"What do you need to know?" Emily asks, looking at the floor.
"Em, I really want to know… It's killing me." My soft approach draws a scowl as her jaw tightens, then she shakes her head.
"I'm not doing this with you at my place of work." She takes a step forward but I stand firm.
"You won't do it anywhere else, either. I've been here for two days and you've gone out of your way to make sure we're never in the same room for more than thirty seconds." I sigh hard and try to control my temper. Shouting won't do any good with her. I've tried it and it didn't work. "I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm trying to have a conversation."
"I've got nothing to say to you about this, Jaxon." I know what she's saying, but her bottom lip trembles when she speaks. She's scared and if she just opened up, maybe I could help her with that. She grips the strap of her purse tighter and stands up straighter, squaring herself off against me. "You should be focused on finishing the job, Jaxon. That's what my money is paying for."
"Just tell me how old she is." This is the kicker. I have to know this because it will confirm to me whether Emily could possibly have cheated on me. Somehow, that feels worse in this very moment than the idea that she got pregnant and hid my kid from me. I could never forgive cheating… but maybe I could forgive a secret. Right now, I have no option but to think the worst about her.
"Why does that matter?"
"Because it matters to me. How old is she, Emily?"
She holds my stare for a long time. Her hands are still on the purse strap and I can see the tension running through her shoulders and neck, the muscles pulled tight, her whole body braced. When she finally answers me, she can't look me in the eye.
"She's six and a half."
I've been away so long, there's no way I could know if she's lying. I used to know things like this about her, or my father, or men that work at Cole and Son's. But time away and distance from people and their quirks has made me rusty. I'm still a good judge of character, but trying to sort out a truth from a lie is challenging.
"Six and a half," I repeat, watching her readjust the purse strap on her shoulder. Part of my heart sinks while the other part twists into a knot. For all I know, she's lying, but if she's telling the truth, then both of my assumptions are wrong. If Mercy is six and a half, that just means Emily waited almost a year before she climbed into bed with someone. And it makes sense that she'd have a rebound relationship—which if that's the case makes sense why the guy isn't around right now.
"Yes. Are we done?" she asks, huffing. I don't respond but I do step aside. She stomps past me and up the back hallway toward the door, pushing out into the alley where her car is parked. I stand in the hallway and listen to the engine start and the tires pull out of the gravel lot, and then it's quiet except for Karen's mixer and the low hum of the cooler in the kitchen.
It wasn't the answer I was hoping for, and I'm not sure what to make of it except to stew some more. I'm so tangled up in my head, it's affecting my work and my sleep. Dad gripes at me constantly about being late and not having my head on straight. It's eating me up. I just know she's hiding something.
But at least I finally have an answer. If Mercy is six and a half—and I really have to force myself to believe that—then she's not mine, and Emily didn't cheat, either. I should be happy about that. So why do I still feel like the other shoe's about to fall?
I grab my toolbelt and head out the front door to where Danny and Russ are waiting in the truck. Nobody says anything on the drive back to the yard and I'm grateful for it. I think they realize by my demeanor and my silence that I'm not in the mood for more of their hazing or jokes.
The house is dark when I get home except for the kitchen, where Dad is sitting at the table with a beer and a plate of crackers he probably called dinner. He looks up when I come in and tips his bottle toward the fridge, which is as close to an invitation as Roger Cole gets.
I grab a beer and sit down across from him. The table still has the stack of mail on it that I sorted weeks ago—pushed off to one side now—and Dad's got the TV on in the next room with the volume so low it's just noise. We sit there for a minute, drinking, not talking, and it's the most comfortable silence we've had since I came home.
It's funny that way, that silence with someone can be more comfortable than talking. It's how you know things are broken beyond repair. At least if there's arguing, it means they are wanting things to be different. When they go fully silent and they're okay with it, it's usually at breaking point, or beyond one.
"Dad, did you know Emily Carter has a daughter?"
He lowers his beer and raises his eyes at me. "Tom and Susan's girl?" He squints and narrows his eyes, and I gather from the deadpan expression that he's clueless.
"Yeah."
"I had no idea." He scratches the back of his neck and frowns. "She came around the house a few times after you left. Talked to your mother more than me. But I don't remember hearing anything about a baby."
"She came to the house?"
"Once or twice in the beginning, maybe. I wasn't paying much attention." He takes another drink and leans back in his chair. "After you didn't come home from your first deployment, we didn't know what was going on. Your CO called and said you'd been moved to a classified unit, that communications would be limited, and that was the end of it. Your mother called the base every week for months trying to get information and they gave her the same answer every time."
My chest feels heavy, still carrying the weight of those long months with zero contact. How many times I wished over the years that I hadn't made those choices. I got all of Mom's messages, but a return message was impossible. The service has to protect its special forces and their families. The only way to do that is a complete blackout. If I'd been taken hostage, they could've come for my family, tortured them as a means to get information out of me.
There's just no way to explain that to a civilian who has no training. They feel hurt by it when no offense was ever intended.
"I know. I couldn't tell her anything. When we go on assignments like that we go completely dark, no contact with anyone, not even family. It's to protect the unit and the people at home." I peel the label on my beer and stare at the table. "I hated it. But I didn't have a choice."
"Well…" Dad sighs and pushes a few empties toward me. "I'm just saying Mom stopped sleeping. She lost weight. And then she got the diagnosis and everything else fell away. I was at the hospital with her every day, then at the yard trying to keep the business running, then back to the hospital…" I physically feel the weight in the room shift. It's a heavy conversation. "If she had a kid, we weren't concerned. We were too busy trying to save your mother’s life."
"Did Mom ever mention Emily being pregnant? Or having a baby?" I know I’m beating a dead horse with a stick, but if there's any chance Emily was lying and Mercy is older than she said, I have to know. None of this sits right with me.
