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CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
SEAN
We passed the time by playing stupid games likespot something bluewith the little girl, Nova. She was adorable, and I couldn’t help but wonder how our child would look when they reached the same age. How would we explain our relationships? I wanted to be just as central to the baby’s life as Damien, even if I wasn’t the biological father. I thought it was only fair.
Damien didn’t join us. Instead, he paced the waiting room looking panicked. I excused myself from the festivities and went to join him. When I planted myself in his path, he looked up with the widest eyes I had ever seen.
“She almost lost the baby.”
“But she didn’t,” I reminded him.
He had obviously done the math like Kent and I and come to the conclusion that he was the baby’s biological father. I hoped that wouldn’t mean a move to a more traditional relationship with Meara and pushing us out. I didn’t think that getting to her first gave him that right. I was about to open my mouth and tell him so, even though the time wasn’t right to get into a pissing match.
Just then, the nurse came back and told us that Meara had been moved to a private room and that we could visit her. We were all on our feet in an instant, vying to be the first one through the door.
Once in the hallway and on our way to Meara’s room, I calmed down.Let Damien have this moment,I told myself. There would be other moments. Maybe we could have multiple children, and Kent and I could have a chance to be fathers as well. In the meantime, if Damien thought I wasn’t going to spoil his little infant, he was mistaken. I wanted to be more than “Uncle Sean”; I wanted the baby to have three fathers, just like Meara had three boyfriends. It only seemed fair.
We reached the recovery room and found Millie and Vlad already inside. They looked up, giving us each a smile as we piled in. Damien’s sister picked her daughter up and remained in the hallway, giving us space. Millie looked at her lover and nodded. The two of them left as well, releasing the four of us to our own devices.
I looked at Kent, sending him a signal that he needed to back off. He flashed me a scowl, not liking my command but obeying it anyway. We let Damien approach the bed first. He was taking it the hardest and with good reason. As fond as I was of the child already, I couldn’t imagine how I would feel knowing it was my flesh and blood.
Meara was pale and worn out. She smiled at all of us bravely, starting with Damien but quickly working her way around to me and Kent. Obviously, she wasn’t putting any outsized value on the fact that Damien had impregnated her. It looked like my fears of being pushed out were unfounded. That was good. It gave me the strength I needed to let Damien have his moment.
“Sean,” Meara said weakly.
I moved to the bedside to take her hand.
“Kent,” she whispered.
Kent came up on her other side, and the three of us stood, looking down at her in awe. She had been through so much, and yet she was still fighting for our little family. I knew I was falling in love with her—if I wasn’t already there. She still looked beautiful, even with the IV in her arm and her face as white as the sheets. I reminded myself that the doctor said she could go home that night. I wondered which home she would go to.
Maybe we should take her back to her apartment; that way, there would be no territorial conflict. We could all stay on to make sure she recovered. I got a kick out of imagining the three of us doing her domestic chores. Some internship that was.
“You just worry about getting better,” I told her, giving her hand a squeeze.
Leaning down to kiss her forehead, I moved off. Kent stayed by her bed, not as generous as I was with Damien’s parental rights. I shrugged. I couldn’t convince either of them to do anything, and I wasn’t going to try. Meara seemed content to entertain all of us, so I just left it at that.
Sitting down in a chair across the room, I pulled out my phone. There was always email and stock tickers to watch. I could pass the time idly just by scrolling through my digital communications. Usually, it was clients asking to move money. I just flagged anything that was important and moved on to the next missive.
One particular email caught my eye. It was from an old college friend, someone I hadn’t spoken to in ages. He was now a competitor, and we spotted each other occasionally at networking lunches. He wasn’t a bad guy. I just kept my distance because there was no use revisiting old friendships when we were each trying for a piece of the same pie.
Sean, buddy,the email read. I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but for old time’s sake I just wanted to give you a heads up. We were just approached by an intern in your firm, a woman named Sam. She says she has some company secrets she’s going to sell to the highest bidder. She was wondering if we would be interested.
I balked, staring down at the words as if they were mystical creatures that couldn’t possibly be real. Sam wouldn’t do that, would she? Was she so disaffected by our relationships with Meara that she had done the unthinkable? It was too horrible to ponder. Not only was she privy to company secrets, but she very well might know the intimate details of what we were doing with Meara behind closed doors.
Who would want that company secret? It wasn’t likely to fetch more than a few dollars from a tabloid. Certainly our competitors wouldn’t care about our sex lives. What was more likely to be of value were the names of our customers and the purchases we were making on their behalf.
I tried to think about just how much Sam knew. She had only been with us for a few weeks, six at the most. She couldn’t possibly have damning information that would expose our clients and take down the firm, could she?
I fired off a quick thank you to my friend. He was putting his neck on the line by alerting me, and I appreciated it. I looked up, but both Kent and Damien were absorbed with Meara. Now wasn’t the right time to tell them about the new development. We had to make sure Meara was on the mend before dropping such a bomb.
I knew Sam was unhappy, but I didn’t think she would take things quite so far. We had underestimated her. All three of us promised to talk to her at one point, but nobody followed through. We had other things on our minds, and we let ourselves get carried away. It was a mistake and one that threatened to be very costly.
I didn’t know if there was still time. In a last-ditch effort to resolve the conflict before it escalated, could I approach the girl and demand her loyalty? What if I paid her? I didn’t want to pay her. I wanted to fire her. I wanted to put her name on a list of people never to hire and circulate that list around the Internet. I wanted to call her home and hang up like some stupid teenager. But none of those things would be even remotely helpful.
I put the phone down, having lost my appetite for digital communications. There had to be something I could do to save the day. The only question was what.
