Chapter xli
xli
THAT NIGHT, I TEXTED DARREN A PICTURE OF THE photograph Sammy had found. Sam saw this. He thought it was a photo of him, and when I told him it wasn’t, he wanted to know why this person looked like him. When I started telling him about Gabe and his mother, he forgot about his question. But we have to talk. He’s going to ask again, and I want to be able to answer him.
My phone rang immediately.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Darren’s voice was somewhere between a hiss and a shout. “Why was that picture displayed in your house? When did you put it up?”
“It wasn’t displayed,” I said. “It was lying on my dresser in my bedroom. I took it out when I was going through Gabe’s boxes for the book and the gallery show a few weeks ago. And honestly, I forgot I’d put it there.”
“You sure you didn’t leave it out on purpose? To force my hand?” he asked.
“Oh my god, no,” I said. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest that, Darren. Do you really think that little of me? There has been so much on my mind recently, I didn’t even think about the photo. I’m sorry,” I added. “I didn’t mean to force anything. But also, why have you ignored my calls and texts? Why haven’t you called me back?”
“I told you I didn’t want to tell him.” His voice was steely.
“I told you I did,” I said, angry and exhausted. “And now I think we have to be prepared. If he asks me again, I won’t try to distract him, I won’t lie. And I think we should get ahead of it now, before he asks.”
I heard Darren breathe.
I waited.
“You’re manipulating me,” he said.
I could feel the fury roiling inside me. “This is not about you,” I said. “Not everything is about you and me. This is about lying to our son about who he is, where he comes from. The only way in which it’s about you is that you’re the one forcing me to lie. And I’m letting you. Maybe I shouldn’t anymore.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he said.
I took a breath. Tears of frustration were filling my eyes, hot and salty.
“We need to figure this out,” I said.
“You are fucking up our lives again, Lucy.”
“No,” I said. “I’m fixing them.”
I could hear Darren breathing hard on the phone. Then I heard Courtney in the background, her voice tinny, saying, “Darren, who are you shouting at? Is that Lucy?”
Then sounds were muffled, as if Darren had put his hand over his phone’s mic. I waited.
Darren came back to say. “I’ll call you later. I have to go talk to Courtney.”
And then he hung up, and I was left staring at the phone, unsure about what I’d do if Sammy asked me about you again.
It was too early in Italy to call Dax, but all I wanted to do was talk to him, share with him, tell him what had happened.
WHEN MY PHONE RANG AN HOUR LATER, IT WAS Courtney.
“Lucy?” she said. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I answered, a little unsure of what was going on. Even though we’d been coparenting for years, I could probably count on one hand the number of times we’d spoken on the phone. Darren was always the one who called.
“Darren told me what happened, with Sammy and the photograph, and I agree with you. You can’t lie to him when he asks you a question like that. You both are going to have to rebuild your trust with the kids, and the last thing you should be doing now is digging yourself a bigger hole.”
I wanted to weep. I took a shaky breath. “Thank you,” I said.
“Anyway,” she said. “I’m putting Darren on. The two of you can work out the details, but he understands.”
In that moment I thanked God and the universe and fate for making Courtney the person that Darren married.
“Hi,” Darren said, sounding resigned. “So let’s say we do tell him. What would you say?”
I walked into the bathroom attached to my bedroom and closed the door. That way I’d have even more warning if one of the kids came looking for me.
“I’d say that you and I have been talking about how best to answer his question,” I started slowly, leaning against the tile wall next to the door. “And I’d tell him that you will always be his dad, the man who is raising him and loves him and would do anything for him, but that the reason that Gabe looks just like him is that Gabe is also his dad, his biological dad. And that Gabe died before he was born, which is why he’s so lucky to have you as a dad now. How about that?”
“Does he?” Darren said quietly.
“Does he what?” I asked.
“Look just like him.”
I sat down on the lip of the bathtub.
“Yes,” I said. “Other than the color of his eyes, they could be twins.”
Darren was quiet again.
“And looking at Gabe’s mom’s art inspired Sammy to go start a new painting,” I added.
Darren sighed. “It doesn’t sound so bad the way you just phrased it,” he said. “And Courtney said I can’t let how competitive I’ve always felt with Gabe cloud my judgment.”
“Courtney’s smart,” I said, and left it at that. It was so sad, so absurd that he still felt that he had to compete with you, Gabe. I wanted to strangle him.
“I’m doing this for Courtney,” he said. “She’s incredibly pissed at me for not telling her. I’m doing this to help fix that relationship.”
I wanted to strangle him a second time. I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath before I could respond.
“I’m sure you’ll work through it,” I told him.
“I hope so,” he said.
I picked up a sock that had fallen out of my laundry hamper onto the floor. “So when do you think? Do you want to be here?”
“How about next Saturday?” he said. “It’s the day after his birthday, the day of his birthday scavenger hunt. Maybe I could come over when you four finish dinner and we could tell them all together then.”
I took a deep breath. This was what I wanted to happen, this was what I knew needed to happen, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t afraid—afraid of how Sammy would react, afraid of the fallout. All of a sudden, everything felt very real. “Okay,” I said. “If Sammy asks before then—”
“Just put him off,” Darren said. “Please.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. And … please thank Courtney for me.”
“See you Saturday” was his response.
And we both hung up the phone.
I knew I would barely be able to think about anything else until Saturday.