“Wait!” he said, holding up his palm. A puzzle piece—a very important puzzle piece—wasn’t fitting together, and he scrambled to figure out what it was.
“She would have ruined your future! She was some little piece of ass that you—”
“Wait. Did . . . did you know she was tellin’ the truth?”
Fancy sniffed the air, then looked away, picking a nonexistent piece of lint off her satin robe.
“You called her a liar. You said that she made it all up. You told her that I was with Vanessa all summer and it was impossible that the child could be mine.”
His mother lifted her chin. “Whatever I did, it was for you.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t fuckin’ say that!” growled Erik, advancing on his mother. One step. Two. He halted, forcing himself to stop, fisting his hands at his sides, not trusting himself to get closer.
“Did you know I wasn’t with Van?”
“Of course I knew you weren’t with Van,” she said, her voice lethal, her eyes cold. “Vanessa went to England for a month that summer, but you were still out every night.”
“You used my own lie to chase her away,” he murmured, his voice breathless, his brain finally understanding the truth: his mother had known that he and Van weren’t together. She’d also known, staring into Laire’s helpless eyes that night, that she was probably telling the truth.
“It was convenient,” said Fancy, sipping her tea like they weren’t in the middle of a conversation that was destroying their relationship forever.
“You knew I wasn’t with Van. You knew Laire was tellin’ the truth,” he said, surprised by how much the words hurt, surprised that there was anything left of his heart for her to break.
He thought he’d hated her when he walked into her bedroom this morning, but part of him still felt guilty that he’d deceived her that summer, and he wondered about his share of blame for her sending Laire away. He’d let her believe that he and Van were together; he’d willfully misled her.
Except he hadn’t. She’d known all along that he and Van were a sham.
“How did you know that I was lyin’ about bein’ with Van?”
“I knew you were spendin’ a lot of time that summer with someone else. I’m not a moron, Erik. You were out every night. You raced back to the Banks when the house was empty. You had a spring in your step every Sunday, and you’d be gone for hours and hours on end. Yes, I knew you had a piece of ass on the side. Wouldn’t be the first Rexford to find someone else to fill your . . . needs.” She took a deep breath, placing her teacup back on her saucer and looking at her husband meaningfully before turning back to her son. “Boys will be boys, I suppose. Their peckers get a workout. But my boy wasn’t goin’ to be saddled for life with some little tramp.”
“All you cared about was your goddamned social status. About avoidin’ a scandal.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” she sniped, her eyes narrow and mean. “You’d have me welcome some fish-smellin’ piece of white trash into our family because you knocked her up?” She hooted. “Think again! I didn’t raise us to this level only to have your wanderin’ cock destroy us!”
“Fancy!” cried Erik’s father.
Erik blinked at her, shock and fury mixing inside until he felt his stomach roll over. “You’re a fuckin’ monster.”
“Here, now!” cried his father, slapping his palm on the table and making the china rattle. “You will not speak to your mother that way!”
He turned to his father, nailing him with a wild gaze. “My pregnant girlfriend showed up at Thanksgivin’ to tell me she was expectin’ our child, to ask for my help. And she—” Spittle flew from his mouth as he pointed at his mother. “—turned her away. Into the night. With nothin’!” His father stared back at him, expressionless. “Your grandchild, Father!”
His father took a deep breath, then dropped his eyes to the tablecloth, running his fingers along a crisp seam in the cloth.
“Well, it’s in the past now, isn’t it?” he asked rhetorically.
“No,” said Erik, picturing Laire and Ava Grace in his mind, feeling them in his heart, knowing the strength of his love for them and the certainty of what he wanted in his life. “It’s not in the past. I found them. I found her—Laire—and Ava Grace, my almost six-year-old daughter.”
Fancy gasped, her face furious. “Ha! I hope you have a good specialist on retainer to do the DNA test becau—”
“She has my eyes,” he snarled. “Your eyes, Mother.”
His mother blinked at him, swallowing before looking away.
“I’m about to leave this house, but before I go, I need to be very clear with you both, so listen carefully.
I will be resignin’ from my job at Rexford & Rexford today. I will be tyin’ up loose ends and packin’ up my desk tomorrow and Thursday. I will not be back to work. Ever.
I will be sellin’ or rentin’ my apartment. I will be leavin’ Raleigh to be with my daughter and her mother. I will not be back. I wouldn’t condemn them to the humiliation of livin’ in the same city as you.”