AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The next morning, Carmela took one look at Lizzie’s face as she wandered into the kitchen after putting a recently fed Stella in her swing, and demanded to know what had happened. Then she took charge.
“He is not going to take Stella away from you,” she said when Lizzie told her what she most feared. “You definitely have reason to mistrust him, sweetie, but his money and supposed power aside, has he ever even indicated that he’d want to have Stella half the time?”
Still in her sleep pants and T-shirt, Lizzie shook her head. Listening. Desperate for reason that made sense to shut out the panic-ridden thoughts in her brain.
She knew she was overreacting. She just couldn’t seem to stop. It wasn’t like her. At all.
“I’d think a more likely fear,” Carmela said, “would be that his parents are going to convince him you’re a gold digger and try to get him to have nothing more to do with either you or Stella.”
That was a viable possibility, for sure. And if that did happen, she’d be home free.
But her heart sank and tears sprang to her eyes.
“That’s what’s really happening, isn’t it?” she asked. “He’s ditching me again.”
It shouldn’t hurt so much. She had Stella. She didn’t need him.
Oh, God, why did it hurt so much to think that she wasn’t good enough for a man who’d run out on her once already?
What was wrong with her that she’d still love him?
“I don’t know.” Carmela’s words reached her through a haze of pain.
She looked up from her seat, slumped at the table, as her friend scrambled eggs for them, meeting Carmela’s gaze. Carmela hated Nolan. Or close to it. She didn’t trust him. She was the one who’d known from the beginning that he was just using Lizzie. That he wouldn’t ever call again after he left the previous year.
She’d been right all along.
“It’s odd that he left this, don’t you think?” Carmela asked, holding up the card that Lizzie had left right where Nolan had dropped it the night before, on the coffee table. Her friend had obviously picked it up that morning since it was now in the kitchen.
She stared at the card, trying not to remember how good it had felt to have Nolan’s body moving under hers just moments before he jotted those phone numbers.
“He gave you his mom and dad’s cell phone numbers,” Carmela said. “It doesn’t get any more real than that.”
“He gave me numbers, Carm,” she said. “Just like last time. Who knows if they’re really to his parents’ cells? Or if he’ll warn them to disconnect them?” She’d uttered those questions for hours as she’d lain awake in the dark of the night, trying to figure out exactly what was going on, and where she was making mistakes.
“And it’s not like I’m going to call them to check,” she added, though she’d thought about doing so.
“He left his office number. You could call that. See where it gets you.” She could. And might, sometime, if she really needed to reach him.
It would have to be a pretty severe emergency, though. She’d promised herself that.
“And his pass to get into his country club,” Carmela added, reading the other side of the card. Lizzie hadn’t picked the thing up, hadn’t known what it was.
Of course he’d have membership to a country club. And he probably didn’t physically need the pass. They’d know who he was.
A country club...
While her parents hadn’t qualified as members, they’d been frequent guests at the Mahoneys’ country club in Chicago. She remembered how her mom would rave afterward about the food they ate, and then complain about the boxed hamburger meals that Lizzie had grown to love.
“Did he say when he’d be back?” Carmela’s question broke into her thoughts. Details of her life as a child didn’t define her anymore.
“Thursday sometime,” Lizzie told her. “Said he’d stop here before going to the club, but wasn’t sure how much time he’d have.”
“The day after Christmas,” Carmela said as though that had some significance. “He’s planning to come right back, Lizzie. What if he really was just going home to break the news of you and Stella to his family? I can’t imagine it’s going to be easy for him. Not only laying his new family on them, but also telling them that you all aren’t going to be a family...in the traditional sense.”
And if they demanded that he end his association with her and Stella? Would he? Would he walk away from them and deny Stella the right to know her father?
It was a better proposition than having them come after her for partial custody, right?
