Chapter Thirty-Five Tessa #2
Gabe’s still combing his fingers through my hair.
I swat him off me. It causes the IV to pull out.
Suddenly, blood pours from the back of my hand, pooling in violent red.
The insertion point stings. Gabe jumps up and gets a tissue to put pressure on the bleeding. He untapes the IV and starts to fix it.
“Get off me,” I shout, and he darts back. I press the button for the nurse. Gabe hovers against the wall as the nurse comes in and repositions the IV.
Once she’s gone, I tell him, “You can talk to me from over there.”
He cowers in the corner, shocked, refusing to speak.
“Gabe.” I use the remote to put the back of the bed a little higher. “Explain to me how you let this woman have a relationship with our son.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he pleads. “She just showed up. Totally out of the blue.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe seven months ago?”
Seven months ago. My first trimester with Opal.
I could hardly get out of bed, barely able to stave off the constant nausea.
Gabe rearranged his schedule so he could take Jasper to the playground and the beach while I rested.
I remember how grateful I was, how lucky I felt to have a husband who prioritized our family.
It was during that time he introduced Jasper to Regina.
“I didn’t plan for her to meet Jasper. She just was outside our house, acting all paranoid, which wasn’t like her.
I guess I wasn’t picking up my phone, and she was freaking out about one of the donors.
She was starting to make a scene, and I wasn’t thinking.
I grabbed Jasper and told you I was taking him for a walk.
I just needed to get her away from our home.
I didn’t tell her about Jasp, but one look at him and—”
“I get it.” I can’t let him finish his sentence, let him vocalize the intuitive bond Regina had with my son.
Jasper would have been eleven months old. His language was even sparser then than it is now. I wonder when he babbled Gigi for the first time, if it was something he’d been saying in front of me for months, something I discounted as meaningless when it couldn’t have been more meaningful.
“How’d she know where we lived?”
“What?” He’s thrown by my question, its unimportance. I’m not ready to ask the questions that matter, the ones that will break me. I need to circle my way toward the truth.
“She was never at any of our parties. You were clearly keeping her a secret from me. So, how’d she know where we lived?”
“It’s the canals,” he says, like that explains everything, and it does. Gabe must have mentioned living on the canals. It’s something people remember. From there, it would have been easy for her to find us. Our shades are always up. Anyone can peer inside.
“You let her into our home.”
“No, never.”
“She had my earring.”
“What?”
“One of my prototypes. She had it.” I’m about to mention Barb, Regina’s leather jacket, but he doesn’t know about our investigation. I’m not about to let him shift the conversation, allow him to interrogate me instead.
Gabe’s eyes flit to the ceiling. “It was three-tiered? Rose-cut diamonds?” I nod. “Jasper had it. We were on the beach path, and Regina noticed him putting something in his mouth. Grabbed it from him. We were both really scared. I guess I never got it back from her?”
“How often did you let her see my son?” My voice betrays me, raising when I want it level, heated when I aim for ice cold.
“Come on, T. We don’t need to get into all this. I know you’re upset, and I don’t blame you, but—”
“That’s a relief,” I say harshly. “What a relief that you don’t blame me for being upset that you implanted another woman’s egg in me without my permission.” I need to keep saying it to make it sound real. The only inconceivable part is that Gabe, the only man I’ve ever loved, could do this to me.
“I asked you if you knew her, and you lied to my face. You made me feel like I was being paranoid. Like I was an emotional pregnant woman, when my instincts were right.”
“No. I never called you emotional.” His voice grows louder and firmer.
I’m afraid he’s going to wake Opal, but newborns can’t hear that well.
This is all ambient noise to her, nothing she will internalize, nothing that will corrupt her before she’s even left the hospital.
“I would never use your pregnancy against you.”
While he may never have called me emotional or directly evoked my hormones, those accusations informed every word, every gesture, every moment he tried to reassure me.
Maybe he’s been so conditioned to assume the irrationality of pregnant women that he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
What am I talking about? He did realize.
He implanted another woman’s egg inside me.
Every action that followed was intentional, nonconsensual.
He rubs his face with his hands, tugs at his hair, seemingly distressed. I can’t tell what’s real with him anymore and what isn’t. “Please don’t let this break apart our family.”
“Don’t you dare put this on me.”
“Come on, Tessa. You know I didn’t mean it that way.” He’s doing it again. Making this my fault instead of his.
“How often did he see her? Because Jasper knew exactly who she was when we ran into her. That doesn’t happen from seeing her only a few times. So I want to know, how often did you let this woman see my son?”
“It wasn’t like an arranged schedule or anything. It was incredibly stupid of me. I see that now. I never should have. But she knew about him, and I was scared she might tell you or appeal for custody.” He hesitates, and I realize, in horror, that she may have actually had a legal claim to my son.
My thoughts start spiraling: all this time, there was a woman out there who could have tried to take my son from me, who may even have succeeded. I tell myself that she’s dead now. My son’s safe. No one can steal him from me. But there’s still Barb.
I’m vaguely aware that Gabe is still talking, offering excuses for his actions.
“That would have been very bad for everyone,” he says, and I think, Yes, her taking my son away from me would definitely constitute bad.
More than bad. The worst possible thing Gabe could do to me, even worse than what he’s already done.
He’s still talking, still explaining. “I just thought that maybe if I granted her limited access, I could control the situation.”
Except now the situation has shifted, Barb in place of Regina. Barb, whom I’ve trusted. Barb, whom I’ve texted for help when she could be the most dangerous person to me, even more than Gabe. And this all leads to another impossible question, one I can’t believe I have to ask.
“And Opal?”
He casts me that confused look again.
“Is she mine?”
I hate the way I phrase this. Because either way, she’s mine.
Jasper too. It’s not about biology or genetics or the law.
I’m the one who wakes in the middle of the night a moment before my son does.
I’m the one who checks his temperature when his cheeks are flushed, who feels loss commingling with pride at every milestone.
Even if the egg was Regina’s, I’ve always been his mother. Opal’s too.
Gabe still has that contrite expression on his face, the one that makes him seem arrogant and entitled.
“You basically just told me I’m infertile. So, what, did you slip me something when I was sleeping, impregnate me with one of the eggs we had on ice when I was passed out?” Because of course the four embryos we have frozen aren’t mine either. They’re Regina’s.
“You think I would do something like that?”
I’m so sick of staring at his face, that bruised veneer barely able to contain his indignance. I start to turn away, only that seems like retreating. So I gaze straight at him, straight through him, trying to make him feel an ounce of the disrespect and betrayal he’s made me feel.
Evidently, he doesn’t like my probing. He walks over to Opal. He hovers above her bassinet as she sleeps. “She’s our miracle.”
Outside, the sky has lightened enough to see the stout white buildings of Cedars’ campus through the hospital room’s only window.
“It happens sometimes. After IVF, even when it seems impossible. It happens.” Gabe caresses the air around Opal’s face, knowing better than to touch and risk waking her.
His face is strained when he returns his attention to me, but his eyes are resolute, clear as ever.
Despite myself, I believe him. Despite myself, when he says, “I never meant for any of this to happen,” I know it’s true.
While it doesn’t change anything, I know he’s being honest with me about Opal.
Only, something about his word choice strikes me as off. It’s plurality. Any of this. And something else he said earlier when I was hardly listening, how it would be bad for everyone if Regina had gotten the courts involved.
“Is there more?” I ask. For a smart man, he’s incredibly gifted at looking stupid. “You said you never meant for any of this to happen. What else did you do?”
“What? No. Nothing. I just mean, this. Jasper.”
“You’d think after lying to me for the last two years, you’d be better at it.”
He shrugs like I’m being cute, and I continue to glare at him until he sighs and retreats to the couch.
“It was just supposed to be one time, with Bethany. I never meant for it to be—”
“Yes, yes, we’ve established this all just spiraled out of your control, that you’re an innocent bystander here.” He frowns. I’m not being unduly mean. He deserves anything, everything I want to throw at him. “Bethany Steinmann?” I ask. She’s the only Bethany I know.
He nods, tight lipped. I’m going to have to eke every bit of information out of him. Even now, when he’s cornered and his family is at stake, he won’t offer it freely.