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So that was that. She wished she was a fly on the wall when he told Elizabeth the news.
A text came through five minutes later from Charlie. On my way home. Bringing dinner. He’d added a smiley face.
She didn’t waste a second preparing for his homecoming, and when she heard the garage door opening, she sprang into place so that when he walked through the door, she was waiting for him, naked.
***
Saturday morning, Lila woke up to the smell of pancakes and maple syrup and Charlie’s voice trying to yodel. “Yodel lay-e-d.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” she said, moaning. “My head.”
“We’re going to go to AA together. There’s no other solution.”
“Okay, I guess you’re right. If I’m ever going to get pregnant, I can’t take the chance, can I?”
“No. Me either. I’m old, and older guys have just as much probability to have defective sperm as older women do a defective egg.”
“Shut up. I’m not that old.”
She struggled to sit up while he laughed, offering her a hand. As he placed her breakfast down on the bed in front of her, memories from the night before engulfed his mind.
“Thank you again for last night. I can’t even put into words…”
“Me either. I guess it was awesome because we waited. I was ready to explode.”
“I exploded,” he said, winking at her.
“Well, it was amazing. I guess because I love you so much.”
“We love each other. That’s the difference.”
“I can honestly say I’ve never loved before,” Lila said. “If I compare this to anything else I’ve felt, I truly never had anything even close to what I feel for you.”
“When you have a baby, then you’ll really know what love is. I can’t wait to start our family.”
A wave of happiness flooded over her. He wanted to have children with her. She remembered Devon telling her to mention her trust fund, and that might make him more receptive to having a second wave of kids. It wasn’t necessary.
“I’m so happy, Charlie. I can’t wait, either.”
She took a bite of pancake and smiled at him. This was about as perfect as life could be.
***
At the beach, about thirty miles south, a much different scenario was unfolding.
“I agree. We need to separate for a while,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe it will help us decide what the next step should be.”
The news that Mike Saint wasn’t Lila’s father didn’t come as a surprise. But it was a huge disappointment, a heartbreaking development. She wanted to continue with the deception and not tell Big Mike, who had probably wondered. But either Charlie would tell him the truth or even Bob, and that would be humiliating.
The subterfuge had fed her need to hold onto Big Mike in any way she could. He didn’t acknowledge Lila, but the threat that Elizabeth might reveal their affair to Roberta kept Mike from questioning her about the baby’s paternity. If she hinted that he might be the father, so be it, but please don’t tell.
Now, with one swipe of a cotton swab, that had vanished.
The strange thing was that Bob had gone along with her story and never challenged her. They’d been having sex all along, too, obviously, so it could have been his baby. What made her so sure it was Mike’s? It gave Bob that extra dose of incrimination against the fire district. He never questioned Lila’s paternity, never asked for blood work to be done.
Instead, he’d sequestered Elizabeth and the baby up in Elfin Forest, isolated from the world, so that her interaction with other people would be minimal. Often wondering how many of her former girlfriends knew her story, he’d finally asked one and her answer satisfied him.
“When you talk to Elizabeth, does she seem happy?” he’d asked.
