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“Four?” she questions back with a genuine look of surprise on her face. “You didn’t know about her before then?”
“Not until the day I…”
My voice drifts because I should say, “not until the day I fucking broke your heart.”
“Until the day you left,” she says softly. “You said earlier that you found out that morning. How?”
“Her mother called me.”
Katie’s eyes narrow. “Her mother? Who is her mother?”
I know the name I’m about to say is going to sting Katie. I only had one semi-serious girlfriend before we met.
Madison Velmont was a constant in my life when I was growing up. Her mom took care of the cleaning and cooking needs of my family. She was a single woman trying to support a daughter on her own.
They lived in an apartment in downtown Los Angeles but spent every day at my parents’ estate until seven p.m. when they’d catch a bus that would take them home.
When it came time for Madison’s prom, my mom insisted that I take her.
I didn’t complain. She was a cute brunette who was always flirting with me.
A year after I was accepted into UCLA, Madison got a full academic scholarship to Vanderbilt University.
She wanted me to make the move to Nashville with her. I refused. She said she loved me. I told her the feeling wasn’t mutual and she took off without another word.
Our paths didn’t cross again until she made a trip back to California to settle her mother’s modest estate.
That’s when she called me and dropped the bombshell that eight months after we broke up, Kristin was born.
“Is it Madison?” Katie blurts out. “Madison is her mom, isn’t she?”
Katie was a virgin when we met. I wasn’t by a long shot. Madison wasn’t the only lover I had, but she was the one my parents mentioned one night when they had too much wine over dinner.
“I always thought you’d end up with Madison,” my dad slurred.
“It’s a shame you didn’t,” my mom added after her goddamn fiftieth sip of the expensive Chardonnay they dug out of their wine cellar to toast to my engagement to Katie.
I’ll never forget the look on my fiancée’s face or the tears that streamed down her cheeks on our ride home.
I scolded my parents for that. I threatened to cut them from my life if they ever uttered Madison’s name again.
They didn’t until the day I told them that they were grandparents.
“Yes, Madison is Kristin’s mother,” I answer.
Silence stretches between us as she studies my face. “You left me to be with her…with them. You went to be with them, didn’t you?”
I did, and I didn’t.
I consider my next words carefully. “I couldn’t be around anyone when I first found out, so I got on my dad’s sailboat the day after I talked to you. I was gone for a week… maybe t
en days. When I got back, I took a trip to Nashville to meet Kristin.”
I don’t mention that my first stop after I hit dry land was the apartment we shared, but Katie wasn’t there.
She broke the lease and cleared her stuff out. I picked up what was left from the landlord and stored it at my parents’ house until I settled into my own place in Nashville. I unpacked it then. I’ve kept those items close to me ever since.
A shaky breath leaves her. “Did you marry Madison?”
