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Moses pushed his moist nose into the crook of his elbow. He always did that when he wanted to be snuggled.
He scrolled past Thomas’ number and called Emmaline instead. “I changed my mind, sorry. Moses is staying with me.”
Immediately, he felt lighter. He could handle adopting a dog. After all, he had a whole-ass investment fund out there somewhere—minus fifty thousand dollars.
He’d need it to maintain Moses in the style to which Bliss had accustomed him to.
Eighteen
Four and a half months later
The videographer settled the camera on a small tripod, and aimed it at Bliss. From long practice, she gave it her right side, which she’d been told was more photogenic, along with a model’s smile.Rest your chin on a shelf. Mouth the word Tuesday.
Then she realized she was being an idiot. This wasn’t a fashion shoot. This was a videotaped deposition for the case against Benjamin Hodgkins, formerly of the American Consulate in Thailand.
After she’d left Lake Bittersweet, she’d checked into the most secure hotel in Washington DC. From there, she’d reached out to the State Department and reported everything to a deputy assistant secretary. She’d shared the video once again. Soon afterwards, they’d arrested Benjamin Hodgkins. From him, they’d learned more about Congressman Linde and his connections to an international group attempting to change U.S. sex trafficking legislation. The whole thing was a mess, which was par for the course in her life. But at least she was doing her part to fix this particular mess.
After the arrest, they’d told her it was safe to go home to New York, but to be prepared to testify about what she’d seen and heard on that cursed yacht in Thailand.
Also around that point, a plus sign on a stick had changed everything.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” the Justice Department lawyer asked her.
At the beginning of this process, she’d noticed a certain patronizing attitude from the various lawyers questioning her. But as time wore on, and her story didn’t change, and all the details of what she’d witnessed were confirmed, she’d noticed a shift. These super-smart, hard-driving lawyers and State Department officials started respecting her.
It was a weird feeling, one she wasn’t accustomed to. But she liked it. More and more, she was letting go of “flighty model” Bliss. For one thing, her face was a puffball. She liked her new chubbier cheeks. They reminded her of her baby photos, the ones where she was snuggled in Gault’s lap while he played the keyboard.
“I do,” she confirmed.
“Where were you on the night of December twelfth of last year?”
“I was at a party on a yacht on the Andaman Sea, about half a mile off the coast of Thailand.”
“Who else was on the yacht with you?”
She reeled off the names of everyone she knew. “There were several individuals that I didn’t know personally, only by reputation.”
“And you can confirm this because…”
“I recorded a video on my phone.” She told the story step by step, in answer to their questions. It took a couple of hours to walk through everything that had happened. Her conversations with Benjamin Hodgkins. The incidents at Lake Bittersweet. Her escape to DC.
She took several breaks to sip some water, and then of course there were the bathroom breaks. She needed a lot of those.
She was eighteen weeks pregnant, and she had to peea lot.
Granger had actually started keeping count.
Her heart swelled at the thought of him. Granger was waiting outside for her. He’d insisted on accompanying her, because he considered it part of his new full-time guardian duties. “If my kid is going to be stuck at a deposition, so am I,” he said.
“Your kid will be completely oblivious,” she’d pointed out. “I’ll be doing all the work. All the podling will be doing is making me pee.” They’d taken to calling the baby the “podling,” and somehow the Dark Crystal reference had stuck.
But Granger got that stubborn look on his face that meant no one could talk him out of his guard dog mission.
A month after that plus sign had appeared on her pregnancy test, she’d called him. She’d waited until her initial freakout had settled into a decision, until her determination had out-battled her attacks of panic.
Not actual “panic attacks,” though. This was different. This was being real, knowing that having a child alone was going to be a challenge, but deciding to go forward nonetheless. The scary part was how unexpected and unfamiliar it all felt. On the other hand, for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel fundamentally alone. She was going to have a baby, after all.
Other models had babies; it happened all the time. At one of Rihanna’s shows, a model had walked the runway at nine months pregnant. Sure, it was easier if you were a supermodel who would be in demand no matter what. But she could still make it work. Couldn’t she?
