4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
“She’s not even denying it.”
Yukiko’s gorgeous face was twisted in a scowl, lit by the pale glow of Samantha’s cell phone.
Next to her, Marcie did her best to crane her neck and read the texts from Dawn Lowry, while on my princess’s other side, I did all I could to not look.
The last thing I wanted was for Samantha’s mother to make this meeting even harder.
“If there was any doubt as to whether or not the test was right, Dawn just erased it.” Kiki sucked her teeth, giving the phone a look like she wanted to smash it against the nearest wall.
“She says she got a call this morning. Probably right after Sam got hers. God only knows who leaked that to her.”
The cheerleaders hissed. Yui leaned over and took Samantha’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze in a way that did not feel at all like a therapist with her client.
“I haven’t written anything back,” Yukiko said after a second. “Jesus, the texts are still coming in. Does she always go this hard with her phone game?”
“Only when she’s being a turbo narcissist,” Samantha murmured.
“She says…” Kiki trailed off, her eyes widening. “She says she owes you an explanation. And that she wants to meet.” My princess put a hand over her mouth as a sharp little laugh escaped her. “She’s already talking about where. Like the fucking dinner reservations are the important part here.”
I was pretty sure I heard someone physically booing Dawn.
“I can’t believe her.” Yukiko shook her head. “How many years did she spend lying to you, and she expects to sit down at a table and be welcomed?”
“Shameful,” Maria cut in. “You don’t owe that woman a single second of your time. You want a few new swear words to put in whatever text you end up sending her, just let me know.”
Samantha snickered at that. “I might just take you up on that.”
“That husband of hers, too,” the Latina continued. “I had to watch the best parts of your wedding from a hospital bed because of that hijo de puta. They’ve got way more to ask forgiveness for than this.”
“One thing,” Mona said, in about as gentle a tone as she could. “I completely support you never wanting to see the Lowrys again. They strike me as extremely disagreeable people—”
“That’s underselling it by quite a bit,” Lakshmi murmured.
“—but Dawn Lowry might be the only person who knows who your actual birth mother is.” She watched Samantha evenly. “Someone could make the argument that it’s smarter to play along with her games until you get that information, then cut her out of your life completely.”
“Fuck,” Maria swore. “She’s right, chica.”
“Parents and deception,” Lakshmi said with a frown. “Why do they always go together in this group like peanut butter and jelly?” She shrugged. “Or naan and curry.”
“Present company excluded, of course,” Marcie added with a glance over at Yui.
Yui was already shaking her head. “I’m not upset at all,” she said, smiling easily at the jape. “That would be a good reason to keep contact with Samantha’s… not-mother. But only if that’s an avenue she wants to pursue.”
I watched the news percolate through the room. Unlike my wives and I, the rest of the group hadn’t heard about this yet. They had no idea that my babygirl was considering leaving the door to that part of her life closed.
“Wait, what?” Heather asked. “Why would you not want to know who your real mom is?”
“That’s gotta be some kind of mistake,” Eva added on beat. “Right?"
Heads turned in her direction. Samantha sighed.
“It’s true,” she admitted, leaning a little bit closer to me. “Yui and I are having sessions, the way she and Jack have them. This is… this is something we’ve talked about. Whether I want to know.”
Everyone looked surprised.
“This is not something you need to decide tonight,” Kiki cut in.
I could tell my princess was trying to head off the argument at the pass—a laudable goal.
“It’s not even something you have to decide this week.
Or this month.” Her finger strayed above the screen of Samantha’s phone.
“Give me the word, and I’ll tell your mom that you’re processing and you’ll reach out whenever you’re ready to talk—”
“I don’t know,” Samantha admitted. “I really have no idea, Kiki. I’ve talked about it with Yui, and I’ve talked about it with Daddy. But I… I haven’t made any decisions yet.”
Heather and Eva shared a look. I could tell the pair weren’t trying to be insulting. They just genuinely did not understand where Samantha was coming from. I had to remind myself that they’d seen less of the Lowrys’ bullshit first-hand than most of us.
“You wanted to know about the… the condition,” Heather said, unwilling even now to say the H-word directly.
“That’s different,” Samantha said. “Not knowing that would’ve killed me.
And mostly I only cared about whether the baby had it, not me.
” Her hand strayed to her stomach. “This doesn’t affect my child one way or the other, because I was never going to let Warren and Dawn be in their lives no matter what. It’s knowing that might hurt me.”
Both cheerleaders nodded slowly. “Sorry,” Eva said.
“No offense,” Heather added on beat. “Really.”
A little bit of the Queen Bee peeked out through Samantha’s eyes. “None taken, pledges,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. “You two would have to work a lot harder than that to offend me.”
“In that case,” Yui asked mildly, “you are leaning towards no?”
Samantha was quiet for a moment. “Any more texts?” she asked.
Kiki shook her head, then handed Sam back the phone. “That’s it for now,” she said. “Wouldn’t put it past her to try and carpet bomb you at the worst possible moment, though.”
My babygirl’s snort told me she’d been thinking the same thing.
“This is the part that’s messing me up,” she confessed, looking around the table.
“Because part of me wants to go. I mean, who wouldn’t?
A chance to hear that bitch grovel for all the things she and my father put me through over the years?
Old Samantha would’ve shanked someone for a front-row ticket to that show. ”
Heather and Eva giggled at that. Lakshmi smiled, maybe thinking of the betrayal she’d faced from her own parents.
“But I can’t tell if that’s genuine,” Samantha continued.
“If that’s what I really want to do, or if it’s just what I’ve been trained to do by a whole lifetime of trying to make my parents love me.
” Her eyes sparkled; she sniffed hugely, forcing down a wave of emotion.
“I always thought there’d be a day when they’d get over themselves and be my parents, you know?
That we’d bury the hatchet and everything would be cool. ”
I remembered this speech from her wedding, right before Tasha’s people had hauled the Lowrys out of the venue in the back of a Stillwell PD squad car.
“I believed that right up until Chloe. I don’t believe it anymore. But there’s still a little piece of me…” She dabbed at her eye with the corner of a napkin then looked up at me, lost. “How can I tell the difference, Daddy? How do I know?”
I didn’t have an easy answer for that. The thought of my babygirl willingly opening herself up again to the Lowrys’ toxicity made me want to scream, but I wasn’t the one contemplating cutting my family off for the rest of my life.
Even having not seen my own family in years—they were out west doing God only knew what, and most of them pointedly hadn’t called since my wedding video went viral—I knew there was a big difference between maybe and never.
So I knew what I wanted Samantha to say. But I also knew that forcing her was the wrong move.
“Babygirl…”
The whole table turned to look at me. The whole damn table.
Half of them were waiting for me to dispense my wisdom. The other half were grinding their thighs together against what the word ‘babygirl’ was doing to the primal parts of their brains when it came out of my throat in that register.
“I wouldn’t make a decision right now,” I told her. “Tell your mother to wait. Or tell me, and I’ll lay down the law.”
“You should totally do that,” Tasha snickered. “Those two are terrified of Jack. If you wind up wanting them to back off, a few words from your husband will probably do what an entire weekend of begging wouldn’t from their own daughter.”
“You don’t have to know what to do, babygirl,” I told her, putting an arm around her shoulder and holding her close. “All you have to know right now is that you’ve got a whole room full of people who love you and are with you no matter what you decide.”
“Damn straight,” Maria said.
“If you want me there, I’ll show up with bells on,” said Lakshmi.
“And we’ll drag you out if things go wrong,” the cheerleaders chorused. “Count on it, boss.”
Samantha closed her eyes and rested her head against my shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, in a stronger voice: “Thank you all. This week has been hard, but the silver lining is that I have literally never felt more loved in all my life. So… yeah. I have some thinking to do, I guess.”
She did.
And yet, as I held her in my arms, I knew she didn’t.
I think the entire table knew, honestly. At some point in the near future—not tonight, and with everything that was going on, probably not this week—she would reach out and respond to her mother’s texts. Or to the texts of the person she grew up believing was her mother.
And they’d set up a meeting. And I would go, because I’d already realized that I was the thing that gave my babygirl the strength to stand up to the adults who’d been bullying her by steamrolling her boundaries her whole life. And we’d learn the truth.
Some doors you had to open a little bit, even if only so you could slam them closed even harder when you finally shut them for good.