‘I’m sorry, Miss Knight. There’s no way that baby’s mine.’
ABI
october
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
Fear crept over me, sliding along every muscle and bone as a new realization settled over me: maybe I didn’t know my daughter at all.
‘How?’ I asked Tyler. ‘How could – how do you – ?’
‘I know it’s not mine,’ he cut me off, his voice rough. ‘Because Olivia and I never . . .’ He looked away.
I pressed my fingers hard into my eyeballs, stars exploding on the undersides of my lids. The vodka I’d gulped earlier burned bitterly in my empty stomach. ‘You never had sex.’
‘Right.’
Olivia was cheating on her boyfriend. It explained so much. She’d been so different lately. Distant. I had a sudden memory of her at the Stokeses’ annual neighborhood barbecue. I’d arrived late, work a handy excuse.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like people, just that I didn’t really have anything interesting to talk about. Once I’d ticked off Olivia’s achievements, the conversation went stale. Besides, I was really more of an observer than a participator. I was better at standing on the sidelines.
Jen Stokes had opened the door, a glass of champagne in each hand and a wide smile on her lips. Her dark corkscrew curls bounced around a heart-shaped face.
‘Hi, Jen.’ I smiled hard, the muscles in my jaw twinging painfully.
Jen and I had known each other since the girls were five. Even after all this time, we were friendly but not friends. Truth be told, Jen intimidated the hell out of me. Standing next to her made any bravado I had disappear, as if it had been sucked into the black hole of her self-confidence. She reminded me of what it was like being in junior high and high school.
Back then I was an outcast. The Girl Whose Mom Committed Suicide. Nobody knew what to say to me, nor I to them. I never wore the right clothes or had the right hair or makeup. I spent lunch alone in a corner of the cafeteria, was never picked for teams in PE, was the last to get a partner for school projects. My teenage years were even worse, lonely until I developed breasts and learned to use my looks to get guys to like me.
As I got older, I learned I was perfectly fine on my own. In fact, I preferred it that way. I didn’t need any better friend than my daughter.
‘Abi, so glad you could make it!’ Jen leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, then handed me a glass of champagne.
I took a tiny sip. It was sweet and crisp, obviously expensive.
‘How are you?’ I asked. My voice was too quiet, lost in the chatter of people inside, so I said it again. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Oh, you know, kids, work, life.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed drily, but I knew she loved it. Jen was an ER doctor; she thrived under pressure.
I followed Jen through her tastefully decorated living room, my feet sinking into thick, oatmeal-colored carpet. We exited the back door to a sprawling deck that overlooked a shade-dappled yard. A shimmering rectangular swimming pool glinted in the waning light. The rich scent of barbecued ribs and burgers wafted up toward me.
‘Have you seen Olivia?’ Jen asked. Something in her voice made me look up sharply. I felt my face freeze, determined not to show that her words sent a gush of worry flooding through my veins.
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, no reason.’ Her eyes skated sideways, and she set her glass on a table. ‘I’m gonna grab you a plate of food. Then we can catch up. Here –’ She turned to a leggy blonde woman wearing a short sunset-colored caftan and high canvas wedges and pulled her over to me.
‘Marie, this is Abi. Abi, Marie Corbin.’
Before I had a chance to reply, Jen had headed down the stairs and disappeared into the crowd. I frowned, feeling inexplicably abandoned. I tidied a few loose strands of hair behind my ears.
Marie was gorgeous, and I felt my shoulders round as nerves pinched my stomach. She smiled at me, her sapphire eyes crinkling, her blonde hair a sleek mane perfectly framing an angular face. ‘Oh, Abi, yes. I remember you. You’re –’
‘Olivia’s mom.’ I forced a smile.
‘I was going to say an accountant at Brown Thomas and Associates. You did the books for my new interior design company, and I was so pleased at how quickly you got them done.’
‘Oh,’ I said, startled. Usually people only knew me as Olivia’s mom, the mother of the rising star of the swim team. I tried to think of the last time I was anything else, and couldn’t. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Across the yard, Jen’s husband, Mark, raised a hand in greeting. Mark was a square-jawed business type, handsome in an aging frat-boy sort of way. I waved back.
‘I’ll just go say hi.’ I pointed at Mark, glad for an excuse to leave. ‘Nice to meet you.’
I went downstairs, grabbed a Coke from an ice bucket, and huddled next to a tall shrub in the corner of the backyard. If Sarah were here, she’d push me to go talk to people. She said I used work and Olivia as bricks in a wall I’d built around myself.
Sarah was always right and she did everything in the proper order. She’d finished college with a degree in psychology, then got a job, then a husband, a kid, and so on. Now she was a counselor for victims of traumatic cases. Most of her clients were referred from the Seattle Police Department. I was a wrecking ball in comparison: a single mom with a job I’d settled for and no real friends.
Just then something cold splashed against my arm.
‘Hi, Abi!’
‘Derek. Hi.’ Mark and Jen’s son used to call me Miss Knight. I remembered when he was a chubby-cheeked second-grader with perpetually grass-stained knees, and now here he was, calling me by my first name. I suddenly felt rather old.
He grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry about that.’
I brushed the liquid from my arm. ‘When did you get old enough to drink?’ I teased.
‘I’m nineteen now,’ Derek said, proud in that way teenagers get when they think they’re all grown-up.
I smiled fondly at him. ‘Have you seen Olivia?’
His smile faded. ‘No. Why? Is she in some sort of trouble?’
‘No!’ I laughed at the thought. Olivia never got in trouble. ‘Nothing like that. We were planning to meet here.’
‘Oh. . .’ He ran a hand over his jaw and I noticed how much he looked like his mother. He had the same intense beauty: shaggy, dark curls; a narrow, heart-shaped face. His dark-blue eyes were piercing and intelligent. He was a good-looking kid. Probably already breaking hearts.
Somebody – a young woman – came up next to him then, touched his shoulder. He glanced at her, then at me, then stepped back. The entire exchange probably only lasted seconds, but it took me all that time to realize that the young woman next to him was Olivia.
My brain felt like it was spinning in mud. Her long, silky blonde locks were gone, cropped into a pink-streaked pixie cut. Gone also were her usual T-shirt and jeans, replaced with black leggings and a low-cut peasant top that plunged into her cleavage.
I remember looking at Olivia in the fading evening light and feeling like I didn’t know her anymore. I knew then that something had been shaken loose, something I had no power to put back together. . .
‘Whose baby is it?’ I asked