Chapter Thirty-Seven Barb
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Barb
I’ve gotten so used to spying on Gabe, it’s become second nature.
Except now I’m not spying on him for Regina but for Tessa, watching as he sets up a banner, rolls a bassinet around the room, situates the pillows on the couch, then rearranges them again.
He never once glances out as I stare blatantly. I’m still invisible to him.
Tessa texts that she’s checking out of the hospital and will be back within the hour.
If Gabe isn’t gone, I’ll go in there and make him leave.
I’m not sure how I’ll do this, so I’m relieved when he disappears and doesn’t return.
Once enough time’s passed, I trust he isn’t coming back.
I unlock the house using the key Tessa gave me.
Inside, I take in the familiar furniture, Regina’s furniture.
To her, it wasn’t Tessa’s. It was Jasper’s.
She wanted to occupy his space, to exist in some version of his world.
Maybe that’s twisted. As her mother, I ache for her, for everything she couldn’t tell me, for everything she tried to understand in the wrong ways.
Jasper’s sweet face appears to me, his eyes that are my eyes, his lips that Regina inherited from Isaac.
I need to tell Isaac. But tell him what, exactly?
It’s not like we’re going to take Tessa’s child from her, raise him as we raised Regina, between two houses where she never felt settled, never felt supported.
I know Tessa’s worried I might try something, and I’m honestly not offended.
It isn’t me she distrusts. It’s the situation that pits our love for her son against us, a crisis her husband created.
The only truth, as far as I’m concerned, is that Regina donated her eggs.
Tessa bore a child, a child who has my eyes and Isaac’s lips.
A child who is hers, not Regina’s. As much as I’d like to claim Jasper as my grandson, it’s up to Tessa what kind of relationship Isaac and I have with her son.
In the kitchen, a sign hangs above the peninsula.
Welcome home, Opal. I debate taking it down, throwing away the pastries on the counter, the envelope resting against the box.
It isn’t sealed. I slip the card out. It reads I’m sorry, and there’s a printed list of women’s names and dates folded inside.
Right away, I know. These are the mothers he deceived.
The list is longer than I’d expected. At least three hundred names.
Some of the women are so famous, even I’ve heard of them.
When scandals involving celebrities break, I never feel particularly sympathetic for the famous people involved.
They chose life in the spotlight. But this? No one chose this.
Some dates have multiple names listed, with asterisks indicating that he’s not sure which patient he implanted with another woman’s egg.
How could he forget? At what point did it become another workday?
I’ve always felt this way about doctors.
More so as I’ve aged. My knee pain is the knee pain of every seventy-year-old they see.
My bone decay. My heart rate. At what point did Gabe stop seeing these women as people?
As mothers? At what point did Regina too?
How could my daughter do this? She was never motivated by money.
She only would have been part of this if she believed she was helping these women—the mothers, the donors too.
This doesn’t justify her decisions. I’m not excusing her actions.
Rather, it’s a way of seeing my daughter in this horrible thing she did.
I fold the list and place it back in the card, the card in the envelope, the envelope on the counter.
I understand Tessa’s impulse not to keep her husband’s secret.
I’m glad she told me, trusted me at her own risk.
And I wouldn’t dare doubt her conviction that she needs to tell the other mothers, too, to undermine what her body has just been through by implying she isn’t thinking clearly.
But it’s a monumental decision, one she can’t undo.
There’s no harm in letting it marinate. Nothing will be different in a week, a month.
Yes, I can hear the hypocrisy, the advice I didn’t follow myself.
I don’t want Tessa to regret her decision the way I do mine with Jessica.
When a car pulls to a stop in the alley, I throw the door open to find Dan Huntsman’s wife helping Tessa out of the passenger seat.
I hate that I think of her as an extension of that angry man.
I don’t know her name. She hoists Tessa’s arm over her shoulders and helps her toward the house.
Then Tessa motions that she can make it inside on her own.
The neighbor returns to the car to unbuckle Jasper.
He spots me and barrels over. His small body crashes into my leg, sending a sharp punch through my bad knee that’s quickly overshadowed by relief.
He’s safe. It’s more than that. He’s safe with me.
Still, it’s Tessa’s choice. I must fight my instincts with him. As his grandmother. As his friend too.
The neighbor carries Opal’s car seat over and hands it to me.
It’s heavy, and the stinging in my knee is now a throbbing.
I manage to use both hands and arch my back to keep hold of it.
The woman’s gaze locks with mine, but there’s no communing, no acknowledgment of the village we’ll build around Tessa.
In handing Opal to me, she’s relinquishing any role in this.
Jasper toddles around me, peering inside.
“Dada,” he calls, confused by his father’s absence.
I manage to lug Opal’s car seat into the living room, placing it beside the couch.
Tessa shuts the door and sets the alarm.
She surveys the banner Gabe’s hung, the counter he’s covered in food.
I can’t tell if she’s hoping to find Gabe, too, or if it’s starting to sink in just how difficult this is going to be without him.
I’m here now, but I can’t stay forever, not even if Tessa lets me be a part of their lives.
“He’s not here,” I tell her.
Tessa nods distractedly. I help her to the couch, ask her if she wants some ice for her incision.
She shakes her head no and motions to the bassinet in the corner, asking me to wheel it over beside the couch, where she grunts as she bends over to lift Opal out of the car seat and into the bed.
When I start to help, she shakes her head no again.
As painful as it is, as much as her body still has to heal, Tessa wants to do this on her own.
Despite Tessa’s clunky movements, Opal doesn’t wake.
She keeps her lids closed tight against this uncertain world.
Outside, the man who walks his two Yorkies rushes by.
Across the canal, I lock eyes with the man who pushes his bike, the child’s seat still empty.
You’re a father, I commune to him over the waterless basin.
Protect her. He scratches his beard as we breathe each other in.
In our contact, I hear him promise that he will.
The house phone rings. Gabe’s name blinks on the caller ID. Tessa shakes her head no yet again, and we let it go to voicemail. He calls four times before getting the hint.
Jasper and I roll a ball back and forth on the floor as Tessa rests on the couch.
I can tell from her steady breathing that she isn’t sleeping; that, as still as she is, her mind is racing.
Suddenly, the room reeks of excrement, but not the yeasty odor of baby poop, which, even after all these years, I can still recall in an instant.
Jasper points to his bottom and shouts, “Poo. Poo.”
Tessa sits up, shifts her focus between Jasper and the staircase, dismayed.
It’s been years since I’ve changed a diaper, but like the memory of baby poop, it’s something that never leaves you.
I offer to change his diaper, knowing not to read too much into it when Tessa tells me it would be a big help.
When we return downstairs, Tessa is now upright on the couch, reading the sheets of paper with the women’s names.
Jasper races across the room, lunging for a bag.
I help him dump out dozens of colorful plastic shapes, their magnetic edges gravitating toward each other and locking into place.
I make my way across the room to sit beside her.
Thanks to my career, I’ve had a lot of experience offering advice that people don’t want to hear, circumventing the truth rather than plowing right through it.
“I know you want to do the right thing. You just got home. Let your body heal. Let yourself adjust to the change. This information will still be here when you’re ready.”
Tessa nods, skimming one page, flipping to the next. “So many of my friends are on this list.”
In the hospital, it had surprised me when Tessa said she’d start with the women she knew, that Gabe could do this to people he’d met for dinners and playdates.
Not he. Them. If Tessa is the one to call, to expose the truth, the mothers will blame her as much as they blame Gabe.
They’ll ostracize her, shun her like her neighbor friend has.
Though we need evidence to bring to Officer Gonzales, she can’t call them.
She can’t do this to the mothers. She can’t do this to herself either.
I try a different tactic. “See here.” I point to the names with asterisks. “We don’t know which ones were—” The words are too horrifying to vocalize. “We’ll unnecessarily scare some of these mothers if we reach out to them now. We need more information. We need to come up with a plan.”
“When this breaks, they’re all going to be terrified that it happened to them. Everyone in their life is going to ask, ‘Isn’t that the clinic you went to?’ At least this way, they’ll know first, have time to cope.”
It’s become a foregone conclusion that this will break. That doesn’t mean Tessa needs to be the one to crack it open.
“I can’t keep Gabe’s secret,” Tessa insists.
“Let’s not decide anything now.” I gingerly reach over and take the list from her hands. I fold it and return it to the counter. “We’ll make a plan. Trust me, you don’t want to do something this big without thinking it through first.”
I haven’t told her about Jessica, my missteps at work. I haven’t wanted her to see me the way Jessica did, as an old lady who confuses meddling for helping. I don’t want to tell her now, but I will, if it will help her make a better choice than I did.
“You’re right.” Tessa lies back on the couch and drapes her arm across her face.
A loud crash jolts Tessa upright again, and she scans the room, expecting disaster. It’s only Jasper, throwing the plastic pieces against the wall. Tessa winces from the sudden movement, shuddering each time the plastic thumps.
My knees crack as I stand. “What would you say to me and Jasper taking a little trip to the park?”
Opal’s asleep in her bassinet. Tessa could use this time to rest, restore, regroup.
At the sound of park, Jasper is already standing, shouting, “Par. Par.”
He waddles over and reaches for my hand.
Again, I remind myself not to read more into this than what it is: an adult willing to give him what he wants, a nod from his tired mother, who could use a moment to herself.
We all need to exhibit patience right now.
Me, in defining my relationship with Jasper.
Tessa, in contacting the mothers. Jasper, in tugging my hand to get to the park.
When Tessa locks the French doors behind us and stumbles over to the entryway to set the alarm, I’m reminded that we all can’t wait too long.
Everything’s calm for now, but my daughter’s murderer is out there somewhere.
Someone who might know the truth. Someone who has already killed a second time.
Someone who has no reason to be patient.