That sounded harsh to Joy. “I’m not ready to be a parent either. But that’s not what I mean.”
“It has to be what you mean. We had unprotected sex. Why take the chance? Just take the damn pill!” He was gettingirritated with her. “Why is it so important for you to make sure you get pregnant?”
That wasn’t her point at all. She would feel as if she was aborting a baby if she took that pill, but he wasn’t listening to her. That was why she turned it back on him. “Why is it so important for you to make sure Idon’tget pregnant? I don’t want your money, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
William let out a long exhale that was less filled with irritation and more filled with what Joy could only describe as a kind of pain. After a very long time, he began to speak. “The reason I had, or that I have nightmares,” he said, “is because I lost my daughter.”
Joy stared at him. His daughter? She didn’t know he had a daughter. “She died?”
It was still as raw as it was the day it happened. He nodded his head. “Yes. She passed away.”
“Was she ill or--”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. She was . . .” Another exhale. “My ex-wife and I were in a bitter custody battle that I won. I was granted custodial custody of my, of our daughter, and it was the first day of her new life with me as the main parent in her life. My ex was certain I was ill-suited to be primary parent. I was a workaholic, she said, who would leave our child with au pairs and governesses and anybody else except for myself. I would neglect our child the way I neglected her and I would be the most-irresponsible parent ever created, is how she described it to the judge.”
A hard look appeared in his blue eyes. “Of course she was right,” he said.
Joy could feel his pain. “What happened?” she asked him in a very soft voice. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to know. But she had to know.
“On the first day of my daughter’s life with her father, an attempted kidnapping occurred.”
Joy frowned. “A kidnapping?”
“An attempted one, yes. Before the kidnappers all perished themselves, my security detail was able to thwart the attack on me and my child. Then the car carrying my security detail lost control and burst into flames.”
“Good Lord, William.”
A stern look appeared on his face. “They all perished as well. But I was so busy looking at their car crash that I forgot I was driving and I crashed myself. Or at least my daughter and I crashed.”
Joy’s heart dropped.
“I came out of it with only a few scratches.”
His face became even harder, as if he was aging years in seconds. “My daughter was too little to survive. But had I not turned that steering wheel to avoid going head-on into a brick wall, saving myself, then she would have been alive. By saving myself, the backend of my car slammed into that wall, and she didn’t survive. She didn’t stand a chance. The first day of the rest of her life with me, her father, didn’t last three hours.”
Joy’s heart just fell. She touched his hand but he quickly moved it away.
“That is why I cannot,” he said, and then stopped. Then he tried to control his emotions as he continued. “That is why I cannot have another child. It nearly killed me when my daughter died.” He looked at Joy for the first time since he relayed his story to anybody ever. All of his friends and family and coworkers knew what happened, but not from him. He’d never uttered it out loud before.
His face was distressed. Anguished. “I fucked up when I didn’t put on protection, Joynetta. I always wear protection. It’s second nature to me. But I didn’t with you and for that I amsorry. That’s on me. But you did something to me that made me want to . . . I should have known better. But having another child?” He shook his head. “I cannot, under any circumstances, go through that again. I cannot.”
Tears were in Joy’s eyes. “What was her name?” she asked him softly.
William stared at her. He expected her to continue to argue why she didn’t want to take the morning after pill and how his experience had nothing to do with her. He expected it to be all about her. But she wanted to know his child’s name?
And in that moment, when she asked that question and he saw the emotion in her eyes, he knew he had somebody special on his hands. He just knew it. “Kaitlyn,” he said and smiled through his anguish. “Her name was Kaitlyn. But I called her Katie.”
“Kaitlyn is a very beautiful name,” Joy said. “How old was she?”
“Four.” He said this and smiled too. “She was so smart and so fat.”
Joy laughed.
“She was a wonderful little girl.”
“She sounds like it.”
“I had just brought her a barbie doll. A pop star barbie doll. And she . . . And she still had it in her hands when they pulled her from that wreckage. It was . . .”
