My birthday. Our anniversary.
I glanced around again, and alarm bells started to go off in my head along with the pounding from the alcohol-fueled headache. Balloons floated around the room and there was a bag that looked to be stuffed with other decorations. There was a cake on the kitchen bar that looked untouched. Gifts were piled up on two different tables along with other discarded party labels like “His Birthday” and “Our Anniversary” banners.
I didn’t remember a party. I went to work in the studio yesterday when everyone forgot it was a doubly special day. Then I stopped by the office…
My heart ticked up several beats as I remembered speaking to my assistant, who shouldn’t have been there, for the second year in a row.
I sat up and dropped my aching head into my hands as my elbows rested on my knees. The incessant throb in my brain made it difficult to concentrate. Slowly, I got up and went to the kitchen. It was just as quiet in there, almost museum or library quality silence. The type where you know you’re the only person, but you would whisper to talk to yourself because it felt like sacrilege to do anything else.
Once I managed to drink down enough water to drown an elephant, along with a couple headache relief tablets, I moved back into the living room and took in the remnants of the party again. Everything appeared to have been dropped at random intervals around the room. The party had not taken place here, or if it had, things had gotten out of control. It looked more like the aftermath of a party my wife might have planned, before she decided to go through everything to see if anything was salvageable to be reused. Violet always hated the waste associated with the shindigs she planned for the ultra wealthy. Often, she would scour through things to see if they could be reused and give them to one of the schools for use at a dance or celebration.
“Vi?” I called out again, despite the feeling that she wasn’t home. If it wasn’t for the forgotten party decorations around me, I’d swear it was like re-living the previous day over again.
A knock on my door startled me out of my thoughts and I moved quickly to go answer it. My father stood there looking none-too-happy with me.
“Come on in,” I motioned with my hand for him to enter and watched as he winced at seeing the evidence of what was obviously supposed to be my birthday-slash-anniversary celebration.
“I wondered if you would remember anything from your birthday.” The way he said it made me nervous.
“I remember feeling like shit most of the day because no one in my life remembered what an important day it was. Vi was gone when I woke up, so I went into the studio and then stopped by the office to drop something off. The only person in the office was Fiona.” For some reason, her name made me feel sick to my stomach.
“And?”
“And nothing. I woke up here on the couch, in a silent house, in the middle of what looks to be abandoned party leftovers.” My father nodded and then braced his hand on my shoulder.
“You need to go have a seat, so I can fill you in on what happened.”
I moved to the couch and glanced around as that strange ache in my chest squeezed once more. It was as if my body remembered why I felt like my heart had been ripped away even if my mind hadn’t given up the memories yet. The scent of bourbon and coconut cake came to mind. I glanced over at the untouched cake on the counter. There was no alcohol sitting out. The cake hadn’t been cut. That wasn’t what I remembered.
“While you were at the studio and the office yesterday, your wife put a surprise party together for you at Clear Lake Park. In fact, she and Moreland meticulously planned the event for months. They decided to start the planning early so you wouldn’t get suspicious.” My father chuckled. “It’s damn hard to plan a surprise party for a man who has his finger on the pulse of everything and everyone around him.”
“They were planning a party for me?” I asked as my brain screamed at me about an affair. Suddenly the memory came back of a picture Fiona showed me. “They were on a date complete with candlelight and kisses,” I stated.
My father reached over and smacked me across the back of my head. “No, they weren’t, asshole.”
“What the fuck, Dad?”
“I want you to shut up now. Your memories don’t appear to be completely intact this morning, so I’m going to walk you through the timeline of when you fucked everything up. Keep your mouth shut while I do or so help me I will walk out that door and never speak to you again.”
I nodded and stared at my father in disbelief. He had never been anything but loving and supportive. The turnaround in his demeanor with me was shocking and wholly unexpected.
“A year ago, you made a huge mistake, and the price for that idiotic decision has come around to bite you in the ass.”
“What?” I questioned. Nothing significant happened a year ago that could derail my life.
“Shut up and listen.” My father growled again as he stood and started to pace the living room in front of me. As he paced, he recounted the proposition my assistant made on my thirty-fourth birthday. I wanted to ask how he knew about that, but before I could get the question out, he told me to wait, and all would be revealed.
“So, you were butt hurt because no one said happy birthday to you yesterday,” my father stated after telling me all about how my wife started to plan a surprise birthday party for me because I told her on my last birthday that I’d never had one and always wanted someone to make that effort.
“Since you were so busy sulking, you fell for the bullshit your assistant fed you about your wife and cousin having some sordid affair. She showed you a doctored photo that didn’t show anything more intimate than them leaning their heads together as they conspired to surprise your ungrateful ass for your birthday. That was it. Who cares if they had gone to a restaurant with candles on the table to do it? They didn’t, but really, who cares if they had? You know them both better than you know yourself, Ridge. Neither of them would ever betray you like that.”
I knew that. I knew that and yet I could still feel the sting of betrayal as the memory of Fiona talking to me about that picture came back. She claimed to have been there. She was the one to take the picture. Then another memory came to me. It was a conversation with Moreland’s fiancée. She told me that it was bullshit. I pulled my phone out and sifted through my texts to find the picture she had sent.
“That was the real meeting,” My father stated as he looked down at the picture I’d pulled up. I moved to the text I’d sent myself from Fiona’s phone. With a clear head, and no alcohol involved, it was obvious that everything had been photoshopped.
“What happened after she showed me this?”
“I didn’t want to speculate, so I went to your office and talked to the security there. They provided camera footage from your office, but only after I explained how you had been attacked and weren’t able to come request it yourself. We’re going to watch it together. As much as certain parts of this will pain me to see again, I think it’s important.”
