Chapter Thirty-Eight Tessa
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tessa
After I set the alarm, I lie back down on the couch, trying to decide whether this makes me safe.
Over the last seventy-two hours, I’ve uncovered more truths than I could have imagined.
Yet I’ve learned nothing about who might be after Gabe, or who killed Regina and Aram.
The alarm countdown ends, beeping to indicate it’s set. Despite its security, I remain on edge.
With Jasper and Barb gone, Opal’s shallow breathing fills the house.
Conversations from tourists waft in. Two women speedwalk by, talking about a date.
“They were fashion sweatpants, but still. On a first date?” one woman says.
“Next!” her friend rejoices, glancing at me as they walk past. A couple—neither of them can be more than twenty years old—stop at my bougainvillea and lean into each other for a selfie.
They don’t notice me until after they’ve taken the picture, and the girl mouths, “Sorry.” I nod that it’s fine as she tugs her boyfriend out of view.
I’m jealous of their voyeurism, so comfortable in their lives that they can envy someone else’s.
I’ve never felt more in a fishbowl, more like a sitting duck—all the animalistic clichés—than I do now.
Their presence doesn’t make me feel safe either. It never did.
Barb is right. I don’t have a plan. I can’t just call one of my clients and say, Hey, we haven’t talked since I made those earrings for your anniversary, but you should know, my husband implanted you with another woman’s egg.
Oh, and I had the baby, so I’ll be back to work in no time.
Don’t be a stranger. I hear how this sounds.
And it won’t be the same as it was telling Barb.
With Barb, it was enriching. A gift. With the other mothers, I’ll be taking something from them, something they don’t know they could lose.
Still, I can’t just sit here waiting for my body to heal, hoping the killer won’t come for us.
Maybe, if the mothers know, if the truth’s exposed and Gabe’s prosecuted for his crimes, the killer will have no reason to strike.
My body isn’t capable of much right now.
It can call the mothers. It’s the only thing I can think to do that might protect us.
I shuffle over to the counter to get the list, to the front door, where my phone’s somewhere at the bottom of my purse, then back to the couch.
I cradle the phone against my chest as I craft a short script.
I can picture Barb’s patient face cautioning me, but I need to get the truth out.
I physically can’t hold on to it anymore.
And I only need one woman to believe me.
One woman to send her child’s DNA for testing.
One person to make this whole house of cards come crashing down.
I run my finger down the list of names, stopping on Nancy Clark. She’s been my client through three engagements. The call goes to voicemail. Before I can leave a message—what can I possibly say in a recording?—she texts that she’s in a movie.
Anything urgent? she writes.
There’s no urgency between a jeweler and her client, which only makes my call stranger.
No rush, I write back. This isn’t news for a text either.
I try three more clients, feeling a strange mix of relief and impatience when their voicemails pick up.
Then panic when Lucy, one of my most regular clients, answers with “Tessa,” like she was just thinking about me.
“I’ve been meaning to call you. I have these diamond studs I want to get reset into something a little hipper. ”
I have loyal customers. It’s because I do good work. Gabe had loyal customers too. It’s because he did good work. Too good.
“Hi, Lucy.” I tread carefully. “I’d be happy to do that. I’m calling for another reason, though.”
“Oh?”
Suddenly, the script I was practicing just moments before has vanished.
“Listen, this is going to sound crazy.” I cringe. Why did I start that way? “You went to my husband, Gabe Irons, for fertility issues?”
She pauses, then mutters, “That’s confidential.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. There’s something you need to know about Gabe. He hasn’t been entirely honest with his clients. I don’t want to worry you, but he may have—”
“Well then, let’s not worry me, all right?” She hangs up before I can finish my sentence.
Gabe was right. She knows.
My phone buzzes. Gabe’s picture fills the screen.
It’s one of my favorites, even though I have no idea when I took it.
He looks impossibly handsome and confident.
Now I can see how his smile is too even, his expression too pleased with itself.
It’s like a switch. Everything I loved about him now disgusts me. I send his call to voicemail.
As I’m dialing Trixie next, a text comes through. When can I see the kids? I ignore him again.
I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to Trixie, that she’d silently stopped being my client, until she picks up. “What do you want, Tessa?”
I forgo our normal small talk and start to tell her that Gabe has been lying to his patients.
“You’re serious?” Trixie barks. “After your husband convinced me to do five rounds of IVF with no results? What happened to ‘one and done’? To ‘the man who can get any woman pregnant’? You have some nerve.”
Her name blinks across my screen as she disappears from my life. She’s angry because Gabe couldn’t get her pregnant, not because he implanted her with another woman’s egg. I’ll happily lose a client if it means there’s one less woman out there whom Gabe has violated.
The call with Trixie gives me the conviction I need to continue. I choose Ciara next.
“Tessa?” she says, confused. Ciara is a newer client. Was a newer client? It’s hard to know whether it’s a one-off project versus the start of an ongoing relationship. I made her a pendant with a teardrop opalescent stone, lab-created from breast milk.
“Ciara, I—” I stumble, remembering she was Gabe’s client first. Your husband mentioned you’re a jeweler, she said when we met to discuss the project. He’s a godsend. Even then, her words had sounded too zealous.
“It’s so funny you called,” she interrupts. “I found another bag of milk at the bottom of my freezer. I’m getting it made into a stone now. Can we set up a meeting to go over ideas?”
Two weeks ago, I would have dived at this offer headfirst, all in.
I would have viewed it as a sign that I could claw my way back.
That rather than ruining my career, motherhood and pregnancy have tapped me into projects like breast milk jewelry that I wouldn’t have understood so intimately before.
Breast milk that Ciara produced because Gabe had made her fertile.
Gabe, whom she isn’t about to turn against now.
“Why don’t you give me a call when the stone comes in, and we’ll set something up?”
“It shouldn’t be more than a few weeks.”
I try to imagine my life in a few weeks.
Opal losing her nocturnal rhythms, sleeping longer stretches.
Jasper, adapting to the reality of our new family dynamic.
Where will Gabe be then? And Barb? Will I have found a mother to come forward?
Will the killer have been caught? Will I have kept my children safe?
As she’s hanging up, Ciara says, “Oh, and tell Dr. Irons I say hi. He’s probably responsible for half my friends’ children at this point.”
I picture a playground, a birthday party, full of children with betrayals in their DNA. This isn’t a random woman here or there but entire communities of mothers who’ve been deceived.
From her bassinet, Opal squawks, her vocal cords too underdeveloped for an outright cry. My sutures tug as I stand, and I rest both hands on the side of her bassinet as I prepare my body for the task of lifting my daughter from her bed.
On the couch, I nestle Opal in my arms, angling her mouth toward my nipple.
I should unswaddle her. I don’t have the energy to wrap her back up again and can’t remember why it’s so bad to let her feed cocooned like this.
Gabe keeps calling, and I let the phone ring.
Except it’s on vibrate, so it’s anticlimactic, just tremor after tremor on the couch beside me.
At some point, Opal’s lips fall open, loosening their latch as her breath heavies with sleep.
I use my last reserve of energy to place Opal into her bassinet, then flop back onto the couch.
The list of names rests on the coffee table, and I scan it, unsure if I have the energy to place any more calls.
One name pops out at me, someone I didn’t refer.
It’s nearly impossible to get an appointment with Gabe.
Women I barely know reach out to me. Maya Linsky didn’t. I never knew she was Gabe’s client.
Maya’s son is dead. Is there any reason for her to know the truth about his genetics?
How will it help her? How will it help any of these women to know, to come forward and expose themselves at the center of a scandal?
A scandal ripe for documentaries and headlines and urban lore.
Barb was right. I need a better plan. I can’t call these women and implode their lives.
I can’t do this to Maya, to any of them.
Even though Gabe is the perpetrator, I’ll become the villain.
I lie supine, thinking back to that dinner when I told Gabe about Maya, the aroma of burnt coconut, what I thought I’d uncovered about Dan.
Did Gabe choke when I said her name? Did he shudder?
I don’t remember him having a reaction. Maybe he didn’t make the connection between my story and his client Maya.
Maybe he’s had several patients named Maya.
Maybe he forgot about her, like he’s forgotten about so many of these mothers, such that a child’s death meant nothing to him.