Page 19 of Lies and Lullabies
“Damn. If we’re not even going for soft serve, this must be really serious.”
Oh, you have no idea. I dragged Adam out to the end of the dock and sat down cross-legged. He flopped down next to me. And then I blurted it out. “He’s back in town.”
My brother was silent for a long moment. “No shit?” he said, finally. “I assume we’re talking about Vivi’s daddy.”
“Right after you guys got out of the car, I saw him. And we spoke for a minute.” I edited out the kissing, not because Adam would disapprove, but because I wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, or what to think about it. “We’re having lunch tomorrow.”
“Jesus! So how’s that discussion going to go? ‘These sandwiches are fantastic. And by the way, our kid turns four next month.’”
“I’m going to tell him.”
“Ofcourseyou’re going to tell him! That’s the right thing to do.”
I flinched. “Adam,” I put a hand on his wrist. “I haven’t done the right thing. Not at all.”
“Not true!” He rubbed my back with one hand. “You’ve done all the right things, Kiki. It hasn’t been easy, but you’re doing well.”
“No. You don’t understand.” I took a deep breath. “I never told you that I found out who he was.”
“Wait… What? He’s some guy named John Smith who spent the summer in Mrs. Wetzle’s place. Are you saying that wasn’t true?”
“It was, and it wasn’t,” I whispered.
“Kiki.” His voice held a warning. “There’s enough soap opera in our lives already. What’s the story?”
Right. If it was this hard to explain it to Adam, how was I ever going to tell John? Or Jonas. Whoever. I sighed. “Okay, when Vivi was nine months old, I saw his face on an album cover.”
Adam whistled. “Agoodalbum cover?”
“Do you know the band Hush Note?”
I watched Adam’s eyes bug out. “Oh my god, Kiki! You got knocked up by a rock star? What’s his name?” Adam dug his phone out of his back pocket.
“He’s Jonas—”
“—Smith!” he yelled. He spoke to his phone: “Siri, show me if Jonas Smith has a hot body!” He squinted at the screen. “Hey—Hush Note is releasing a new single this weekend. Wait—what I really need is YouTube.” He tapped feverishly on the screen.
It was just my luck that cell phone service had arrived at Nest Lake. In no time, my brother pulled up a video clip of Jonas Smith in concert. I leaned over Adam’s shoulder to see. I’d done this before, though, peering at clips of him, trying to understand who he really was.
On Adam’s screen, Jonas sang hard, one sculpted arm clutching the microphone, torqueing his body as if to squeeze the sound out. The stage lighting had an orange hue, lending him an otherworldly appearance.
After a moment, I had to look away. Whenever I saw one of those videos, it brought him further away from me, not closer. It was like watching a stranger.
Today on the dock, though, I’d found the real man. And tomorrow we would meet again, and I would spill my secret.
But then what? He’d probably freak out and disappear. And that was actually thebestscenario. The scarier one was that he’d sue me for custody. Not that John was mean. But living with Adam—a lawyer—had been an unwelcome education on the topic of interpersonal disasters. The cases passing through my brother’s office showcased every kind of crazy thing people did to hurt one another.
I dreaded telling him.
“That is one hot piece of man,” my brother said, still squinting at his phone. “A burning hunk of love.” He clicked the phone off and stuffed it into his pocket. “But Kira, you knew who he was, and you never told him? That’s so wrong.”
“Iknow, Adam. I should have tried harder to contact him.”
“Did you try at all?”
I was silent, because the answer to that question was somewhat complicated. But he mistook it for denial. “Tsk, tsk,” he said. “Youarea bad girl.”
“What do you think will happen?” I raised my eyes to him, and the sight of my thoughtful big brother was a balm on my soul. Without Adam, these last few years would have been unsurvivable.
