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I nod, silencing my phone. No doubt Fran has alerted Damon to my call. It was her stuttering silence that sold them out in the end. He bought my company. I trusted him and believed his talk about legacies when he was stealing my family’s legacy right under my nose.
I look up at the doctor, trying my best to smile through the soul-splitting pain. It’s paralyzing, and as she waits for me to say something, the only thing I can do is swallow down the burning brine streaming down the back of my throat. The effort of trying to hold myself together is threatening to shatter me from the inside out.
“Miss Monroe, are you all right?”
“Thank you,” I nod, taking the information she hands me of my options and all the things we’ve discussed.
I’m relieved I can leave when she walks me out telling her secretary when to arrange my next appointment.
For the next while, I stand outside thinking of where to go.
Where can I go? Who can I turn to?
I consider my apartment, but Damon will be there, and I don’t want to see him right now. Fuck, I don’t want to see him ever again if not for the fact that I don’t want him to see what he’s done to me.
He did you well. He did, and then he sent his right-hand man to undo me. The bastard couldn’t even face me for the delivery of the punchline to his own joke.
Fresh tears sluice down my face as I try to figure out where to go. I try calling Mom, but she doesn’t even let it ring out anymore. She’s declining my calls. Not that I deserve any better after Friday night.
Was it his plan all along to isolate me? To build me up and then tear me down?
If so, why would he introduce me to his family? I don’t understand why suddenly nothing makes sense, and I desperately need it to make sense because there’s a baby inside me and—Fuck!—I can’t do this shit on my own.
I manage to hail a taxi after a while, and whilst I have no idea where I’m going, I tell the driver to take me to the park. The fucking park.
What is wrong with me?
“Ma’am?” The driver pushes a wad of tissues through the cash tray. “Is everything okay? Do you need help?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh man,” she grates. “Look, I can’t drop you off like this.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine, and you were outside that doctor’s office… You’re not sick, are you? You’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s just that you hear about healthy young women getting real sick now with cancer and—”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, and because I can’t bear to listen to her analyze my situation, I give her Lacie’s address. It’s a Monday; she’ll probably be at the office, but her doorman knows me well enough to let me up.
And he does. In fact, he calls the elevator and takes me all the way up to her floor. Sitting on the ground outside her door, I look through the information the doctor gave me. I’m pretty sure I’m ready to collapse from sheer exhaustion when she arrives.
“Oh fuck.” She pauses in front of me. “What’s happened?”
Hoisting me up from the ground, she lets us into her home. It’s not over-the-top, but impressive enough that you know she makes really good money.
Once she’s got me on her couch, she starts to go through all the shit in my hands. “Oh fuck.”
At this point I have no tears left to cry. I’m empty in feeling and being. I remember thinking Damon had broken me before, but that was nothing compared to this.
“What am I going to do?”
“Wash up,” she says, grabbing her phone and texting away as she paces in front of me. “You’re going to wash this day away, and then we’re going to order pizza and dirty burgers and all the shit we can get here tonight. And we’re going to pig the fuck out. Besides, you have the best excuse, right?”
“I can’t have his baby.”
