Chapter 40
He stares at me. I wait. The refrigerator hums.
“Just once,” he finally says.
Something inside me tears, though I can’t yet tell what has been severed.
I open my mouth to ask when it happened, but I already know the answer: Phoebe’s age minus about nine months.
My mind races back in time, landing on that snowy day in the lakeside café when Mick and I said goodbye for the last time. No wonder he could barely look at me.
“Makes total sense now,” I say. “Why you didn’t want to be friends.”
“That wasn’t the reason.”
“You sure about that?” I say. “Maybe you had feelings for her.”
“No,” he says. “It didn’t mean anything. We were both drunk.”
“Being drunk isn’t an excuse.”
“I know. It was a horrible mistake.”
“A mistake? It was a betrayal. She was my best friend, Mick. You were the love of my life,” I say.
It occurs to me that sex isn’t even the worst part—it’s the years bent around a secret I never knew to look for.
“I’m so sorry—”
“You are both cowards,” I say, realizing I’m talking about Erin in the present tense.
I feel a flash of rage that she’s not here to face my judgment.
Mick’s eyes lift to mine. “She made me promise never to tell you. She said there was no point—that it would only hurt you.”
“Oh, I know. I read that part, too.”
He looks down, his thumb tracing a nick in the tabletop.
“So, where were you guys?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter,” I say, knowing that I won’t be able to handle it if it happened at the orchard. Or in the back of his truck. Or in her bedroom. Or anywhere I’d ever been with either of them.
“Was this some kind of revenge? Did you really hate me that much?”
His eyes snap up. “C’mon, Billie. You know I could never hate you. I was crushed without you…totally lost.”
“So lost that you had to sleep with Erin? Is that what this was? And what was her excuse? That I’d abandoned you all by moving to New York? That I was a bad friend first?”
My mind races back to the call I took in the supply closet. How I’d promised to be at her side through her pregnancy. How she leaned on me while keeping the truth in the vault.
“It wasn’t like that,” he says. “We weren’t punishing you for anything. It was just a bad time in both our lives.”
“Well, you picked a hell of a way to commiserate.”
“You have no idea how much we both regretted it—”
“Phoebe could be yours, Mick. We’re talking about guardians, and she could be your biological child.”
“She’s not mine.”
“She has your eyes,” I say. The same impossible blue. The ones I used to drown in.
“She can’t be mine. Erin got her period a few days after we were together.”
“Ever heard of implantation bleeding?”
“She said there was no way.”
“So you just believed her?”
“Yes.”
“Even though she was lying to her so-called best friend? You just took her word at face value?”
He stares at me, frozen. The overhead light casts a shadow on his face, making him look older.
“Did it cross your mind to take a paternity test?”
“Of course it did.”
“And?”
“Erin didn’t want that.”
Memories rearrange themselves, snapping into a new pattern.
“Is that why you’re so close to Phoebe? Because you think she could be yours?”
“No. I’m close to Phoebe because she’s Phoebe.”
“Mick,” I breathe. “She could be yours. Admit it.”
“I guess anything is possible.”
“It wouldn’t be a question if you hadn’t had sex with her,” I say under my breath.
His lips part, then close. “Does this change your decision?” he says. “About being Phoebe’s guardian?”
“No. But it’s changed my trust in you—and any feeling of partnership.”
“I understand,” he says, his gaze dropping.
“I’m going to bed,” I say, the chair legs scraping as I push back. “Enough damage has been done for one night.”