When I decided I wanted to be your mom—and again, please know that for me, it was a stunningly easy decision—I vowed I’d put him out of my mind. That he wasn’t part of this, wasn’t relevant, never would be.
But it wasn’t that easy. I thought about that night a lot. And I got curious, because I knew you would one day get curious, too. And I wanted to get ahead of that.
One problem—I knew almost nothing about him. Nothing to tell you not if, but when, you asked, no way of contacting him in the event that I felt I should, for whatever reason. What if you needed a kidney donor one day, for God’s sake? I knew that I should at least know who the hell he was, even if I have no interest in ever seeing or speaking to him again.
Of course I tried googling him—he’d told me that his name was Brendan Wallace, that he was a sports agent from Cincinnati. Google could not find such a person.
Fortunately, your aunt is the kind of woman who can track anyone down on social media or the internet, even if all she had was a cocktail napkin they’d used, or the first name of their second cousin’s dog. So I enlisted her help.
The fact was, I hadn’t even wanted to tell her I was pregnant, at first. She’s sort of been more of a mom than a sister to me; she’s eight years older, and our mom died when we were young, so she always helped take care of me （while also being extremely judgmental of what she perceives as my many shortcomings）。 I knew she’d have some strong opinions about my choice to keep the baby. Sorry, to keep you. So I waited until pretty late in my pregnancy to tell her.
I should have given her more credit. She was supportive, or supportive-ish, and promised to love you like mad.
Anyway, when I told her I wanted to find out more about your father, she went back to the bar where we’d met that night. She sweet-talked the bartender into printing out the credit card receipts from the night we were there. The bar wasn’t crowded that night. There were forty-one receipts. Twenty-five of them men. She googled and pulled up pictures of every single one of those men until we found him.
I looked him up—the real him. Suffice it to say, none of what he told me about himself that night was true.
For one thing, he’s married. Of course he is. When I found that out, I felt a lot of emotions, but surprise wasn’t one of them.
Is it too soon for me to give you advice, having not even met you yet? If you find yourself in a situation with a guy, or girl, and things aren’t going the way you anticipated—if it isn’t what you wanted—say so. Scream it! It’s hard for me to say that to you, because I don’t want you to think that I regret the outcome of that night—you—and yet, I do regret not trying everything I could to stop it while it was happening. Because it wasn’t what I wanted. Or what I thought it would be.
I also know better than to blame myself. Officially. But while it was going on, and even now, that’s exactly what goes through my head: You shouldn’t have stayed there alone. You shouldn’t have drunk so much. You shouldn’t have been wearing that top. You shouldn’t have kissed him. It’s what women are trained to do—blame themselves. I promise to teach you better.
Only one thing matters to me, now, though: you. Kicking, churning inside me. My sweet love. I will see you soon.
Love you forever,
Mommy
Chapter Ten
Monday, October 5
As much as I didn’t want anyone to find out what was on my phone, I was also desperate to talk to someone about the detectives’ visit and what they’d asked me about my alleged plans with Isabel the night she disappeared. It made no sense, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that this was a simple misunderstanding with an accessible explanation. Maybe one of the other moms would be able to make sense of it. I told Tim that detectives had stopped by to talk to me, but he was surprisingly nonchalant about it and didn’t ask me too many questions about their visit. He said it was logical that they’d talk to everyone who had seen her recently. For reasons I couldn’t explain myself, I didn’t tell him about what they’d said about me having plans with her, though.
And of course, I didn’t mention the Google Doc to him. I would never mention it to anyone. I needed to make sure no one ever saw that again. Including myself. As much as I yearned for an explanation—and surely there was one—it was more important that it stayed buried and forgotten. Forever.
Add it to my list of secrets.
Days had passed since Isabel’s disappearance, and there were no leads that I was aware of. I kept looking for news items on Isabel, even though her name was already plugged into my Google Alerts. There was a brief item in the local West Side Rag: Search Underway for Local Missing Mom: Foul Play Suspected. The comment thread on this article had devolved, just like the one following the Upper West Side Moms Facebook post, into an argument about whether it was safe to house the men at the Two Parks Hotel.