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“Do you want to go sit down?” she offered once my wails had turned into sniffles.
I nodded against her shoulder, and she led me through the hallways of the familiar home.
She had bought this condo, a massive apartment in a high-rise on the Upper East Side, a year before I had disappeared.
I hadn’t been here many times, but I had always found it cold, almost sterile back then.
Things had definitely changed since then.
As she led me through the space, I couldn’t help but take in the updates she had made since the last time I was here.
What once had been a space affected by the trend of minimalism, with nothing but cold marble floors and stark white walls, was now warm and bright.
The flooring had been redone in beautiful cherry hardwood.
There were handwoven tapestries and bohemian rugs.
Bookcases in every corner, each overflowing and accompanied by a stuffed reading chair.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I hiccupped as we arrived at the couch.
Not some white monstrosity you would be afraid to sit on like I had expected, but a sofa of lush, soft, green velvet.
I collapsed onto it, sinking into the cushions and letting out a sigh of relief.
“The old décor didn’t suit me anymore,” she mused as she took the seat next to me, her brown eyes soft as they regarded me. “But that isn’t what I want to talk about.”
“I know,” I said with a nod, still sniffling. “I just can’t sort through all of my thoughts.”
“That’s okay,” she consoled. “You don’t need to make any hard and fast decisions now, but it might help to talk out all of your options.”
I nodded again but didn’t say anything as my brain began to work through said options.
I might have said that I couldn’t sort through everything, but the truth was that I already knew what I wanted to do.
And the decision was even more terrifying than anything that had happened so far.
“I want to keep it,” I admitted. “But I don’t know how to move forward with that. How do I become a mom when I can’t trust my child’s father?”
My mother’s face grew pensive as she considered this.
Finally, she gave me a calm, knowing look.
“I’ve known Blake for a very long time,” she began. “And I know that he didn’t have the same comforts that you did growing up, which just makes what he did later in life all the more impressive.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You know about his childhood?”
My mom gave me a slight roll of her eyes and smiled at me. “Of course, I knew. Your brother might have thought he was being sneaky when he was covering for Blake’s expenses whenever they would go do something, but I was the one who got the statements from the credit card. It’s why I increased his card limit so that he would never have to worry about not having enough to cover the both of them.”
I gaped at her. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
She shrugged. “What good would that do other than to embarrass Blake? I had approached his mother once after he had spent that entire summer at our place and asked her to let me cover his tuition. She wouldn’t let me do all of it, but I gave her what she was willing to accept. He’s been a part of this family for a long time. And while you may have lied about the engagement,” she shot me a pointed look.
“The feelings you have developed for him since then make all the sense in the world. And I guess I’m saying all this to tell you that I know Blake Whitlock better than he thinks I do. And if there is one thing he isn’t, it’s a liar.”
“But the article,” I protested, and she cut me off.
“Since when have the tabloids and the magazines ever gotten anything right?” She scoffed. “Greedy little leeches, all of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever that “source” was had been paid or got some kind of compensation to lie.”
