Page 99 of Shame the Devil
Blake’s face had changed, too. He said, “Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
Oscar said, “Excuse me.” Loudly, and everybody shut up. “Excuse me,” he said again, “but I still haven’t heard what happened with this paternity test.”
“Oh,” Jennifer said. “Harlan’s the father.”
A long silence, then, and Harlan said, “Which I only found out today, because Jennifer didn’t call me.”
What?She said, “You got the results the same day I did!”
“No, I didn’t. I got them this afternoon. I was in L.A. all week, doing this modeling thing. The one that got put off because I had to go to North Dakota.”
Annabelle said, “Coming out of the water with a surfboard. In slow motion, it’s going to be, with the water sort of dripping off him. Like, a single drop of waterrollllling”—she dragged the word out—“down his chest. ‘So women want to lick it off,’ the producer told me, which was pretty gross to hear about your brother. And then pulling on his T-shirt in slow motion again, so everybody gets to look at his chest some more. For cologne. Are you sorry you’re pregnant, though, Jennifer? I get that, but it seems kind of exciting, too.”
Dakota said, “Mr. Darcy in the wet shirt, but backwards. I can totally see that. It’d work, too, on him.”
Blake said, “I think you’re straying from the plotline, darlin’.”
Harlan said, “I’m not sure why we can’t keep this discussion focused, but here’s the deal.” He looked straight at Jennifer, no humor at all in his deep-blue eyes. “I found out today, yeah, and I need to know—why didn’t you call me as soon as you knew? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Because I …” Her hand was shaking, holding her fork.Clack-clack-clack-clack,against the porcelain. She tried to stop it, and she couldn’t, so she set her fork down and put her hand to her cheek. “Because I thought …” Her face was working, and she couldn’t stop it. “You didn’t … say anything, and I thought …”
“Oh, boy,” Dyma muttered under her breath.
“Son,” Oscar told Harlan, “I think you’d better take this somewhere else. Whatever you came here to say—take her into her bedroom and say it. But I’m telling you right now, it had better be good.”
40
Blundering Through
When they gotinto the bedroom, which was about a hundred square feet, Harlan shut the door behind them. And Jennifer still hadn’t said anything.
He said, “Let’s sit down,” which would be on the bed, because there was no place else, but she shook her head violently, her arms wrapped around herself. Like it was too much. Like she’d held it together all this time, but now, she couldn’t.
Because she’d thought, as those days went by without a word from him, that he was throwing her away. That he was throwing this baby away. That he was the kind of asshole he couldn’t stand to think he’d become.
He couldn’t stand any of it. He got his arms around her, pulled her head into his chest, and held on. And, yes, that was exactly what his lawyer had just told himnotto do, but what was he supposed to do, let her cry?
“Decide what you’re going forbeforeyou get any more involved with the mom,” Alexis had said when he’d called her today. On the jet, because as soon as he’d opened that envelope, standing in the kitchen with his duffel still over his shoulder, he’d been arranging the jet. Even though he’d just stepped off of one.
“Joint custody?” Alexis had gone on. “Visitation? Or just child support, and that’s it? I’m going to tell you one thing for sure going in. If you don’t want to be involved with the baby, being involved with the mom isn’t going to work.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m going for,” he’d said, which was an understatement. He didn’t know atallwhat he was going for. Also, he’d wished that Annabelle wasn’t hearing this. That Annabelle wasn’tseeingthis, since she’d been across from him on the jet at the time, making shocked faces. He also wished that she hadn’t seen him bumbling around here during Jennifer’s announcement, for that matter, but he couldn’t exactly have left her home alone. Which was also why he’d taken her to L.A. Along with the tutor, because those AP exams were coming right up, and he couldn’t very well tutor his sister in chemistry while he was striding out of the ocean carrying a surfboard about ninety times. If he’d remembered any chemistry, that is.
He thought about that now, and he thought about how he didn’t know what to do, so he’d just do the obvious thing, and hope that the next thing would come to him. He held on to Jennifer, guided her over to the bed, sat down with her, and said, “Of course I was coming. Of course I was. I wouldn’t have left you to face this alone.”
“I thought …” That was all she got out, because she was crying.
“Yeah.” There was a lump in his throat, a constriction in his chest, that were threatening to overwhelm him, but he fought the words out. “But I didn’t, baby. I didn’t. I didn’t know yet, that was all.” He kissed the top of her head and stroked his hand over her soft curls and held her tight, and when the sobs finally died down, he said, “Also, I’ve spent so much money on jets this year, my accountant’s probably going to tell me to just go ahead and buy one.”
She looked up at him. Eye makeup streaked, her hand over her nose and mouth before she rolled over and grabbed a handful of tissues from the bedside table and started mopping up. She said, her voice still wobbling all over the place, “You haven’t … made enough money yet to buy a jet. You need at least five … hundred million for that, if it’s not a corporate jet.” And blew her nose.
He laughed out loud, hugged her hard, and said, “See, now, that’s why you’re so good for me. And I should be offended, you know.”
“W-why?”
She kept on mopping. It was an effort. Her face was blotchy, like a redhead who’d just cried like crazy and had no walls left to hide behind, and he took her head in his hands, kissed her swollen eyelids, one after the other, and said, “What kind of a man would I be, to treat the woman who saw me through the worst three days of my life like that?”
She pulled back and looked up again. Her gaze direct, not caring a bit how she looked. “If that was how you felt,” she said, “why didn’t you even … I don’t know. Text me? After you got home? That was … I felt …” Instead of breaking down again, she took a breath, lifted her chin, and said, wobbles and all, “I felt stupid. Like I’d cared too much. Like you were stomping on my heart.”
