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Jealousy poked its spiky finger into my chest.
“My mother hated her of course.”
“Did you love her?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t looking for a relationship. She knew that. I was still at college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And she was all over the place. She’d go into these dark places, which I couldn’t navigate.” He took a breath. “Anyway, when she fell pregnant, she insisted it was mine, despite her fucking other guys.”
“Really? You weren’t exclusive?” I asked, surprised that anyone would need other lovers with a man like Declan.
“No. I mean, I didn’t fuck around, but she did. My request for a paternity test after the baby arrived, seriously pissed her off. She wanted me to marry her.”
“Did your mother know?”
He nodded. “Jasmine saw to that. She went around telling everyone that I was going to turn her into a single mother. I hated how pressured that made me feel. My mother even offered her money to go away.” He shook his head. “Unsurprisingly, my mother hated her.”
“Yeah, unsurprisingly,” I muttered.
He gave me an apologetic smile. “Yeah, well, my mother’s another story.”
“So what happened to Jasmine?”
“She killed herself. Slit her veins.” The tremor in his voice justified by that shocking detail.
I touched my mouth. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “That’s why I don’t talk about it. I ran away after that and joined the army.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“One was found. But it was illegible scrawl. Something vague like ‘life wasn’t worth living.’”
His voice cracked, and I studied his face. The shadow of night accentuated the depth of pain in his eyes.
I couldn’t leave it there. I needed to know every tragic detail.
“Would you have married her had the child been yours?”
He turned sharply and held my stare. “I wasn’t in love with her.”
“But it isn’t just love but responsibility, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, I would have provided for them. They wouldn’t have wanted for anything. She knew that.”
I nodded pensively.
“In any case, the child wasn’t mine.” His voice trailed off.
“Oh?” My eyebrows knitted. “They discovered that at the autopsy?”
“Yep.” He looked like he’d seen a ghost. His face long and his eyes remote. I felt guilty for dredging it up, but I needed to know everything. “My mother arranged it.”
“The autopsy?”
“No, she insisted on a paternity test.”
“They can do that?”
“I guess so. She was six months pregnant at the time.”
