Page 14 of Turning Back

He exhales loudly like he’s really frustrated now. “I really think I need to know.”

“You don’t deserve to know where I’m going.” My own frustration is building. Where does he get off? How in the world does he figure I owe him something?

“Not where you’re going,” he snaps. “If I’m the father.” His head is downcast, but he looks up through a wave of hair. It’s longer than I remember. Not long. But shoulder-length. And some of it falls over his face until he runs his fingers through it, putting it back in place.

“Why?” I ask. “It’s not like you ever wanted kids.”

“Didn’t want them. That’s right. But if I have one, Rochelle, that’s different. I’d need to know that. We really do need a DNA test.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Well, we do.”

“Quin doesn’t even know about her. So he can’t want that.”

“I’m gonna tell him tonight when I leave here, and once I do, he’ll come looking and he’ll demand a DNA test.”

“Is that a threat?” So many things in that statement make me uncomfortable.

“No,” he says. “No,” more emphatically. “That’s not why I’m here. I just… need to know. And I need to make things right with Quin. So I have to tell him.”

We have another long silence as Bric picks up a toy from the floor. A red plastic block. He turns it in his hand like he’s never seen anything like it before.

“You said you came to beg for a favor. Was that your favor? The DNA test? Because if so, it’s not happening. I get why you’d want to know, I do.” I look at him with an earnest expression. “I even sympathize about your situation with Quin. But I cannot get involved with you guys again. It was…” I stop and try to pull myself together. I’d forgotten about the feelings. All those desperate moments last year. All the crying and craziness. I know it was just the hormones, but it was real while it was happening.

“It was what?” Bric prods, ever the psychoanalyst.

I let out a long breath of air. “It was hard. I didn’t want to walk away, Bric. I wanted what every pregnant woman wants.”

“The happily ever after?” he asks, shooting me another small, but genuine, smile.

I shrug. “I guess you could call it that. But right after I found out I was pregnant, after I told you—like the next day, I think—Quin and I were at your last garden party on the Club roof and we were dancing. It was such a great night. I told him I loved him and he looked at me, Bric… he looked at me like I was a stranger.”

“So you left.”

I nod. “I left. I knew he… I knew I was important to him, right? But the minute I admitted that I loved him, I saw the fear in his face.”

“What fear?” Bric asks.

“That the game would end. I knew right then that ending the game was the thing he feared most. Not me, Bric. He wasn’t going to miss our couple relationship. But us. Me and you and him. That’s what he wanted. That’s always been what he wanted.”

They both want that. I thought Smith did too, so that doesn’t fit into my assessment of them. Why play this game over and over again? But I don’t know Smith that well. I do know Bric. And Quin is just like him, minus the dark Machiavellian side.

Bric picks up a blue block and stacks it on top of the red one on the arm of the chair. He watches Adley for a few seconds. Another smile creeps out. So many real smiles from Elias Bricman today. “She looks just like you.”

My gaze falls down to my absolutely beautiful daughter. “I think so too. She’s got my blonde hair. And I still have a baby picture of me.” I nod to the photo frame on the mantle of the fireplace. It’s a cheap frame. Something I bought at the local drugstore after I got Adley’s first pictures taken last month when I made a rare trip to the Durango mall. It’s me and her, side by side. And we could be the same baby, that’s how much alike we look.

Well, except for the eyes. Adley has bright blue eyes and mine are hazel. But that might change.

Bric stands, walks over to the fireplace, and picks up the frame. “Jesus.”

He stares at the image for so long I start to feel weird. “That was the favor then? The DNA test?”

“No,” Bric answers, still gazing down at the photo. “That was just to piss you off.” He smiles, looks over at me from under that curl of hair again. “Because I know you. I know how to push all your buttons, Rochelle.”