CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As soon as the Mercedes drove past the security gate and the guard house on the outside of that gate, they got into it about Plan B.
“What you said about going to the pharmacy earlier,” Joy said to William, “is something I don’t think I wanna do.”
“I told you that isn’t debatable, Joynetta.”
“I know what you told me. But since it’s my body I should have the right to decide what I put inside of it.”
Joy quickly realized that was the wrong way to phrase it since she had no problem putting him inside of her. But she objected to a pill? “What I mean is that should be my decision alone.”
William let out a harsh exhale as if he really didn’t want to be bothered about that, and then he pressed a button that lifted a privacy glass between the driver and his bodyguard up front, and himself and Joy on the backseat.
Then he looked at her. “You want to be pregnant?”
“No! That’s not what I mean at all.”
“Then why won’t you take the pill that will more than likely prevent a pregnancy?”
“Because I don’t wanna do that.”
“You are just starting your career, Joynetta. Are you ready to take on a kid? Because I’m not going to.”
That sounded harsh to Joy. “I’m not ready to be a parent either. But that’s not what I mean.”
“It has to be what you mean. We had unprotected sex. Why take the chance? Just take the damn pill!” He was getting irritated with her. “Why is it so important for you to make sure you get pregnant?”
That wasn’t her point at all. She would feel as if she was aborting a baby if she took that pill, but he wasn’t listening to her. That was why she turned it back on him. “Why is it so important for you to make sure I don’t get pregnant? I don’t want your money, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
William let out a long exhale that was less filled with irritation and more filled with what Joy could only describe as a kind of pain. After a very long time, he began to speak. “The reason I had, or that I have nightmares,” he said, “is because I lost my daughter.”
Joy stared at him. His daughter? She didn’t know he had a daughter. “She died?”
It was still as raw as it was the day it happened. He nodded his head. “Yes. She passed away.”
“Was she ill or--”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. She was . . .” Another exhale.
“My ex-wife and I were in a bitter custody battle that I won. I was granted custodial custody of my, of our daughter, and it was the first day of her new life with me as the main parent in her life. My ex was certain I was ill-suited to be primary parent. I was a workaholic, she said, who would leave our child with au pairs and governesses and anybody else except for myself. I would neglect our child the way I neglected her and I would be the most-irresponsible parent ever created, is how she described it to the judge.”
A hard look appeared in his blue eyes. “Of course she was right,” he said.
Joy could feel his pain. “What happened?” she asked him in a very soft voice. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to know. But she had to know.
“On the first day of my daughter’s life with her father, an attempted kidnapping occurred.”
Joy frowned. “A kidnapping?”
“An attempted one, yes. Before the kidnappers all perished themselves, my security detail was able to thwart the attack on me and my child. Then the car carrying my security detail lost control and burst into flames.”
“Good Lord, William.”
A stern look appeared on his face. “They all perished as well. But I was so busy looking at their car crash that I forgot I was driving and I crashed myself. Or at least my daughter and I crashed.”
Joy’s heart dropped.
“I came out of it with only a few scratches.”
His face became even harder, as if he was aging years in seconds.
“My daughter was too little to survive. But had I not turned that steering wheel to avoid going head-on into a brick wall, saving myself, then she would have been alive. By saving myself, the backend of my car slammed into that wall, and she didn’t survive.
She didn’t stand a chance. The first day of the rest of her life with me, her father, didn’t last three hours. ”
Joy’s heart just fell. She touched his hand but he quickly moved it away.
“That is why I cannot,” he said, and then stopped.
Then he tried to control his emotions as he continued.
“That is why I cannot have another child. It nearly killed me when my daughter died.” He looked at Joy for the first time since he relayed his story to anybody ever.
All of his friends and family and coworkers knew what happened, but not from him. He’d never uttered it out loud before.
His face was distressed. Anguished. “I fucked up when I didn’t put on protection, Joynetta.
I always wear protection. It’s second nature to me.
But I didn’t with you and for that I am sorry.
That’s on me. But you did something to me that made me want to .
. . I should have known better. But having another child?
” He shook his head. “I cannot, under any circumstances, go through that again. I cannot.”
Tears were in Joy’s eyes. “What was her name?” she asked him softly.
William stared at her. He expected her to continue to argue why she didn’t want to take the morning after pill and how his experience had nothing to do with her. He expected it to be all about her. But she wanted to know his child’s name?
And in that moment, when she asked that question and he saw the emotion in her eyes, he knew he had somebody special on his hands. He just knew it. “Kaitlyn,” he said and smiled through his anguish. “Her name was Kaitlyn. But I called her Katie.”
“Kaitlyn is a very beautiful name,” Joy said. “How old was she?”
“Four.” He said this and smiled too. “She was so smart and so fat.”
Joy laughed.
“She was a wonderful little girl.”
“She sounds like it.”
“I had just brought her a barbie doll. A pop star barbie doll. And she . . . And she still had it in her hands when they pulled her from that wreckage. It was . . .”
Joy took his hand and held it whether she wanted him to or not. But she got no resistance from him.
Then he continued to stare, as if he was reliving it all over again.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, William,” she said as both of her hands held his hand. “I am so sorry.”
And that was when William lost it. He grabbed Joy and pulled her into his arms. He never cried in front of any human being ever. Not even at his own child’s funeral did he shed a tear. But he sobbed in Joy’s arms. It was as if it had been building up all year long and now it was rushing out.
“Let it out, William,” she said in tears as she held him. “You have to let it out.”
And he let it out. For several minutes he sobbed and for several minutes Joy held him tighter and tighter until there was no daylight between them. Until he wasn’t just clinging to her, but she was clinging to him. And all the baggage that came with him.
She definitely wanted to eventually have children, while he made it clear he never would. That should have been the dealbreaker right there. But just like his sobbing only caused her to cling to him more, his baggage would never cause her to leave him.
It was complicated. It was so complicated. As she held him.
And eventually William pulled himself together and he and Joy stopped embracing.
He thought he would feel embarrassed opening himself up and in front of another person.
But Joy made him feel as if it was needful.
Let it out, she said to him. You have to let it out.
With her, he didn’t feel embarrassed at all.
Acknowledging his pain and getting it out of his system felt cathartic. It felt like a cleansing.
He looked at Joy. She had taken his hand and was holding it again, but she wasn’t staring at him or asking him more questions or telling him everything was going to be alright.
She looked out of the window away from him as if nothing had happened, as if he didn’t just bare his soul, as if it was just another ordinary day. And he loved her for that.
But when his driver stopped near the pharmacy and his bodyguard was about to get out and purchase the Plan B morning-after pill, William pressed the intercom button on his passenger side door.
“No need to stop,” he ordered. “Go to the office.”
William didn’t look at Joy when he made that decision, and Joy knew better than to look at him.
But inwardly she was elated. Not because she wanted to get pregnant.
She certainly didn’t at that early stage in her career.
But because he heard her. He listened and he heard her.
And despite his monumental reason to not want to ever have children again, he didn’t take that out on her.
So far, in the good man department, he was batting a thousand.
Not that that meant they were this couple now. He gave no indication of that and Joy wasn’t ready to jump in that boiling pot called William Skeffington either.
They rode the rest of the way to the office in a comfortable uncomfortable silence.