Let me stop there.
With what Maddie said.
To Ben.
Let me stop there before Stella bent down and bustled as much of the lace as she could—my eyes holding on the little girl, the beautiful little girl, her eyes holding on mine. People stopping on the street, staring at Michelle, pointing.
Ben was moving toward me, completely panicked. Three words coming out of his mouth, but maybe not the words you’d think. Not: I am sorry. Not: It isn’t true. Not: I can explain.
Just this. As though it was all he could see. And if it was, does that count for anything?
“You look beautiful,” he said.
Ten hours later, I took off my satin heels and headed up the stairs, holding my dress so I wouldn’t slip, moving quickly to the safety of my room.
My phone rang again, vibrating through the house.
“Don’t hang up,” Ben said.
“Didn’t we just do this?”
“You answered, didn’t you? A part of you wants to hear what I have to say.”
He wasn’t wrong. There was a way to turn off the phone. I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t been able to. Part of me wanted Ben to tell me a story that would make this all okay, that would make him familiar again.
I sat down on the staircase, my dress billowing out to the sides.
“You need to understand, I didn’t even know about Maddie until a couple of months ago . . .” he said.
“Your daughter?”
He paused. “Yes. My daughter.”
“How old is she, Ben?”
“Maddie is four and a half.”
He emphasized the half and I knew why. We had been together for five years. The half meant she was conceived before me, before us.
“I obviously wasn’t going to keep this a secret forever, but it’s complicated with Michelle,” he said. “And I wanted to smooth that part of this out before I dragged you into it.”
“Complicated how?”
He paused. “That’s complicated.”
I stood up again. I’d had enough—enough of Ben’s non-explanation, enough of my heart pounding in my throat.
“Look, I just don’t want you to do anything rash. We’re getting married in a week.”
“I’m not so sure about that, at the moment.”
He got quiet. “That’s what I mean by rash,” he said.
He sounded devastated. And the problem was that it reminded me of the first time I’d spoken to him. My law firm had just signed Ben as a client and I called to introduce myself shortly after his bike was stolen. I didn’t know this about him yet, but Ben had owned that bike for ten years. It was less his preferred mode of transportation and more . . . an appendage. And still, by the end of our conversation, he was joking, happy. His bike, and his sorrow, a thing of the past. Because of me, he said. And, even now, there was a huge part of me that wanted to make him feel that good again.
“Where are you?” he said. “Let me come talk to you in person.”
I was at the top of the stairs. Maybe because Ben asked where I was, I looked around. My bedroom was to the left—the door wide open. My parents’ bedroom was to the right.
And coming out of my parents’ bedroom was a large man. Two hundred and fifty pounds large. With hair and skin I didn’t recognize. In a towel.
My mother, in a matching towel, stood close to him.
This man, who was not my father.
I dropped the phone. “Oh my God!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Oh my God!” my mother screamed back.
The man moved away, backward, toward my parents’ bedroom, which he apparently knew all too well.
Then, as if thinking better of it, he reached out his hand. “Henry,” he said.
I was stuck in place, right at the top of the stairs. I reached, as though it made sense, for this man’s hand.
My mother covered her mouth in abject horror. I thought it was her disgrace at being caught. But then she reached for me, touching my cheek with the front of her hand, then with the back.
“What did you do to your wedding dress?” she asked.
Regarding Henry
If I were keeping count—and who was keeping count?—it wasn’t shaping up to be the best day of my life.
I sat in the dining room with my mother, the two of us dressed in sweatshirts and jeans, my dress hanging on the door, the silence between us aggressive.
Henry was gone. My mother had said good-bye to him on the front steps while I waited for him to walk away. It was like what my mother had done to me my senior year of high school, when I was dating tattooed and mean Lou Emmett. But in a gross reverse.