“He and Miles had a sleepover last weekend.” Eli shut his eyes.
“Well, how was I supposed to know this wasn’t Gabe’s toothbrush?” Ari demanded.
“I don’t know!” Eli shouted back. “Maybe because there’s a Sesame Street character on top of it?”
Ari shrugged. “Oops.”
Eli got to his feet and started toward home with the dog plodding behind him. After a moment, Ari scrambled after him.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry. Really. Honest mistake. Want me to try again?”
Eli shook his head. “There’s no time.” In a few days, they’d all be leaving for the Cape. His only hope, the only thing left to do, was to get Gabe’s mother alone and make her tell him the truth, and hope against hope that the boy she’d given birth to eight months after they’d been together had been fathered by someone who was not him.
Ari was following him, still talking, but Eli wasn’t listening. Before the wedding, he told himself. I’ve got to find out, for sure, before the wedding, because if it is what I think, and the worst is true, I cannot let my daughter marry this boy. I’ll have to figure it out somehow. I’ll have to find some way to stop it.
Rosa
Mami, are you okay?” Gabe had asked.
She fixed a smile on her face and hoped he’d be able to hear it. “I’m fine. I’m so excited for you!” Gabe had wanted to FaceTime, but she’d bargained him down to a phone call. “I’m getting my hair done next week, before I fly out, and I don’t want you seeing your old mother like this,” she’d said. Gabe had assented, but had heard something in her voice that had concerned him, and his kind, probing questions—“Is everything all right? Is there anything I can do?”—made her want to scream and cry and rake her own face with her fingernails. I don’t deserve him, Rosa thought.
“I’m fine,” she’d assured him, and he’d promised her, again, that she had nothing to worry about. “Ruby’s father and stepmom are good people. They’ll like you. It’s going to be fine.”
“Sure,” said Rosa, knowing that Ruby’s father, whether a good person or not, was not going to like her, that it was not going to be fine. She thought back to the beginning of the pandemic, when Gabe had told her he was moving in with Ruby, that Ruby’s mom had found him a job, remembering how grateful she’d been that her son was safe. She’d called Ruby’s mother to thank her, to offer to contribute to the expense of feeding and housing him. Sarah Danhauser had waved away her offer, saying, “Please. We should be paying you. Gabe’s a delight. He cooks, he cleans, he’s friendly first thing in the morning, and Ruby’s brothers adore him. We’re lucky to have him here. He’s a wonderful kid. You should be proud.”
Rosa had been so glad that her son had found a safe harbor, that he’d found not just a girlfriend but a family, with other boys, and the kind of father who could show him, however belat-edly, what a father should be. It was ironic. Because, soon, she’d be face-to-face with that father. That good man. And he would know that Gabe had been raised by the kind of woman who’d mislead a man about being pregnant just to get a few hundred bucks.
We’re lucky to have him here, Sarah had said. You should be proud.
Proud, Rosa thought, as a sob caught in her throat. Oh, if only she could be proud! If only she’d behaved honorably; if only she’d told the truth, if only she’d done the right thing when there was still time!
She tried to smile, to sound normal, as Gabe went over the travel plans. Rosa and Amanda had tickets from Los Angeles to Boston. Gabe would meet them at the airport, in a rental car, and the three of them would drive up to the Cape together. “The house is incredible. I can’t wait for you to see,” Gabe told them, and explained that they’d all be in a guesthouse, with Gabe and Ruby in the master bedroom, and Rosa and Amanda in the living room. “We tried to find a hotel, but there wasn’t anything within an hour’s drive that weekend,” Gabe said. “I’m sorry.”
Rosa couldn’t breathe. She felt like a giant’s hand was gripping her chest. Her knees felt trembly; her belly was a knotted ache. “Don’t apologize,” she told her son. “I’m just happy I’ll be with you. That’s all I want.”
Meanwhile, Eli Danhauser was frantic to reach her. Every time she turned her phone on she found another spate of texts and emails from him—please call, it’s important, we need to talk. The last time it had happened she’d gotten so dizzy, so sick with disgust and regret that she’d turned the phone off and thrown it onto her bed, like it was a snake that had bitten her. Then she’d deleted her email and text apps from her phone. It didn’t mean his messages weren’t still coming, but at least she wouldn’t have to see them, and have her mistake thrown in her face.