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“I’m sorry.” Bethany shook her head and placed the newspaper clipping to the side.
“It’s okay,” Aria stuttered. When Bethany’s sobbing slowed, she asked, “So you’re still friends with Judah?”
Bethany closed her eyes. “Not exactly.”
“But he still reached out to you to tell you I’d been on campus recently?” Aria asked.
Bethany opened her eyes again to stare directly into Arias. “Judah was my college boyfriend and my very first love.”
Aria’s jaw dropped as Bethany nodded. Color returned to her cheeks, as though she’d just unburdened herself from a horrific weight.
“All this time?” Aria stuttered. “Why didn’t he ever tell me he knew you?”
“Oh gosh. It’s all so complicated.” Bethany rubbed her temples.
“Why?” Aria felt they were spinning in circles. “And why did you and Judah break up in the first place?”
“Judah took a fantastic internship after our senior year and left the United States for a while,” Bethany explained. “I was heartbroken, but I was also sassy— and I wanted to prove to him that I could do my own thing, too. I moved to Texas and began working as an intern at a pretty good firm. Around that time, I met your father. He was handsome and arrogant and very, very rich. He surprised me with a trip to the Bahamas, then a trip to Alaska, then a trip to Paris. It seemed that every day with him was an adventure of sorts just because of the freedom that money allowed us.
“I can see the way you’re looking at me now,” Bethany went on. “Your eyes are judgmental. You can’t understand why I would abandon someone cool and smart like Judah for someone like your father.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Aria said, although she had been.Had her mother been able to read her mind for the past twenty-four years?
“It’s okay,” Bethany offered. “Your father didn’t transform into the man you know, into this cruel and manipulative person, until a little after Gregory was born. It took me a little longer to lose the baby weight, and I struggled with undiagnosed depression. Neither of those things fit well with Kenny’s image of how his life should be.
“Not long after that, we had Natalie, and things seemed to only worsen,” Bethany continued. “I’d lost the baby weight quicker this time, thank goodness— but I’d also begun dreaming about architecture again. When I told Kenny I was thinking about returning to work, he insinuated it would be impossible since I’d so easily dropped my career after marrying him. He said, basically, who would want me at my age without any real experience?”
Aria’s jaw dropped, although she wasn’t fully surprised. This was Kenny Baldwin to a T.
Bethany stared at the ground. “The phone call from Judah came out of the blue, honestly. I’d thought of him endlessly and kept up with his career as best as I could. But I hadn’t assumed he’d even thought of me since he’d left for Europe.
“On the phone, he told me that he was coming to Texas for a conference soon. Did I want to have dinner? Gosh, the sound of his voice was like drinking water in a desert. I realized that so much of my heart still loved him. I could barely get out of my bed the next day due to fear. But when he came to town, I arranged for a babysitter for Gregory and Natalie, dressed myself to the nines, and then drove out to meet Judah at a restaurant near his hotel.”
“What was Dad doing that night?” Aria asked.
Bethany waved her hand. “He had something to do, a function where they needed to see his face. Whatever it was, it left me in the clear.
“When I arrived at the restaurant, Judah was seated in the corner, wearing a gray suit jacket and a pair of jeans. Gosh, he looked so dashing. So successful and artistic. I nearly fell to the floor when I saw him. We hugged and then spent the next hours talking ourselves silly. I felt like I hadn’t said so many words to anyone in my life. When he asked about Kenny, I told him the truth— that I wasn’t happy in my marriage and that I’d made a mistake. And after that, he placed his hand over mine on the table, looked me in the eyes, and asked me to come up to his hotel with him. Nothing in my mind or body told me not to go. I realized that I’d actually agreed to meet him that night just for this.”
Aria was breathless. It was hard to imagine her mother and Judah together, so many years before Aria hung around his office, watching the world roll by from his window.
“I guess you know what I’m going to tell you next,” Bethany said.
Aria shook her head at first, unsure. A few ideas came to her: that Kenny had found out about the affair and forbade Bethany to ever see him again or that Judah had abandoned her after their one night together to return to his career.
But then, the realization struck Aria so hard that she nearly fell off the bed.
“No,” she breathed.
Bethany nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
“Judah? Really?” Aria gaped at her mother, unsure what to say. She felt as though her heart had exploded, as though every conceivable thing she’d once known about the world had been wrong.
“I didn’t tell him until many years after you were born,” Bethany whispered. “Because Kenny had made me sign a prenup, and I had no idea how I could care for myself or my children on my own. I had never really worked before, and I was terrified. Gosh, I hate how much fear has dictated my life.”
Aria burned with a mix of horror and intrigue.All this time, Kenny hadn’t been her father? All this time, she’d been with her father, an architect genius, at Savannah College of Art and Design.
“I knew you were going to meet Judah when you went to college,” Bethany went on. “And when you started your first semester, I expected to hear from him. But I didn’t! In fact, I didn’t know how chummy you two were until that Christmas when you spoke about your brilliant Professor Heskew.”
