‘Ahhh,’ she’d say, dropping on to my bed. ‘Much better.’
All I could think about was how to get her back out of them.
The worn jeans she’s currently wearing could be one of the three or four pairs she appropriated from me back then, though I’m fairly certain she either shredded them with a giant set of shears or burned them in some sorcerous ritual after we broke up. She’s barefoot – her toenails polished blood red – and wearing a plain, fitted white T-shirt.
Silent, she gestures for me to enter, and I follow her through a maze of boxes and into her living room. I don’t remember exactly what her place looked like when I was here last, because I’ve only been here once, and it’s been almost a year – but several things appear to be missing. And then there are the boxes.
Frowning curiously, I turn back to her. ‘Moving?’
She nods. ‘I’ll need two bedrooms. And most of my décor isn’t exactly child-friendly.’
She says this as though it’s normal for such sentences to be said between us. Or for the phrase child-friendly to come from her mouth, ever.
She perches in a black leather chair and I take its twin – these make up the only furniture in the room, aside from a nearly empty bookcase.
I begin first, pre-empting whatever plan she had for the direction of this conversation. ‘My manager got a call for me from a social worker in Texas. He wouldn’t tell George what he wanted, but I’m pretty sure it has to do with you – or, you know, River.’
She takes a deep breath, staring at the interlocked hands in her lap, and a distinct feeling of unease creeps over me.
‘Yes, that’s why I asked you to come over.’ She sighs, and I think, Oh, no. ‘I had to tell them.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘That you’re his birth father.’
My jaw drops. ‘What do you mean you had to tell them –’
Her eyes flash up. ‘I had to fill out an eighteen-page questionnaire, Reid. It asked the most personal questions you could imagine, and Norman, my attorney, warned me to be utterly truthful, or I could risk a denial before we even got started.
‘So I told them about my home-wrecking mother, and my cheating father. The fact that I was illegitimate because my father was still technically married to Kathryn when I was born. The fact that my mother frequently slapped me across the face when I pissed her off, starting so young that I don’t remember the first time she did it. I had to reveal my sexual history and experience – all of it. My relationships with my stepfathers and stepmothers and my experience with children – which is of course zero.’
I shake my head. ‘You keep saying you had to, but that’s not true, Brooke – no one is forcing you to do this.’
She narrows her clear blue eyes and they blaze. ‘We are done discussing the decisions I’m making concerning my child, Reid Alexander.’ Backlit by the wall of windows behind her, pale blonde hair haloing her head, she looks like an angel spoiling for a fight.
‘You’re making decisions for me, Brooke – why can’t you see that?’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘You do –’
‘Fine! Then I’m choosing our son.’
My jaw clenches and I stand, hands fisted at my sides. ‘You’ve called me his birth father. Now you’re calling him my son – like I have some sort of connection with him. I don’t. I didn’t think he was mine when you turned up pregnant, and you knew it. We’d been broken up for weeks by then. I never felt anything about him one way or the other, Brooke, and I don’t now, and if that makes me a heartless bastard, then so be it –’
‘No, Reid – that’s you making him a bastard.’
My hands both go to the back of my neck and I pull my elbows in, biceps shielding my face like blinkers. Pacing between the dozens of boxes littering the floor, I count. One, two, three, four … I ache to throw something or break something or scream something. Five, six, seven. Eight, nine, ten.
I need to leave. But first: ‘What does the social worker want?’
She blanches like she’d forgotten about that, and then licks her lips. If her head was transparent, I’d see gears working furiously. ‘A couple of things. They want you to sign a form saying you willingly volunteer to relinquish your parental rights to him. That … shouldn’t be a problem for you, I gather. It’s like clearing a deed to a property, Norman says, so it can transfer easily to a new buyer.’ She swallows, the muscles in her throat strained. I get the feeling she wants to cry, but isn’t allowing herself to do it. So Brooke of her. Always calculating something.
‘They might also ask you about our relationship. And the break-up. And the pregnancy. And why I left your name off the birth record. And … they’re calling people for character references. For me.’
I laugh once, humourlessly, stuffing my hands into my front pockets. ‘Me? A guy who plea-bargained his way out of a DUI a few months ago as a character reference? I doubt anything I say will hold any weight one way or the other.’
She shrugs, her expression earnest. I can’t stand to look at her. Not when she looks so much like she did years ago. I conclude that she must have done this on purpose – but how would she know? How would she know that for months after our break-up, I woke up from dreams of her looking exactly like she does now?
‘Maybe not,’ she says. ‘But the worst thing would be if they believe I lied and said he wasn’t yours, or didn’t tell you about him at all. Will you just back me up on that, and sign the relinquishment papers? Even if you can’t say another positive word about me?’