Page 31 of Bountiful
Goosebumps broke out across my back. “Okay,” I said slowly, still trying to catch up. This had never happened to me before. Or really to anyone I knew. I remembered that once a teammate had been in a situation like this, but it had turned out to be a false alarm. “So…” I swallowed hard.Think. What would Bess do right now? “I, uh, have a lawyer. He’ll know about paternity suits. DNA tests. I’m gonna call him.” Just saying those words made me feel cold everywhere. I could not be someone’sfather. What aninsaneidea.
Beside me, Zara made a small noise of surprise. “I don’t need your lawyer,” she sputtered. “I’m not suing anyone. That’s not why I’m tellingyouthis.”
“Why then?” I asked withoutthinking.
Her eyes got wide. “Because it’s theright thing to do. I spent nearly two years fending off my family’s questions. I wouldn’t tell them who her father was, because nobody had a right to know before you did.” She stood up quickly. “You’rewelcome.”
While my mouth was still hanging open, she got up and ran off, disappearing into thetrees.
ChapterTen
Zara
Iranhome as if someone had lit a fire under my ass. The motion helped shake off my tension and terror. Lengthening my strides, I ran along the road until I came back to my brother’s property. Running felt different now than it had before I became a mother. For starters, there was more of me than there used to be. As I neared The Gin Mill, I crossed my arms under my breasts to stop thebouncing.
So many things had changed in the last two years. And now I was terrified that another tectonic shift was underway, and I hadn’t seen itcoming.
Breathing hard, I went around to the side of The Gin Mill building, where the private entrance was. But after I let myself in the door, I stood there at the bottom of the stairs, taking deep breaths. My mother was upstairs with Nicole, and they were expecting me. But I couldn’t go up there and panic in front of my child. And I was too stunned to level with mymother.
I sat down on the third stair and tried to calm down. The business card was still in my hand, so I studied it onemoretime.
DavidBeringer
The BrooklynBruisers
There was a line-drawing of a hockey stick and a puck. And a phone number and an email address. Benito—after all his efforts to help me search for Dave—would be fascinated to know how the hell my onetime hookup actually spelled hislastname.
How unreal it felt to be holding this information in my hand. When I’d woken up this morning, it was with the belief that I’d never see Dave again. The moment before he’d walked into the coffee shop, my mind was on a dozen otherthings.
The last person I expected to see today was the one whose green eyes could always stare right through me. For a second there, I hadn’t even trusted my eyes.Two years. That’s how long it had been since I’d seenhimlast.
That first fall, when I was pregnant, I used to look for him in crowds. Whenever the door to The Mountain Goat opened during my bartending shifts, I’d felt a little flutter of expectation. I’d scan the men entering the bar, looking for a flash of red-brown hair and a sexysmile.
It never came. And eventually I’d stopped looking. Switching jobs broke me of the habit. I finally accepted that he wasn’t coming back, and I made my peacewithit.
My family never did, though. They hated that I kept the details to myself. My older brothers and two Italian-American uncles—they all wanted to know whom to kill. Everyone wanted to take a piece out of the guy who’d “knocked me up,” as my unclesputit.
That phrase made me want toscream.
Dave had gone, and even Benito—my only confidante—hadn’t been able to find him. All we had was a first name, my crappy memory’s feeble attempts at his last name, andBrooklyn.
There are two and a half million people in Brooklyn. Quite a fewDaves,too.
And anyway, getting pregnant by a stranger had been a pretty stupid thing to do. But it wasmystupid thing. I forgot about Dave. Or—even if I couldn’t truly forget him—I’d stopped expecting him to reappear. As time wore on, I’d made my peace with the idea that he’d never know his child, and that a surprise child wouldn’t bewelcome.
Seems I was right about that lastthing.
Here I sat in the stairwell, going a little insane, while upstairs my child waited for the parent wholovedher.
I stood up, shoving the business card in my pocket, and took one more deep breath. Then I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I opened the door to my brother’s mostly finished dwelling to find my mother seated at my kitchen table with Nicole in the clamp-on chair. There were Cheerios and carefully cut-up grapes on the plastic mat in front ofthebaby.
“Mama’s home!” my mother sang as I stepped into the room. “Say, ‘Hi,Mama!’”
My baby girl opened her mouth and shriekedwithjoy.
“That also works,” Mom said with alaugh.
Even though Nicole was fifteen months old, she hadn’t spoken yet. I was starting to get worried, honestly. But the pediatrician said to wait a few more months beforepanicking.
