7. Layla
— ? —
Layla
My hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t get the keys in the ignition.
Three times I tried. Three times the metal scraped against the slot and slipped away. My fingers wouldn’t cooperate. My whole body wouldn’t cooperate.
He’s here. Stefan is here. In my city. In my coffee shop. Looking at my daughter with those eyes.
Everything I built was crumbling around me.
“Mommy?”
I forced myself to turn around. Cece was in her car seat, chocolate milk stains on her shirt, watching me with those big brown eyes. His eyes. God, she had his eyes.
“One second, baby.” My voice came out wrong, too high, too tight. “Mommy just needs to find the right key.”
“That one.” Cece pointed at my keychain. “The shiny one. You always use the shiny one.”
“Right.” I grabbed the key she was pointing at and finally, finally got it into the ignition. “Thank you, sweet girl.”
“You’re welcome.” She kicked her feet against the seat. “Mommy, why you sad?”
“I’m not sad, baby.” I turned the engine over and gripped the steering wheel, forcing myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
“You look sad.” Cece’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Your eyes are leaky.”
I reached up and touched my cheek. Wet. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
“Mommy’s just tired.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand and adjusted the rearview mirror. “It’s been a long morning.”
“Who was that man?” Cece tugged at the straps of her car seat. “The big one. In the coffee shop.”
The knife twisted deeper.
“No one, sweetheart.” I pulled out of the parking spot, not trusting myself to look at her. “Just someone Mommy used to know a long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“Before you were born.”
“Wow.” Cece considered this with the gravity only a three-year-old could muster. “That’s super long ago.”
“It is.” I turned onto the main road, my knuckles white on the wheel. “Very super long ago.”
“He was nice.” Cece’s voice was dreamy now, the way it got when she was thinking hard about something. “He had pretty eyes. Like me.”
I almost drove off the road.
“Lots of people have brown eyes, Cece.” My voice sounded strangled even to my own ears. “It’s the most common eye color in the world.”
“What’s common mean?”
“It means lots of people have them.”
“Oh.” She was quiet for a moment. “But his were extra pretty. Shiny pretty. Like mine are shiny pretty.”
“Your eyes are very pretty, baby.”
“I know.” She said it without arrogance, just simple fact. “Mitch says I have princess eyes. He says one day a prince is gonna fall in love with my eyes and take me to a castle.”
“Mitch talks too much.” I stopped at a red light and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel.
“Mommy, are you sleeping?”
“No, baby.” I lifted my head. “Just resting.”
“You can’t rest while you’re driving.” Cece’s voice turned scolding. “That’s dangerous. You said so. You said we always gotta keep our eyes open when we’re driving.”
“You’re right.” The light turned green and I forced myself to focus. “I’m sorry. Mommy will keep her eyes open.”
“Good.” She nodded firmly. “I don’t want us to crash. Crashing is bad.”
“Very bad.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Can we get nuggets?”
I almost laughed. Almost. Leave it to a three-year-old to pivot from existential crisis to chicken nuggets in the span of thirty seconds.
“Maybe later.” I turned onto the street that led to her daycare. “Right now Mommy needs to drop you off at daycare, okay?”
“Okay.” Cece kicked her feet again. “Will you pick me up later?”
“Of course I will.” I pulled into the daycare parking lot and killed the engine. “I always pick you up.”
“Sometimes Nessa picks me up.”
“Sometimes.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned to face her. “But today Mommy will pick you up. I promise.”
“Pinky promise?” She held out her tiny hand, pinky extended.
“Pinky promise.” I hooked my finger through hers and squeezed.
“Okay.” She grinned at me, and it was his grin, it was Stefan’s grin, and I wanted to scream. “Love you, Mommy.”
“I love you too, baby.” I got out of the car and went around to unbuckle her, lifting her onto my hip. “More than anything in the whole wide world.”
“More than nuggets?”
“More than nuggets.”
“More than ice cream?”
“More than ice cream.”
“More than...” She scrunched up her face, thinking. “More than the moon?”
“More than the moon and the stars and the sun and everything in between.” I kissed her forehead, breathing in the smell of her shampoo and chocolate milk. “You’re my whole heart, Cece. You know that?”
“I know.” She patted my cheek with her sticky hand. “You tell me every day.”
“Because it’s true every day.”
I carried her inside, signed her in, handed her off to Miss Patricia with a smile I didn’t feel. Cece ran off to play with the other kids without looking back, already distracted by the block tower her friend Madison was building.
I made it to my car before I fell apart.
The sobs came out of nowhere. I sat in the driver’s seat with my hands over my mouth, trying to muffle the sounds, my whole body shaking.
Four years. I’d been running. I’d been hiding. Building a life brick by brick, convincing myself I was safe.
And now Stefan was here, and everything was falling apart.
I thought about those first days after I arrived in Savannah. Pulling into town in the middle of the night with nothing but a bag of clothes and a positive test burning a hole in my pocket. The fear so thick I could taste it.
Marie’s sister, Dot, had been exactly where Marie said she’d be.
She took one look at me on her doorstep, asked no questions, and gave me a room for the night and a hot meal I couldn’t finish.
In the morning she pressed a coffee into my hands and told me the town was small but the work was there if I was willing to look for it.
She still asked about Cece whenever I stopped by the bar.
I looked. Three days later I found a listing for a junior designer at a studio downtown, a woman named Nessa taking on help. I walked in with a folder of old sketches, work from the business I’d built and abandoned in Chicago, and I laid it on her desk before I lost my nerve.
She went through every page without saying a word. Those sharp hazel eyes moved slower the deeper she got.
“You did these?”
“I used to have my own firm.” I kept my chin up. “Before everything went to shit.”
“How far along are you?”
My hand had drifted to my stomach without my permission, and she’d seen. “Six weeks. Maybe seven.”
“And you can work?”
“I can work until I drop.”
“Then start Monday.” She’d closed the folder and slid it back to me. “Talent like this shouldn’t be sitting in a shoebox.”
I’d nearly cried right there in her office, this stranger seeing something in me my own husband’s family never had.
The months after that were brutal, but they were mine.
Sourcing fabrics with my feet swelling and my back aching, learning the vendors, staying late over drafting tables while the baby pressed harder against my ribs every week.
I worked up until the last day. Nessa gave me maternity leave when I couldn’t stand at the table anymore, then drove me to the hospital herself when my water broke at two in the morning.
I remembered the terror of that room. The fluorescent lights. The beeping machines. The loneliness of bringing a child into the world with no family beside me.
And then they’d put my daughter in my arms. Francesca Stone. Cece. This tiny, perfect, red-faced creature with a head full of dark hair and her father’s mouth, and I’d looked at her and thought, I will never let anyone hurt you. I will burn the world down before I let anyone take you from me.
I was back at the drafting table six weeks later with Cece asleep in a bassinet beside me. Nessa never once complained. When Cece was eight months old, Nessa spread my newest sketches across her desk and looked at them a long time.
“These are too good to have my name over them and not yours.” She’d said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve got the savings. You’ve got the eye. Let’s do it together.”
That was two and a half years ago. Now we owned one of the most sought-after design houses in Savannah. A client list that would have made my old Chicago contacts weep. A storefront downtown and a waitlist six months deep. I built that. Not the Grahams. Not their money. Me.
Without Stefan. Without anyone.
And now he was here, threatening to tear it all apart.
I pulled myself together enough to drive. Wiped my face, fixed my makeup in the rearview mirror, made myself look like someone who wasn’t falling apart inside.
The design studio was ten minutes from the daycare. I pulled into my usual spot and sat there for a moment, gathering strength.
Then I went inside.
Nessa was at her desk, surrounded by fabric samples and paint chips, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She looked up when I walked in.
“You’re late.” She glanced at her watch. “That’s not like you. Everything okay?”
“No.” I dropped into the chair across from her desk. “Everything is very much not okay.”
“What happened?” She pulled off her glasses and leaned forward. “Is Cece all right?”
“Cece’s fine.” I pressed my hands flat on her desk to stop them from shaking. “Stefan’s here.”
Nessa went very still. “What do you mean, he’s here?”
“I mean he’s here.” My voice cracked. “In Savannah. At the coffee shop this morning. He walked right up to me while I was sitting with Cece.”
“How is that possible?” Nessa stood up and came around the desk. “How did he find you?”
“He says he didn’t.” I shook my head. “He says he’s here for work. Some property deal. He claims he just walked in for coffee and there I was.”
“And you believe that?”
“I don’t know what I believe.” I pressed my palms against my eyes. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Did he see Cece?” Nessa’s voice was careful now, measured. “Did he get a good look at her?”
“He couldn’t stop looking at her.” The tears were threatening again. “He knows, Nessa. He took one look at her and he knew. He asked me point blank if she was his.”
“Shit.” Nessa dropped into the chair beside me. “What did you say?”
“I told him it was presumptuous.” A laugh bubbled up, hysterical and wrong. “Like that’s going to fool anyone. She’s his clone.”
“Okay.” Nessa grabbed my hands, forcing me to look at her. “Okay. Let’s think about this. What exactly did he say?”
I squeezed her fingers. “He gave me his business card. He’s staying at a hotel downtown. He said he’ll be here for a week.”
“And then what? He just leaves?”
“I don’t know.” I pulled my hands free and stood up, pacing the small office. “I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know what he’s planning. I don’t know anything except that my past just showed up in my present and I have no idea how to handle it.”
“What do you do?” Nessa’s voice turned sharp. “You tell him to go to hell. That’s what you do.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I spun around to face her. “What if he doesn’t just go away, Nessa? What if he has lawyers? What if he tries to take her?”
“Then we fight.” Nessa stood up and grabbed my shoulders. “You hear me? We fight. You’re not alone in this, Lay. You haven’t been alone for a long time.”
“He has money.” My voice was shaking. “He has connections. His family owns half the hotels in the Midwest. If he decides he wants custody, he can afford lawyers I can’t even dream of.”
“Money isn’t everything.” Nessa shook me gently. “You’ve been Francesca’s mother for three years. You’ve raised her, loved her, provided for her. No judge in the world is going to take a child away from the only parent she’s ever known.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” She pulled me into a hug. “I know how hard you’ve fought to build this life. I know how much you love that little girl. And I know you’re not going to let some man from your past destroy everything you’ve worked for.”
“He’s not just some man.” I pulled back and wiped my eyes. “He’s her father. Even if he doesn’t know it for sure yet, he knows. I could see it in his face. He looked at her and he knew.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Nessa crossed her arms. “Are you going to run again?”
“I can’t run.” I shook my head. “We have the business. Cece has school, friends, a life here. I can’t uproot her just because I’m scared.”
“Then you stay and you deal with it.” Nessa’s voice softened. “Whatever that looks like. Whatever you need. I’m here.”
“What if he’s changed?” The words came out before I could stop them. “What if the last four years changed him the way they changed me?”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t know.” I sank back into the chair. “I don’t know anything anymore. I spent four years hating him, blaming him, convincing myself I made the right choice. And then he shows up and looks at me with those eyes and I just... I don’t know, Ness. I don’t know what I feel.”
“You feel scared.” Nessa crouched down beside me. “And that’s okay. Anyone would be scared. But you can’t let fear make your decisions for you.”
“What if I was wrong?” The question had been eating at me since the moment I saw him in that coffee shop. “What if I misunderstood something? What if I ran for nothing?”
“You didn’t run for nothing.” Nessa’s voice was firm. “You ran because you had to. Because something happened that made you feel like you had no other choice. That doesn’t go away just because he showed up with sad eyes and a business card.”
“I have no idea what to do.” I dropped my head into my hands. “God, Nessa. How did I end up here?”