Page 71 of Promise Me Nothing
She sleeps off her vodka hangover while I open her cell phone and scroll through her contacts list. And there, sandwiched between Joanne Mabel and Patricia Murphy, is Henry Morrison.
I click over to messages, searching for the name in the endless mass of texts to friends planning pedicures and salon visits and trips to the Galleria.
I miss you, I finally read.You need to come meet Ivy. She looks so much like you.
It’s a text from years ago, sent only a few months after Ivy was born. And his response is about what I would expect from a man having an affair when he had a family somewhere else.
Telling my mom he couldn’t come visit. That he had a family and he’d made that clear when she’d decided to keep the baby.
My head starts to pound, everything beginning to feel like a tangled web of lies and affairs and death and I can’t keep it all straight.
So I go straight back to Lucas.
The party is still going, and I can’t find Lucas anywhere. So I go to his bedroom and bang on the door enough times that he quits banging his girlfriend and lets me in. Remmy waves at me with a sneaky little smile from the bed, tucked under a sheet.
But I storm past her, out to the same balcony where we had just toasted his father.
“What’s going on?” he asks, coming up beside me as I stare out at the ocean. “Is something wrong?”
I laugh, though there’s absolutely no humor to be found anywhere in this fucked up situation.
So I tell him what I know. Which isn’t much, but it’s enough.
That Henry Morrison,hisfather, had also had an affair with my mom. That he was Ivy’s dad.
Lucas’ face says exactly what I feel.
That it’s too much information.
Too many secrets.
Too much to keep straight in the wake of everything else.
“So… that means Ivy’s… my sister, too?”
That hadn’t even occurred to me, and the reality of it pinches something inside of me, knowing he’s her real brother and I’m not.
I nod. “Probably.”
“So that means Hannah is also related to her.”
My brow furrows. “Who?”
“Hannah is Henry’s daughter. My half-sister. So, Ivy’s half-sister, too.”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know what you’re thinking in your head, but Ivy is not going to get wrapped up in whatever ideas you have about meeting this… Hannah girl. I don’t want Ivy to ever know. She’s going to have enough struggles in life,” I say, referencing her how sick she got just last year, how she’d gone deaf. “She doesn’t also need to have strange half relationships with people who don’t fucking matter.”
Lucas shakes his head. “I can’t lie to Hannah.”
“So you’ve already decided you’re going to meet her?”
He looks unsure, so I play off that lack of certainty.
Because I don’t need any new shit in my life right now. There’s enough going on.
“I think it’s a mistake, Lucas. You’re inviting a host of problems. You think someone like her, who comes from a dad like yours, a guy who had affairs with any number of rich women in the South Bay, is going to be anything other than money hungry? If she just lost her parents, she’s probably living with an aunt or a grandparent. They’ll want some of the money that doesn’t belong to any of them. They’ll justuseyou, Lucas. We don’t need people like them in our lives.”
It was a low blow. Something I’ve never regretted saying but still wonder about.
