Page 68 of What Happens in Paradise
“Rosie…” he said.
“It happened,” I said. “But it can’t continue.”
He nodded at my midsection. “Except it is continuing. You’re having my baby.”
I nearly surrendered to him right then and there. My baby. Here he was, willing to claim the child so that I wasn’t alone in all of this. And in the months since he’d left I had felt very, very alone. Mama and Huck would help me. I would live with them and bank the money that Todd Croft had given me to get me through the first year.
“I have to get back to work,” I said. I left Russ and put in an order for conch fritters.
He stayed until service ended. His mere presence at the bar—he was watching the Braves-Phillies game—made my pulse quicken and my breathing get shallow and I feared this reaction would affect the baby so I tried to stop and rest, drink plenty of ice water, and get to the ladies’ room often to splash my face.
Finally, I was finished. It was time for me to leave. I walked over to him.
“I’m going home,” I said. “It was nice to see you again.”
“Please, Rosie,” he said. “Just come to the room.”
I wanted to, if only for the air-conditioning and because I knew he would order me whatever I wanted from room service. But then it occurred to me that Russ might have been after sex and sex alone; maybe he saw me as a girl in a port, an island wife. I was nobody’s island wife.
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re married.”
He nodded. “That I am.”
It pained me to hear him say it, but it also gave me resolve.
“Please don’t come back here,” I said. “Unless you get divorced and you have bona fide legal documents to prove it. It’s difficult for me to see you.” I spread my hands across my stomach. “I had feelings for you.”
“Had?”
“Had, have, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live here and you aren’t mine.”
“I’d like to support the baby,” he said.
“I received money already,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this would come as news to him or not.
He said, “Todd showed me your e-mail last week. He told me he sent you money back in May. He told me he came down to Carnival in July and that he checked in on you and that his hunch was correct: you were pregnant. The instant he told me, I made plans to come down here. I’m here only to see you, Rosie.”
Todd Croft had come during St. John’s Carnival and had spied on me? I didn’t like that one bit.
Russ had found out only last week?
“I have everything I need,” I said. “But thank you.”
“You don’t have to forgive me but you do have to let me support that child,” Russ said.
“I don’t, though,” I said, and I walked out of the restaurant, past the Sugar Mill, and into the parking lot, where I climbed in my car and cried.
The following week, a package arrived containing five thousand dollars in cash. An identical package came the week after that. And the week after that.
October 29, 2006
Today at 5:09 a.m., Maia Rosalie Small entered the world weighing six pounds and fourteen ounces and measuring twenty inches long. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on.
The nurse brought me a form to fill out so she could make the birth certificate. On the line where it asked for the father’s name, I wrote Unknown.
November 1, 2006
Maia is three days old. Today, I sent an e-mail to Todd Croft at Ascension letting him know that I’d had a baby girl and that her name was Maia Small.
