Chapter Thirty-Six Tessa
Chapter Thirty-Six
Tessa
After Gabe leaves, I cry as I hold Opal, my tears darkening her white linen swaddle, stains that lay claim on her as mine.
I hold her tightly, thinking of all the other mothers who have no idea what truths their children’s DNA holds, the secrets I can’t keep.
Not from them, not from Barb either. When Gabe gave me back my phone, I read through the dozen texts she’d sent, saw the genuine fear Barb had for my well-being, the worry that persisted after she was thwarted at the nurses’ desk when she tried to visit me last night.
I’ve let her know that I asked Gabe to leave, offering little explanation for why.
I have to tell her about Jasper, and I will.
I will trust my instincts that she wants to help, not ruin my life.
Barb knocks on the partially open door to my room, then rushes to me like a mother would.
“I’m sorry.” Barb takes my hands in hers. “I should have told you as soon as I had my suspicions about your husband. I shouldn’t have spied.”
I clutch her hands, shaking my head, insisting I’m not mad. We sit there, heads bent toward each other, silently acknowledging everything we’ve been through together. I want to hold on to this closeness, but it isn’t real, not until she knows about Jasper.
Barb lets go of my hands as she spots Opal, who lies in her bassinet, cocooned, awake. Barb asks if she can hold her.
“Welcome to the world, Opal.” She cradles my daughter, bending over to kiss her tiny face. I don’t know how to differentiate the gratitude from the fear, the certainty that whatever happens, this moment cannot last. It’s enough to make me cry.
“Hey.” Barb sits on the side of my bed and hands Opal to me so I can feed her.
Before I know it, I’m telling her everything Gabe has admitted to me about his scheme, about Regina’s role.
I don’t lay the blame at Regina’s feet, like Gabe did.
Even if she streamlined the process, if she was better at talking to the donors, if she’s responsible for the choices she made, she’s not the perpetrator here.
I won’t off-load Gabe’s blame onto anyone else.
During my story, Opal falls asleep with my nipple still in her mouth.
I let her stay there, suckling, gently gnawing, cracking my nipple and guaranteeing the next feeding will be more uncomfortable.
I want her latched to me. It gives me the strength to tell Barb the parts that scare me, the details that can still change everything between us.
“There’s something else.” My pulse pounds as I hold Opal’s small body against my bare chest, wanting her to give me strength. But I’m too exposed. I don’t know how to be this vulnerable. Barb stiffens with worry. She has no reason to hope. “I know why Jasper recognized Regina.”
Barb’s face remains stoic as she processes what I’m telling her, her connection to my son.
“You should know—” My voice is surprisingly calm. It betrays the anxiety electrifying my system. “Regina never signed paperwork. There’s no proof that she forfeited her rights to Jasper. Legally speaking.”
I hold my breath in anticipation of how she’ll respond as I clutch Opal, who emits gastric sounds too loud for such a tiny human. Despite the tension, Barb and I laugh. It feels good to laugh, even though it hurts, too, physically as well as emotionally.
“He has her eyes,” Barb says once our laughter fades. “I always thought there was something familiar about his eyes.”
Barb’s attention glazes over, shifting inward. Her eyes are Regina’s eyes too.
“She never wanted to be a mom. I’m not sure what attachment she developed to your son, but she never would have tried to take him from you.” And I hear what she doesn’t need to say: Barb would never try to take him from me either.
Relief courses through me, a cool rush of calm.
Barb stares intently at me. “We need to go to the police. Officer Gonzales can’t ignore this.”
“Gonzales will just think I’m a jilted wife with an axe to grind against my husband. We need someone else to come forward with DNA proof. One of the other mothers.”
I hand Opal to Barb as I use my arms to pull myself up and stiffly waddle over to the bassinet.
Barb puts Opal down so I can change her.
Naked, she’s all wrinkled limbs, not quite ready for this world.
Each day, her skin will grow a little less pruned, her eyes a little more open, her body more nourished.
Still, it will be my job to protect her.
I slip a diaper beneath Opal. “I’ll start with the ones I know, keep calling until someone agrees to help us.”
“You think they’ll be open to this? It’s a lot to absorb.” Again, I hear what she doesn’t say. It’s a lot for her to absorb too. She hasn’t yet processed what I’ve told her. Still, I know she won’t take Jasper from me. I trust that conviction, the bond it’s built upon.
“I can’t keep it a secret.” And I hope she hears the words I don’t say, too, that I would never, could never have kept this from her.
That’s not how this will work between us.
Not with the other mothers either. Maybe some of them will hate me for it.
Maybe they’ll write me off as crazy, at least until the news breaks.
And it will break. Whether it’s in a year or in ten, one of the children will take a DNA test. If the mothers find out I knew .
. . if I keep this hidden . . . then I’m no better than Gabe.
I swaddle Opal, tugging the cotton so tight I’d worry I was suffocating her if I didn’t know this is what infants like.
I’ve done this before. I know I won’t harm her by binding her snugly.
I know her ragged breath is just the natural rhythm of a baby’s respiration.
I know that the black-tar poop in her diaper is normal, that when it becomes green it will be normal too.
I have so much wisdom inside me to trust. Most of all, I know to not let anyone make me doubt myself, my instincts, again.
“I don’t think you should go back to your house,” Barb says.
During flood watches, wildfires, evacuation orders, I’ve never understood why people refuse to leave their homes.
I thought Gabe was my home. I thought we sheltered each other.
But Gabe’s been the worst kind of threat, the one I couldn’t see until it was too late.
Even now, as I look back for signs I missed, I don’t feel there were any.
I thought the house was the illusion, new disguised as old, when it had always been Gabe who was the lie.
The anger starts to rise again, a prickling in my chest that wants to unleash, and sometimes that kind of fury is a force to reckon with.
Right now, though, it won’t help us. I don’t know what will.
I just know that I’m tired and I want to be with my children in the only place that has ever felt like home.
That’s not Gabe. It’s the house itself. It was Gabe’s dream, but it’s become my harbor.
“I don’t want to go anywhere else.” I shuffle to the bed. Although I’m ready to be strong, my body craves a rest. Anywhere we go, I’ll still be waiting for the murderer to find us. At least at home, I know the dangers, the systems to keep us secure. I settle onto the firm mattress.
“I’m staying with you.” Barb doesn’t hesitate. She isn’t conflicted. It’s natural, her maternal instinct to protect me as well as my children. It’s foreign for me to accept it. I will try. Because I don’t need to keep us safe alone. We will. Me and Barb.
There are things Gabe can’t take away from me.
He can’t take away the pleasure of my daughter at my breast, the sensation of being woken by her cries and remembering she’s here.
He can’t take away the first time she curls her fingers around mine.
The first time she sneezes. The first time she yawns.
He can’t take away the first time my son meets my daughter.
Jasper appears in the doorway, hugging a stuffed giraffe to his chest. When a hand nudges him into the room, I expect to see Marisol inch in behind him.
The plan was for Marisol to bring him to meet Opal; then the four of us would return home.
If Marisol thought it strange that she was bringing Jasp instead of Gabe, she didn’t convey it over the phone.
She simply repeated the time and promised to bring my son.
Only, it’s not Marisol stepping into the room after Jasper. It’s Claire. I can’t hide my surprise at the sight of her. Jasper scans the room, trying to make sense of this place, until he spots me. Right away my chest swells. Jasper. My Jasper. My son.
“Mama.” He lets go of Claire and runs to me, abandoning the giraffe mid-trot.
He charges into me, resting his head against my leg.
If I could bend down to lift him, I would, staples and stitches be damned.
My abdomen still isn’t strong enough. So I cling to him, feeling the burn through my incision.
Opal squawks, and Jasper perks up, confused. I wasn’t sure how much he’s understood, and I’m still not, even as he stumbles toward her bassinet.
“Jasper, that’s your sister, Opal,” I say.
He reaches up and bangs on the plastic, tempting me to tell him to be gentle.
The bin doesn’t even shudder with his touch.
I use the remote to push my bed up so I can stand.
Jasper gets distracted by the sounds and movement of the mechanical bed and tries to touch the buttons.
“Bun. Bun,” he says, pressing the remote too softly to move the bed, Opal already lost to him. I wanted their first meeting to be monumental. This is better, though. More honest than the tender scene I envisioned.
Claire remains at the door.
“Thanks, Claire. Thanks for coming to get us.” She brought Jasper. It’s an opening, a crack, however small. “Thanks for bringing my son.”
My son. My son. I think it again and again, fortifying it each time. My son. My son. My daughter. My children.
“Marisol had a family emergency, and I couldn’t exactly ask Dan to pick you up.”
This isn’t meant as an olive branch. It isn’t even an olive twig. A leaf, a bud.
“Well, it’s still appreciated.”
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Gabe?” Her voice has the cool neutrality of a reporter. She drums her nails against the doorframe, impatient for a story she can relay or discredit at the playground. Claire isn’t my confidant. I’m not sure she ever was.
“Gabe and I are over. I’ve asked him to be gone by the time I get home today.
” To my surprise, I have to stifle a cry when I say this.
My bed gyrates as Jasper jabs the buttons.
He’s close enough that I can smell the pineapple of his shampoo.
The piquant scent unleashes something in me.
I wipe my tears, uncertain if I’m crying for Gabe, or because of him.
If I’m grateful for what I still have, or mourning what I’ve lost.
Claire studies me, inquisitive yet unsympathetic. It’s not cruel, exactly. Just distant.
“You’re sure that’s the best idea?” she finally says. “Whatever he’s done, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. And when it’s over and you’re still there, he’ll love you even more.”
We watch each other, and I’m struck by an overwhelming sadness for Claire, even though she regards me resolutely.
There’s so much we don’t know about each other’s marriages, about each other too.
I nod, pretending to hear her, when really I’m nodding from a different understanding.
Claire and I were always going to lose each other.
We want different things from this world.
“I am sorry, you know. I never meant to interfere.”
Claire observes me, betraying no emotion. Then she tilts her head toward the hall and says, “I’ll be downstairs.”
Just like that, I’m alone with both my children for the first time.
Jasper trades the remote for my bedsheet, playing a little game of peekaboo with its starchy fabric.
I limp over to Opal and carry her to the bed, where Jasper scrambles up beside me. I lean Opal toward him. “Jasp, this is your sister, Opal. You can touch her.”
He stares at the bundle of blankets in my lap, Opal’s pinched face barely visible beneath the pink-and-blue skullcap.
I have no idea what’s going on in his head.
It all started with this, with Jasper not being able to communicate fully.
With me believing a better mother would be able to access the thoughts of her son.
Finally, he taps Opal on the shoulder, then burrows into my lap beside her.
“She’s going to come home with us today,” I tell him.
After Jasper was born, they kept me at the hospital for four nights.
Everyone had advised me to stay as long as possible, to accept the help, the experience, the rest. I couldn’t wait to get home, to start our life as a family.
This time, they’re eager to get rid of me after forty-eight hours.
Opal’s gaining weight and latching well.
The on-call pediatrician has deemed her healthy, but my body is too weak to do this alone.
I’m not about to let Gabe back just because I need someone.
Although Barb can help, she isn’t going to live with us permanently.
Even if she wants to stay in our lives, she needs to develop a new normal.
I need to too. And that starts by letting go of Gabe, by not protecting him.
It starts with the calls I have to make. It starts with the mothers.