Serenity
Xander had his sleeves rolled to his forearms and his tie loosened and I needed him to stop looking like that while he was explaining discovery timelines because my brain could not hold legal strategy and attraction at the same time.
He’d been at the apartment since eight that morning.
Files spread across the kitchen table, laptop open, yellow legal pad covered in notes written in handwriting so neat it looked printed.
Rita was napping in the back bedroom because she’d been up since five with heartburn and told us to wake her when we had something worth hearing.
So it was just me and Xander at the table, close enough that I could smell his cologne every time he shifted in his chair, and I was sitting here nine months pregnant with swollen ankles and an ankle monitor and unwashed hair piled on top of my head trying to focus on witness deposition strategy while this man’s jawline was testing my commitment to being a serious defendant.
It was embarrassing. I looked like a whole mess.
My skin was dry, my face was puffy, I hadn’t worn real clothes in weeks.
Everything I owned that still fit was a rotation of oversized t-shirts and stretchy pants that made me look like I was auditioning for a “before” photo.
And here was Xander Cross looking like a GQ editorial in my kitchen talking about prosecutorial overreach while I fantasized about what his hands would feel like on my lower back.
I needed therapy. Or maybe I just needed to have this baby so my hormones would stop making me delusional.
“So we can prove she wrote it.”
“We can prove it was created on her machine, on her user account, within the timeline of the cover-up. That’s enough for a jury.
And that’s not all. He’s been sending me financial records from that same computer.
Shell companies, wire transfers, communications with city contractors.
The picture it paints of Vivica is exactly what we need.
A woman who operated outside the law habitually and was more than capable of committing a violent act to protect her family’s reputation. ”
He was energized. His eyes were bright and his posture had changed from the careful, measured attorney who walked in this morning to a man who could see the path to winning.
He talked with his hands when he got excited, pointing at the screen, tapping the legal pad, gesturing at invisible jurors.
I watched him build my defense with genuine passion and something inside my chest ached because I couldn’t remember the last time a man fought for me without wanting something in return.
Julius wanted a trophy wife. Mega wanted a possession.
Xander wanted me free. And the fact that he wanted it this badly, that my freedom mattered to him beyond a legal fee, made it impossible to keep my feelings in the professional lane where they belonged.
Then his face changed.
“There’s something else we need to discuss.
” His voice dropped and the energy in the room shifted and I knew whatever was coming next wasn’t good because Xander only used that tone when he was about to deliver something he wished he didn’t have to.
“The prosecution filed a motion last week. They’ve located the sealed adoption records. ”
The warmth I’d been feeling evaporated. Every ounce of it, gone, replaced by something cold and sharp that pressed against the inside of my ribs.
“How? Those records were sealed through a private agency. Vivica made sure of that.”
“The anonymous tip included enough specifics about the child for the state to petition the court to unseal them. The judge granted it based on the relevance to the murder investigation. They know about the adoption, Serenity. And they’ve filed a subpoena for a DNA test to confirm that David Jamison is the biological father.
If paternity is established, it gives them motive.
A sexual relationship between a minor student and her teacher that resulted in pregnancy and, in their theory, his murder. ”
“She’s twelve years old, Xander. She doesn’t know anything about any of this. She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t know who he was. She has a family and a life and they want to drag her into a courtroom and test her blood to prove that a dead man groomed me?”
“I’m going to fight it. There are privacy protections for adopted minors and I intend to use every single one of them. But I need you to be prepared for the possibility that this goes forward. The prosecution is building a circumstantial case and the DNA is the strongest piece they’re missing.”
I put both hands on my belly and stared at the table.
My daughter. My Kayla. I wanted her safe from this.
I just wanted her to live in bliss not knowing the ugliness she was born from.
I didn’t want her to know me, David, nor Vivica.
Our family was too complicated and she didn’t need to be thrown in the mix of it.
My phone rang.
I didn’t recognize the number since it was a Maryland area code. I almost let it go to voicemail but something told me to answer, some instinct that had been sharpened by months of receiving calls that changed everything.
“Hello?”
“Is this Serenity Banks?” The voice was female and tight, like a woman holding back everything she actually wanted to say.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Ayanna Lake. I’m the adoptive mother of Kayla Lake.”
The kitchen disappeared. Xander disappeared.
The legal pad, the laptop, the files, the ankle monitor, all dissolved into nothing and there was just me and this woman’s voice in my ear and the sound of my own heartbeat flooding my head.
I’d imagined this call a thousand times.
I’d rehearsed what I’d say, how I’d sound, what words I’d choose to introduce myself to the woman who raised my daughter.
I was never supposed to receive it like this.
Not on house arrest. Not facing murder charges.
Not nine months pregnant by a man who kidnapped me.
“Yes,” I managed. “This is Serenity.”
“I’m going to be brief because I don’t know you and I’m not interested in getting to know you right now.
We received a subpoena this morning for a DNA test for my daughter in connection with a criminal case in Connecticut.
My husband and I have spent twelve years raising this child.
We love her. She is ours. And now your situation is disrupting her life and I need you to understand how upsetting that is for our family. ”
Every word was precise, measured. I could hear the anger underneath them, restrained but present, and I deserved every bit of it.
This woman didn’t ask for any of this. She opened her home and her heart to a baby that I couldn’t keep and built a life around her and now my past was showing up at her door with a subpoena and a dead man’s name.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My voice cracked on the second word. “I never wanted this. I never wanted her involved in any of this.”
“Well, she’s involved now.” Ayanna paused.
I could hear her breathing. Then her tone shifted, just slightly, just enough to tell me the next thing she said was harder for her to deliver than everything before it.
“Kayla has always known she was adopted. We told her when she was young because we believed she deserved the truth. She’s never expressed interest in finding her birth parents.
Until today. When we told her about the subpoena, she asked about you.
She asked if she could speak with you.” Another pause.
“She’s here. She wants to talk to you now. ”
No. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for this, not now, not today, not ever, really.
I had fantasized about meeting Kayla for twelve years but the fantasy was always different.
I was clean. I was free. I was wearing something beautiful and my hair was done and I had something to offer her besides a criminal record and an apology.
I wanted to meet my daughter as someone worth knowing, not as a cautionary tale.
But I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t refuse my daughter’s voice after twelve years of silence. Even if I wasn’t ready. Even if the timing was catastrophic. Even if hearing her would break me.
“Okay,” I whispered.
There was shuffling on the other end, a muffled exchange between Ayanna and someone else, and then a new voice came through. She sounded young and soft and careful, like a child who knows something important is happening but hasn’t figured out exactly what.
“Hi. This is Kayla. Um… is this… are you my…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.
Her voice hit me somewhere below my chest and above my stomach, in a place I didn’t know existed until it detonated.
Twelve years of silence, grief, Friday afternoons in a cafe, withdrawal sweats in a rehab bed, promises I made to myself in the dark, all of it collapsed into the sound of a twelve-year-old girl trying to figure out what to call the woman who gave her away.
And then my body broke.
The contraction seized me so hard and so fast that the phone slipped from my hand and hit the table.
It started in my back and wrapped around my entire torso and squeezed with a force that bent me forward in the chair and ripped a sound out of my throat that I didn’t recognize as my own voice.
My hands grabbed the edge of the table and my knuckles went white and I heard Xander’s chair scrape back and his voice saying my name but it was distant, underwater, somewhere outside the wall of pain that had closed around me.
“Serenity. Serenity, look at me. What’s happening?” Xander was beside me, one hand on my shoulder, his face close to mine.
I couldn’t answer. Another contraction hit before the first one fully released, an excruciating wave on top of a wave, and I slid out of the chair onto my knees on the kitchen floor and grabbed Xander’s arm with both hands and squeezed until I felt his muscle compress under my fingers.
He picked up my phone from the table. “This is Xander Cross, Ms. Banks’s attorney. There’s a medical emergency and she’ll need to call you back.” He hung up before Ayanna could respond and slid the phone into his pocket and then he was on the floor next to me with his arm around my shoulders.
“Is it the baby?”
“She’s coming,” I gasped. “Xander, she’s coming now.”
He was on his feet and moving down the hallway before I finished the sentence.
I heard him knock on the bedroom door and say “Rita, we need to go, the baby is coming” in a voice that was calm enough to keep an old woman from panicking but urgent enough to get her moving.
Rita appeared in the hallway within seconds.
“Call her probation officer,” Rita told Xander. “Tell them we’re going to the hospital and if they have a problem with it they can arrest me.”
Xander helped me to my feet and I leaned against him and we moved toward the door. The ankle monitor blinked green against my swollen skin.
In the car, somewhere between the apartment and the hospital, between contractions that were coming faster now and closer together, I realized two things at the same time.
My second child was about to be born. And my first child’s very first interaction with her birth mother was three seconds of silence followed by a scream of agony before the phone went dead.
That was what Kayla heard. That was what she’d carry.
And I couldn’t fix it because I was bent double in the backseat of Xander’s car screaming into my own hands while Rita held my head and told me to breathe and the world narrowed to nothing but pain and motion and the unbearable weight of being two kinds of mother at the same time.