardless, I’ll have that information and get it to you as soon as I get it.”
“All right. Thanks.”
He hung up. The call had put him into a black mood. It was…not ideal. The poor child. Whether he was the father or not, he didn’t really care. He was going to get custody of him, and he was going to take care of him to the best of his ability. If he couldn’t get custody, he was going to figure out what the very best thing for the child was, and then he was going to hire his lawyer to go full throttle after that. There was nothing that would stop him from doing the very best he could for that child. What was the point in having money if he didn’t use it for good?
Fourteen
Becky sat in the waiting room, her whole body and soul tied up in knots. She twisted her hands together on her lap, and then when both of the men who had been sitting there walked out before Rodney came back, she got up and started to pace.
She was praying, but she wasn’t casting her worry upon the Lord. She was holding it all tight to herself. It was pretty heavy.
Suddenly, she stopped pacing and thought.
Whatever happened, happened. Rita was at peace with it. Of that she was certain. So why wasn’t she calm as well?
Maybe it was the idea that she didn’t know whether or not she would be able to care for a baby, let alone two, and keep them alive. What did she know about children? She had loved horses all of her life and had spent all of her time learning about them. She hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention on how to raise a human.
