Chapter 6 #2
Colum's theatrical laugh rings out from somewhere behind me, utterly oblivious to the undercurrent of meaning threading through this exchange. He's already moved on to something else, some new scheme or social commentary that requires his full attention.
But Cecie. Cecie is still watching me with those sharp hazel eyes, and I can see her deciding something. Choosing, perhaps, between pushing and letting this particular conversation lie dormant for now.
Cecie glances between us, and I see her clock the nickname. Ridge. Her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly before she smooths it back into that pleasant, professional mask.
She knows.
The certainty of it settles over me like a lead weight, heavy and suffocating in my chest. She definitely knows, I see it in the way her hazel eyes track mine for just a fraction too long, in the careful neutrality she's painted across her face, in the slight tension around her mouth that suggests she's holding back a dozen different responses and choosing none of them.
And she's not saying anything. Not a word.
Not even a hint of accusation or confusion or the thousand accusations I deserve.
She's just standing there with Orry balanced against her hip, watching me with an expression I can't quite parse, and the silence is somehow worse than any confrontation could possibly be.
Why?
The question loops endlessly through my mind, tangling with the spreadsheet already fragmenting into statistical chaos.
Why wouldn't she say something? Why wouldn't she demand answers, throw accusations, something—anything other than this maddening, deliberate quiet?
Is she protecting herself? Protecting Orry?
Or is she simply deciding right now, in this very moment, that whatever happened between us isn't worth addressing in front of Colum and his oblivious enthusiasm?
I grip Clarence harder, feeling the familiar plastic shell press against my palm like an anchor.
The cracked screen reflects the office lighting in a dozen fractured directions, and I wonder if my thoughts look like that too—broken into a thousand pieces that no amount of careful reorganization could ever reassemble into something resembling coherence.
"Well." Cecie shifts Orry again, adjusting the stroller with one practiced foot. "I should let you all get back to work. Thanks again for the warm welcome, Colum."
"Anytime, neighbor." Colum grins, oblivious to the tension crackling through the air like static electricity before a storm. "And seriously, those muffins are incredible. You should sell them at Sparkle Beauty."
"I'll keep that in mind." She turns toward the door, and I watch her go with the sick certainty that if I let her walk out right now, I'll never get answers to the thousand questions currently shredding my internal logic into confetti.
"Wait."
She pauses. Doesn't turn around.
"I—" What? What am I supposed to say? Is that my child? Were you the woman from the hotel? Why didn't you tell me?
"Yes?" She looks back over her shoulder. Polite. Distant.
I open my mouth. Close it. My hand tightens around Clarence until the plastic casing digs into my palm hard enough to hurt.
"Welcome to the plaza," I finally manage. "If you need anything. Financial advice. Or. Anything."
Smooth, Ridgeway. Very smooth.
Something flickers in her expression. Too fast to read. Then she smiles, bright and empty.
"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."
She leaves.
I stand there like an idiot, watching the door close behind her, while my entire world recalibrates around a single, inescapable fact.
I might be a father.
"So." Colum leans back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head with the satisfied air of someone who just witnessed the social equivalent of a train wreck and plans to dine out on the story for weeks. "That was impressively awkward. Even for you."
I don't respond. Can't. My brain is too busy running calculations, trying to fit this new information into some kind of logical framework that makes sense.
Eleven months since the party. Babies take nine months. Sometimes ten. The math—
The math works.
"Gunther." Colum waves a hand in front of my face. "Earth to my favorite number-cruncher. You in there?"
"I need to go."
"Go where? We have the tenant meeting in—"
"Reschedule it."
I'm already moving toward the door, my body operating on autopilot while my mind spins uselessly through the same loop of impossible possibilities.
"Gunther." Colum's voice sharpens, cutting through the fog that's settled over my thoughts. "What's going on?"
I stop mid-stride toward the door. Turn back. He's watching me with actual concern now, the teasing theatricality gone from his face, replaced by something genuinely worried. The shift catches me off-guard, Colum in serious mode is rare enough to be unsettling.
"I think—" The words stick in my throat like I'm trying to swallow broken glass. My mouth goes dry. I can feel my pulse in my temples, a steady thrum of panic disguised as logic. "I need to check something. At home."
"Check what?" He leans forward, elbows on his desk, the picture of focused attention. Waiting. Demanding answers in that gentle-but-insistent way he has when he knows something significant is happening and refuses to be left in the dark.
Everything. The thought crashes through me like a wave. My entire life. My assumptions. The night I'd carefully compartmentalized and filed away under "mistakes best forgotten."
"I'll be back in an hour," I manage, my voice sounding thin and distant, like it's coming from somewhere outside my own body.
"Gunther—"
I don't wait for his response. Can't. My legs are already moving, carrying me toward the elevator with single-minded urgency, leaving Colum's protests to fade behind me as the office door swings shut.
My apartment is exactly as I left it. Neat. Organized. Every surface clear except for the vintage calculators displayed on the bookshelf in chronological order by manufacture date.
I head straight for the bedroom. Pull open the closet. Dig past the color-coded shirts and perfectly creased slacks until I reach the back corner where I keep a small cardboard box labeled "Miscellaneous."
Inside: ticket stubs from movies I barely remember, a few photographs from college, some old tax returns I should have shredded years ago.
And a hotel receipt.
My hands shake as I pull it out. The paper is thin. Worn at the edges. I've touched it too many times since that night, running my thumb over the faded ink while trying to remember details that champagne and time blurred into impressionistic smears.
The Riverside Inn. Room 304. One night.
I flip the receipt over slowly, carefully, as though the fragile paper might disintegrate under too much pressure. My fingers are still trembling slightly, a fact that irritates me even now, even alone in the sanctity of my own apartment where no one can witness my lack of composure.
The back of the receipt is what I've been avoiding looking at directly, even though I know exactly what's written there.
I've memorized every loop and angle of the letters through sheer repetition, through late nights when I couldn't sleep and found myself pulling this box from the closet just to confirm that the memory wasn't entirely fabricated by my desperate, wishful mind.
In my own cramped handwriting, the kind I use when I'm trying to write quickly, trying to capture something before it slips away entirely, there is a single word scrawled across the faded paper.
Hibiscus.
Just that. No explanation. No date beyond what the hotel receipt itself provides.
No attempt at poetry or sentiment, because that's not how I work.
I deal in facts, in data, in concrete information that can be filed and retrieved and relied upon.
But even facts can lie when filtered through the fog of champagne and desperation and the particular ache of knowing something beautiful is temporary.
I'd written it down because I needed to remember something true about her when everything else had become unreliable. The perfume. The way it clung to the hotel room even after she'd gone. That particular note of floral sweetness that I could almost taste on the back of my tongue.
Hibiscus.
I'd written it down the morning after. Stood in the empty hotel room with the sheets still smelling like her and tried desperately to capture something—anything—concrete before the memory dissolved completely.
The perfume. That's what I'd managed.
Hibiscus.
I bring the receipt to my nose. The scent is long gone, of course. Just paper and old ink and my own foolish hope that I could somehow preserve a moment that was never meant to last.
But I remember.
And today, in Colum's office, I smelled it again.
Fainter. Mixed with vanilla and baby powder and the particular chaos of new motherhood.
But unmistakable.
Cecie.
I sink onto the edge of my bed, still holding the receipt, and let the full weight of realization crash over me like a wave I have no hope of outrunning.
Sis was Cecie.
Cecie is Sis.
And Orry—
Orry is mine.