My heart stopped when I heard that voice. For a moment, I thought I was imagining it, but a quick look at Nicholas sufficed to confirm that what I’d heard was real.
Anabel Grason was there.
I turned in time to see her stop next to me, and I felt every ounce of air in my lungs vanish.
“I’m so happy to see all of you, especially you, Andrew. You must be very proud to be the founder of such an empire.”
Nick’s grandfather, who had just been talking to me about English literature and what a disaster America was, now smiled, stiff but friendly, his thin wrinkled lips slightly pursed.
“Very nice to see you, Bel. It’s been years.”
My eyes were struggling to decide whom to look at: Nicholas, who appeared to be on the verge of committing murder, or my mother, who suddenly captured all my attention. She was as pale as the white linen napkins on the table, and her posture was as tense as a violin string.
Before Anabel could tell some cold lie, William scooted his seat back and took the reins, his eyes fixed on his ex-wife.
“We should talk. In private would be best.”
Anabel turned to him, her tight body squeezed into a bloodred dress, and with a studied smile, she said, “I’m sure Raffaella would like to be present as well.”
My mother looked up at her in a way that was plainly threatening. “I would recommend you leave. This is neither the time nor the place.”
What the hell was going on?
I was scared, scared that the suspicions I’d felt ever since I had lunch with that woman would turn out to be real.
Nick and I met eyes across the table just as someone grabbed the microphone to announce that it was time to take to the dance floor.
The music started blaring and everyone stood, smiling, unaware of the family crisis unfolding right in front of their noses, ready to dance and enjoy the party.
I knew I needed to get Nick away from her. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything else. Turning around, I walked over and grabbed his hand. He looked lost as I tugged him out onto the dance floor. I had no idea what our tablemates had thought seeing us leave together; I had no idea if it was obvious that our way of looking at each other was anything but fraternal; all I cared about just then was making sure Nick was okay.
I tried to get him to notice me, but he was still focused on the other end of the room. When I looked over there, I saw William disappear through a doorway with my mother and his ex-wife.
“What do you think they have to talk about?” I asked, a knot in my throat.
Nick looked down, as if he’d only realized in that moment that I was with him. “I have no idea, and I don’t want to know either.”
I tried to imagine the state he must be in. I’d seen him like this before, and I knew he would explode sooner or later.
I touched his cheek, forcing him to look at me, thinking that agreeing to meet that woman months ago was probably the worst mistake I could have ever committed. Just the sight of Nicholas reminded me that his mother’s presence brought him incomparable pain.
If he found out I’d been with her…
“Nicholas, I need to tell you something,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. I didn’t know how he’d react, but with his mother in the next room over and clearly prepared to make a spectacle, it was likely she would mention the time we met, and if Nick found out from her lips…he’d probably never forgive me.
“What?” he asked.
I took a deep breath, trying to find the right words, but then, someone interrupted us. It was Sophia, and her face was filled with worry.
“Nicholas, I think you should go see your parents.”
We pulled away from each other, each looking at her before glancing back at the door.
“I’ll go,” I said, wanting to keep things calm.
Nicholas grabbed my arm. “No,” he said resolutely.
“Nicholas, she doesn’t matter to me. There’s no reason for you to confront her.”
He looked like he was about to lose it.
I turned to Sophia. “Don’t let him go near that door.”
Before Nick could react, I took off across the room.
As soon as I approached the door, I could hear the shouting. For a moment, I was unsure whether to enter, but when I remembered my mother’s face, how tense she’d seemed… I knew she needed me. Nick’s mother could be a monster.
I carefully opened the door, and the three of them—William, Anabel, and my mother—turned to look at me, all of them red in the face from arguing. Anabel was next to the window and clearly enjoying herself. William looked faint. And my mother…my mother was sitting on a sofa as if she wished to vanish and never reappear again.
“Oh, lovely! Come on, Noah, I think you should hear what I have to say.”
Hearing this, my mother’s attitude changed, and she got up to stand between the two of us. “Don’t you dare involve my daughter in this! Don’t you dare!”
William came over and tried to put his arm over her shoulders, but then, something I’d thought would be impossible occurred: my mother shook him off violently and slapped him across the face. I froze. Everything happened so quickly that I couldn’t hear the door opening behind me. But I did feel a pair of hands on my shoulders.
“Don’t you touch me again!” My mother turned her back to William and walked toward me. “Noah, we need to go, now.”
Nicholas walked around in front of me and stood between us. “What the hell is going on here?”
Now it was Anabel’s turn to speak up. She walked away from the window, clearly happy with the scene she was causing and the sight of my mother smacking the only man she’d ever loved. “What’s going on is I’ve come to claim what’s mine.”
William laughed bitterly, quickly getting a hold of himself, looking more furious than I’d ever seen him.
“All you want is fucking money. You’re getting a divorce from that imbecile you call a husband, and so here you come telling lies to try and ruin something you could never do anything about: the fact I love that woman more than you could ever imagine.”
My mother turned around, tears pouring from her eyes, and stood still, her fingers trembling, her eyes focused on her husband.
“Every day I ask myself how you could deceive me for years with a little girl who only wanted one thing: for someone to save her from a hell she went looking for herself.”
My breath was racing. What was she getting at?
She went on: “Now you like to pretend you’re the best father in the world, and you throw it in my face that I left Nicholas behind, but you gave me no option! You traded us for her, and you had the balls to try and throw me out on the street.”
William burst out laughing. “I tried to divorce you long before I met Raffaella. Nicholas wasn’t even six years old then. I told you I didn’t love you anymore, I told you I’d take care of your every need, but you wouldn’t accept that. You wanted to perpetuate that farce of a marriage and go on living under my roof, and I agreed for the sake of our son.”
Nicholas was listening to each of his parents’ words, almost as if his life depended on it. It seemed he was hearing the answers he’d never had, as if he were finally understanding why everything had turned out the way it had and why he’d had to grow up without a mother.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, looking at my mother, not understanding a thing. Pulling away from Nick, I looked at William. At the drop of a hat, I’d found myself wrapped up in something I hadn’t even imagined could exist: two families bound together in unimaginable ways and with terrible consequences.
“You and Raffaella have known each other for years?” Nick asked, not seeming to believe it.
Anabel turned and looked at him with surprise. Then she looked at me. “You didn’t give him the letter, did you?”
My heart was pounding. Nick looked me in the eyes. The poor thing had no idea.
I shook my head, but the words caught in my throat. “I…”
“Noah and I had a very interesting meeting a few months back. It’s incredible what a person can do for money and for the sake of morbid curiosity, isn’t that right, Noah?”
Anabel looked almost insane. Nick stared at me incredulously.
“That’s a lie!” I shouted at that devil of a woman. “Nicholas, it’s not what you think! I agreed to meet her because she told me otherwise, she’d stop letting you see Maddie. That’s the only reason!”
“You saw her behind my back! You never told me?”
Nicholas’s eyes pierced my heart. I’d never seen such pain in them before. I knew I’d betrayed him by meeting with her, but it hadn’t been curiosity or money that had motivated me. I did it for him. All that woman wanted was to come between us, and her mere presence so upset him that he couldn’t listen to what I was telling him.
“Nicholas, listen…”
He wouldn’t let me complete the sentence. He stepped back, gave everyone a hateful look, and walked out, slamming the door.
I turned back to that demon woman. “The only reason you came here is to cause more harm than you already have!”
Anabel looked unfazed by all that was happening around her. She was calm, relaxed even. She seemed to be in her element. Her face hardened when she heard the door slam, and she turned back to William with determination. “I’ve come to inform my daughter’s father that the girl is his and that he must take responsibility for her.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. I looked at her, then at William, as he brought his hands to his head, and finally at my mother, who was a wreck, almost paralyzed after striking the one person who would never have hurt her.
And then, it all made sense.
William stepped forward between the two women. “You know what, Anabel? You’re a fucking liar, and I don’t believe a single word of what you’re saying.”
Anabel opened her bag and took out some papers, showing them to him as if they were printed on gold leaf while I remained still, watching the soap opera unfold before me.
“It’s a DNA test. I always had my suspicions, but I never wanted to find out because I was afraid Robert would leave me. But he’s turned out to be exactly like you, and now he wants to take everything away from me. Well, that’s not going to happen. Madison is your daughter, and you’re going to have to provide for her care.”
My mother continued standing there in silence. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
William tore the pages from her hand, looked them over for a moment, and then glared at her.
“Lies. This is just a bunch of fucking lies. I never took any DNA test. I never submitted to this, so you can get out of my sight before I call security and have you kicked out.”
Anabel smiled smugly. “The results are correct. You think it was hard to find someone to go into your house and get a DNA sample? You didn’t think it was odd when you got that call about a break-in and nothing was stolen apart from a hairbrush?”
Oh God…the thieves who broke in last summer… I couldn’t believe it; it had to be a lie. This was madness. Anabel had hired them; she must have paid their bail to get them out. I’m sure it was easy for them to hide the hairbrush from the police.
William was speechless. Anybody would be after a revelation like that.
Anabel turned to me with spite. “Look at you, judging me. How dare you.”
I walked straight up to her. “You know what I think? You don’t deserve to be a mother.”
Anabel chuckled and looked over at my mother. “Funny you should tell me that, when your mother was the one who left you alone at home with a man who nearly killed you while she was fucking my husband in a five-star hotel.”
My mother stepped in front of me and shouted, “Get out!”
Anabel giggled again and continued, with pity, “I left my son with his father because I thought it was best for him. Never in my life would I have left him with an abuser.”
My mother covered her mouth with her hand and began to sob uncontrollably. Anabel walked out. I turned to my mother, waiting for her to deny what that woman had just told me.
“Mom…?” I hadn’t realized my voice would crack until the word came out.
“Noah, I…”
Could the words of that witch possibly be true? Could my mother and Will really have met long before they’d married? When my father had almost killed me, had it really been because my mother was with another man?
“You said…you said you were working…” I responded, tears streaming down my cheeks, blinding me to everything in the rest of the room.
My mother tried to come near me, but I stepped back, keeping a distance.
“Noah, I never thought that could happen. You have to believe me. I always…I always felt so guilty for what happened, but…”
“How could you?” I shouted, wiping my tears away violently. “How could you leave me alone with him?”
William walked up beside her. I hated him with all my strength just then. I hated him so much, I thought I’d never be capable of forgiving him. “Noah, calm down. None of us wanted that to happen. None of us could ever have imagined that…”
I covered my face with my hands, unable to believe what they were saying. The fog that had settled on my life was finally lifting, and it revealed things were far, far worse than they’d seemed.
“I never thought I would say this, but Anabel Grason is right: you are worse than her, and I will never forgive you. You’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined me.”
I didn’t let them respond. I just turned around and headed for the door, ready to escape. I slammed it behind me, wiped away my tears again, probably smearing my makeup all over… and I realized I had no way of getting home, no one to pick me up. I didn’t want to call Steve.
A bundle of nerves, I took my phone out of my clutch and saw four missed calls from Briar.
I didn’t even know if I would be able to get outside, let alone explain to her what had happened, but I tried to calm myself because there was no point in continuing to dwell on what I’d just found out. My mother would get the prize for the worst mother of all time. Fine. I just needed to go, needed to hold the one person who could console me just then, the person who had walked out looking at me with the same hatred he’d felt for his mother.
My heart in my throat, I called Nick. His phone was off—that was unusual. He always complained that I never picked up the phone. I realized then that he wasn’t just angry: he saw my meeting with his mother as a betrayal.
I couldn’t believe how complicated things had become in such a short time. I couldn’t believe what my mother had done, the way she’d lied to me for years, about leaving me alone, about her relationship with William, about everything. And now it turned out Madison was Will’s daughter. How would Nick take that?
I was so stressed that I felt grateful when I saw Briar come through the door. She found me there, froze, then ran over to hug me. “Morgan?”
I collapsed onto a sofa, and she sat down beside me.
“I’m so sorry, Noah…” Briar said, wrapping an arm around me.
“I can’t believe what happened,” I started saying, but I couldn’t choose the right words. I couldn’t even tell her what was going on because she had no idea about me or my family’s history.
“I wanted to warn you, I really did…but he’s like that. He was that way with me, and he will be with you… Nicholas is incapable of loving anyone.”
My thoughts froze, and I looked up until my eyes met hers. I knitted my brows. I didn’t understand. Briar reached up and wiped off the tears still rolling down my cheeks.
“I hoped you hadn’t seen it, but…it’s obvious you have.”
I grabbed her hand to pull it away and scrutinized her face, trying to understand what she was saying.
“What are you talking about?” I asked as a horrible new fear rose in the center of my chest.
“I wanted to tell you…but then I saw how much you loved him, so I decided not to say anything. But then I saw him leave with her, and Morgan, I can’t let him do the same thing to you that he did to me. He doesn’t have the right to cheat on you right in front of everybody’s nose like that.”
I shook my head. My hands were starting to tremble.
“He’s a son of a bitch, Morgan. He always has been. He told me to keep quiet, to not tell you anything, and I agreed to because I thought he really was in love with you, but after seeing him make out with her, I can’t go on lying…”
I could almost hear my heart cracking. If what she was saying was true…
“He left with Sophia?” My voice broke as I uttered her name, and Briar gave me a pitying look, as if trying to understand how I could be so lost.
She must not have known I’d just had two bombs dropped on me: I was mourning Nick, but I was mourning my mother, too…
I stood, and Briar did the same.
“You slept with him, too?”
She remained silent for several seconds. That was all I needed to know the truth.
