Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nikolett glanced over at him in surprise.
“My parents were members,” he explained.
“Mom, two dads. Actually, one was my father, and the other one was just this asshole who showed up sometimes. I didn’t know who he was to them until I was sixteen and they told me about the society in secret.
They waited until they were fairly certain I’d be invited to be a member too, then they explained the man who kept showing up and referring to himself as my father wasn’t their asshole friend/sperm donor the way I thought. He was their husband.”
“He was a member, married, but you didn’t see him?”
Eric leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling.
“He was an advokat—a lawyer—in Sweden. He won a case against one of our banks that was laundering money for people in the Balkans.” Eric shrugged.
“I don’t think he cared about stopping money laundering, or any of the other crimes he prosecuted. He simply liked to fight. To win.
“I know Nils didn’t care about me, or my parents. He would show up in Copenhagen—that’s where I was born and where I grew up—for some holidays, say something cruel, sometimes say he was my father and I’d get upset because he was a stranger. They’d fight, and he’d leave.”
“How often did he visit?”
“Three or four times a year. I wish I could have pretended he didn’t exist, but…” Eric rolled his head to look at her. “He was my biological father.”
“You had a DNA test?”
Eric snorted. “No need. I look like Nils, not like the man who was my real father, Lethabo. Lethabo was Black South African. He studied physics at the University of Cape Town. Came to Geneva to work on his doctorate, then got a job with a research group based out of Copenhagen. He was recruited just after he finished the doctorate work, and placed in a trinity with my mother and Nils.”
“Genetics are odd,” she said. “Just because you look like Nils may not mean…”
She trailed off as he shook his head. “Lethabo wasn’t able to have kids.
I don’t remember why, but they knew I was Nils’s.
I always knew Lethabo wasn’t my biological father because of a medical issue that prevented him from having kids.
Once I learned about biological parents versus real parents, I realized Nils must be my father the way he said.
Since I didn’t know about the trinity marriage, I decided he must have been the sperm donor, though we never talked about it. ”
“That’s a lot for a child to try to piece together.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have cared as much if he hadn’t been such an asshole. Every time he called himself my father, I got upset because I didn’t want to be like him. He really was a dick. I think that’s why I’m an only child. My mother could only bear to sleep with that asshole once.”
Imagining Nils—cold and cruel asshole that he was—even kissing his brilliant, kind mother was enough to make Eric feel ill.
“I think they didn’t know, not really, until after I was born.”
“Know what?”
“How much of an asshole he was. Otherwise, I doubt they would have let him name me, or given me his last name instead of my mother’s.”
There was a moment of silence before she asked, “What do you mean they didn’t know until after you were born? What happened?”
“He stole me.”
Nikolett jerked up. “What?” She tried to reach for him, apparently having forgotten about the restraints. “Take these off.”
Eric smiled lazily. “No.”
“Fine.” Nikolett bent, grabbing the end of the Velcro with her mouth.
“If you take them off, I won’t tell you the rest of the story.”
Slowly, she lowered her hand, glowering at him in a way that only widened his smile.
“How did Nils steal you?”
“In Denmark, Sweden, most of Scandinavia, babies nap in their strollers outside. The cold air, being outside, it’s good for them.”
She nodded. “I’ve seen pictures of babies bundled up until only a tiny bit of their face shows. They look like fluffy blankets with a face.”
He laughed at the description.
“This is how my father told the story—he and my mother were sitting in a café. I was napping outside in my stroller with all the other fluffy blanket babies. They finished, went outside, and I was gone.
“Kidnapping children it just…doesn’t happen.
When they couldn’t find me after checking everywhere, they called the police and it was instantly national news.
Maybe the Danish people would have to change their whole way of life to protect the children.
” Eric shook his head. “They call Nils to tell him, to ask him to come and be with them and help them look. He tells them he’s in Copenhagen and he has me. ”
“He walked up to the café, grabbed your stroller, and walked away?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t like seeing children everywhere.
He traveled a lot and decided he preferred countries where children, especially babies, were kept inside, not brought out into public spaces out of fear of something happening.
He decided the best way to make sure he didn’t have to see sleeping babies out on the sidewalk was to scare the entire country into thinking their child would be kidnapped. ”
“Asshole,” she breathed.
“Yes. And it gets worse.”
“Worse?”
“He went to the authorities who were frantically searching for me and said that I was never lost or missing. Everything was fine because he was my father. Played it off like my mother was losing her mind and didn’t remember he said he’d take me for a walk.
Also implied that maybe my mother was distracted by the affair she was having with Lethabo, and that’s why she forgot. ”
“Were your mother and Nils legally married?”
“No. None of my parents ever legally married, in any country, but Nils acted like he and my mother were together. I saw video of the news coverage. He was calm while she was sobbing, angry.”
“A distraught mother made to look like an unstable woman.” Nikolett sneered a little. “How predictable and disappointing.”
“Plus, the country wanted it to be true—wanted it to be her panic and stupidity at fault rather than believe strangers would steal their babies. Though now, most parents use baby monitors and have GPS tags on the strollers.”
“Were you okay? How long did he have you?”
“I wasn’t hurt, though my mother said he didn’t feed or change me in the ten hours I was ‘missing.’ I was hungry and exhausted from crying when she got me back. After that, they never left me alone in a room with him.”
“They protected you.”
“Yes.”
They sat there in heavy, but not uncomfortable, silence.
“My father tried to force me to marry when I was twelve,” Nikolett said into that calm silence. “The marriage was just a legal way to sell me to an older man who was probably a pedophile.”
Eric froze, his stomach sinking. He saw her in his mind, a child version of Nikolett, her blue eyes big and scared. The soft version of her only he saw magnified by ten, made even more vulnerable with youth.
“Fuck, Nikki. I’m sorry.”
“It’s why I…I mean, what you did was objectively horrible, but I… It...” Her words tumbled to a stop.
It took him a minute to realize what she was trying to say. “I used the trinity marriage as a legal way to force you to do something. Not exactly the same as what your father did, but close.”
She nodded once.
“Fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry.” Eric needed to release her and get the hell away from her because she deserved better than him.
Yet he felt paralyzed, trembling with both the need to act and the fear that anything he did would be wrong.
“You should just marry the cookie guy, and we’ll find—no, I mean, you’ll pick, I’ll stay out of it—someone else—”
“I won’t love them. Not the way I love you.” She rolled her head to the side to look at him. “And I don’t want them. I want you. Even when you make me cry.”
Eric twisted and kissed her, soft at first, until she deepened it. And when they finally broke apart, some of the darkness in the room had lifted.
He rested his forehead on hers. “Have I mentioned I’m sorry?”
“Several times.”
“Will you tell me the rest? About your childhood and your marriage… Anything you’re willing to tell me, I want to know.”
She tried to smile but it was shaky. “I might cry. When it’s you, I don’t think I’ll be able to explain it like a report, facts only.”
“It’s okay to cry, Nikki. And I don’t want bare facts like your life is a report. I want to know what happened to you.”
Nikolett took a steadying breath, then started talking.
At first, it was calm and measured, the facts-only version of her life.
Expectations were she’d marry and raise children, maybe work for her husband’s family’s business, but her primary role in life would be wife and mother.
She didn’t question that, or the way her father treated her, until she got her hands on books that opened her world.
Her father was normally strict about what she read, but she had an e-reader full of books in English and he didn’t read that language.
She started imagining another life for herself, so when her father wanted some religious thing and was planning to sell her to the artisan creating the piece, she objected.
Eric waited for her to finish, then asked, “Did you kill him, or did you run away?” He paused to consider. “Maybe killed him then ran away?”
“That’s your question? Not, did my father suspect the artist was a pedophile, or—”
“Of course he was a fucking pedophile and your father knew it. The man wanted to marry a twelve-year-old, and your father thought it was a good idea.” Eric snorted. “I’m not saying your father was a fellow pedophile. I’m betting he thought of you as a possession instead of a person.”
Nikolett gave him an odd look.
“Errr. I mean to say… I’m sorry that your father was an asshole.”
He decided to shut up before he said anything else stupid.
“More like livestock, not a possession,” Nikolett said after a moment. “You don’t beat a chair or a pot, but you might beat a horse or mule.”