Chapter 15 Victoria #2
Nighttime descended with a moody indigo sky and the moon hung low, as if its swollen bloodless sphere carried too much weight to achieve its usual height.
Victoria drove home on autopilot, questioning the logistics of how this could have happened, since the central event itself was beyond comprehension.
How was it possible that Ace, her husband, the love of her life, was the same man who had abandoned her best friend?
The same man who had told her he had no children.
The same man who had held her in his arms and thanked her for proving everyone wrong and finally making him a father.
Victoria gripped the wheel tightly. She recognized that it was possible—in the details, anyway.
Ace’s real name was Andrew. His close friends had started calling him Ace a couple decades back due to his ace moves in both poker and business—but professionally and in print he was referred to as Andrew.
In print. In Liz’s yearly Google search…
what had she called it? An exercise in self-sabotage?
Victoria remembered Liz saying that she had quit the practice a few years ago, after her thirtieth birthday, before any mentions of Victoria and Ace’s wedding would have cropped up on the internet.
Victoria shook her head. If she or Ace had been on social media…
If she had been the kind of woman who had a couple’s picture on her phone’s lock screen…
If Victoria, Ace, Liz, and Preston had had dinner together instead of repeatedly having to cancel for various reasons at the last minute…
If, if, if. But on second thought, what did the timing and the way it had transpired matter?
That it had taken place in public, at Victoria’s baby shower, only made it more cinematic, but the facts themselves were explosive in any capacity.
Victoria approached their house, feeling a kind of apprehension in her chest like she was entering a crime scene.
Would she find an emptied-out safe, a shimmering carpet of broken glass, a bludgeoned body, or just the metaphorical cadaver of her previous life?
Victoria pressed the button to open the gate to their driveway and pulled in, the trees casting elongated shadows that looked like ghosts on the gravel.
She opened her garage door and saw that Ace’s car was in his stall.
Victoria wasn’t ready to face him. She couldn’t reconcile the person she married with the kind of person capable of these actions.
Someone who could lie to her about the most basic facts of who he was.
Someone who could rewrite history in every single conversation that had taken place between them.
Someone who could callously abandon his own flesh and blood, his child, Victoria’s friend, Liz.
For the first time, and with a pang of guilt about this, Victoria’s thoughts refracted in scope so she wasn’t only focusing on her own pain and betrayal but also thinking about her friend.
How lost and destroyed Liz must feel too.
While still sitting in the driver’s seat, Victoria called her.
Liz’s phone went straight to voicemail. Victoria tried again with the same result.
She left a message asking Liz to call her—there was no need to say any more.
Then Victoria walked into the house. She passed through the mudroom from the garage and into the kitchen, where Ace was waiting for her.
He sat at the table, illuminated by the sole light in the room that was on, so he looked like he was in a play, the rest of the set fading into the background.
Victoria turned on the lights over the kitchen island and then went around turning on every other light in the vicinity.
She would not allow him the privilege of a spotlight.
She would not give him anything. No latitude, no grace.
“Please,” Ace said, his voice broken. “Please just listen.”
Victoria wordlessly marched over to the table, yanked out the chair on the far end, opposite Ace, and sat in it. She glared at him across the expanse between them.
“Start talking.”
Ace nodded with the look of a man resigned to his fate.
“Thirty-four years ago, I got someone pregnant—”
“Someone. Angela. Liz’s mother.”
“Yes.”
Victoria knew this was obvious and she was being petty, but she couldn’t help herself. She was outraged. She was also irritated: Wasn’t this the oldest story in the book—a man is so enthralled with the invitation his penis has received, he forgets what it’s capable of?
But the lying idiot—Victoria’s husband, love of her life—pressed on.
“Angela told me she didn’t want a baby and she was going to go to a clinic, then she disappeared.
A few months later, she called me asking for money and told me she didn’t go through with it.
I tried to step up and do what was necessary.
I sent money; I flew all over creation to see them.
But Angela made it impossible, and what was I supposed to do when she was living in Bali or had a new boyfriend and told me they were better off without me, or changed her phone number so I couldn’t find them? ”
Through her anger, Victoria felt sadness creep in for everyone involved.
But then it passed. Victoria seethed at the man she thought she had known, a man whose twin traits of tenacity and honesty were, in part, what had allowed Ace to become a self-made success.
“You can throw every excuse in the book at this and you can try to rationalize the decisions you made three decades ago, but right now, you’re talking to your wife.
Your wife, who you lied to from the start, and then every day after.
You looked me in the face and kept this colossal secret from me for every single second I have known you.
How, in the millions of minutes we have spent together, in the countless opportunities you had, could you have not told me? ”
“I was ashamed. I felt so guilty that I gave up on her. So I buried it. I decided I didn’t have a child.
I wasn’t a father. I was more like…a sperm donor.
It was the only way I could go on, the only way I knew how to cope.
Otherwise, I would have been flattened by it.
” Ace put his head in his hands. “Over time, it felt like it had never happened. Like it had happened to a different person.”
“But it didn’t. And now I feel like I married a different person. I don’t know who you are.”
Ace flinched, and for the first time, he looked his age, weary and overcome.
“I know you said not to apologize, but I’m so sorry, Victoria.
You won’t believe me now, but when we first started seeing each other, I almost told you.
So many times. I tried to find the words.
But the longer I waited, the harder it got. ”
“Here are the words: ‘I have a child’!”
“I was scared to lose you, this incredible woman who had made it very clear that she wasn’t looking for me—or anything serious—but who I was somehow managing to convince otherwise.”
“You didn’t convince me. You tricked me! I married someone who lied to me every second of every day we were together.”
“I didn’t tell you. That’s different.”
“You said I was making you a father. For the first time!”
“That’s how it feels,” Ace said haplessly. “It’s true to me.”
“But it’s not true.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk about it. I’m sorry I gave up on her. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m so fucking sorry, for all of it. But you have to know, this was the truth for me. I didn’t have a daughter. It was the only way I could go on.”
“But Liz was your daughter and it did happen, and you didn’t tell me. So you want to know what else is happening? You’re sleeping in the guest room tonight.”
Ace hung his head. “I’ll give you as much space as you need.”
Victoria started to stand up, and as she did, there was a strong karate chop to her gut. The timing was so laughable, and Victoria was caught off guard; she sank back into her chair. She put her hand on her stomach and the baby kicked again.
“Are you okay?” Ace asked. “Of course you’re not okay, but…”
Victoria summoned her composure, then stood up again, mourning the loss of poignant moments in their past, present, and future. Before, she would have excitedly beckoned Ace over so he could feel their baby move. But that was before. Everything between them had been indelibly fractured.
Like he could sense her thoughts, Ace asked, “Can we fix this? Not right now, of course, but can I earn your trust back, eventually? I love you, Victoria, and I will do anything to make this right.”
“You lied to me about everything, Ace. Everything. So, I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
Victoria walked out of the room. Her insides felt like a spaghetti squash that had had its innards scooped out by a fork.
The whole time Victoria had doubted whether she would be a good mother to their child, she had never questioned Ace’s fitness to be a father.
The man she had married was made for the job, however late in life he was taking the role.
But Victoria had been spectacularly deceived.
Ace had abandoned his child; what did that say about him as a man, as a father, as a person?