My heart is beating up my ribcage in indignation. “We only had sex twice,” I whisper. I haven’t made eye contact with anyone else in the bar, and I know I’ll never see any of them again, but I can’t bear the thought of seeing the pity in their eyes. “Why would he believe me?”
“Hello?” Ariel widens her eyes at me. “Have you heard of paternity tests? They’re a thing these days. If he demands a test, he’ll know that you’re not lying when he gets the results. But do you want to know what I think?”
“Not really, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”
She grins at me. “Yas! The attitude is coming back. I would say that my work here is done, but I’m not finished with you yet.”
“Go on.”
“I think he’ll believe you.” I open my mouth to speak and she shuts me down. “He said he couldn’t let you walk out of his life, Rem. He said, and I quote, ‘you’ve bewitched me’.”
“I wasn’t pregnant at the time. He’s a successful businessman. He doesn’t want to be a father.”
“He said that did he? In the throes of passion, when his eyes were rolling back in his head and his legs were shaking, he said he didn’t want you to get pregnant. Because in my experience, Rem, men who don’t want to get trapped use a condom. End of.”
“Maybe he assumed that I?—”
“He’s a successful businessman, yeah? Your words. He can sit in a boardroom and buy a fucking casino he can wrap up before he?—”
“Okay, okay.” I rest my elbows on the table and cradle my head in my hands. “So, what, I go in there, ask him to support his babies, and he writes me a check?”
“Then you won’t have to worry about money for a while.”
Hot tears fill my eyes. That isn’t what I want. I’m not avoiding the conversation with Bash because I don’t think he’ll want to be in his kids’ lives. I’m afraid that he will want to be a father… but with someone else.
“Look, I’m going to throw this out there once,” Ariel says, “and then I won’t mention it again. What if Bastien Murray turns out to be a great dad?”
She doesn’t elaborate. She lets it sit there between us while I sip my Diet Coke, and she orders a second glass of wine.
Finally, when images of Bash cradling a baby in each arm begin to replace the fear of realizing that I can’t afford to buy formula, I say, “Fine. I’ll speak to him.”
Ariel pulls me into a bear-hug. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.” I suck in a deep breath and jut my chin. “I’m a big girl now. I’ve got this.”
And for half a beat, I almost believe it.
I don’t take flowers to the cemetery. I take a packet of Swedish Fish because they were Danielle’s favorite. I sit at the end of her grave, pop a candy into my mouth, and tilt my face towards the sky.
“I screwed up, Dan.”
I didn’t get to say goodbye to my sister. One of her so-called friends called an ambulance when she didn’t wake up one morning and bolted before assistance arrived. The paramedics were too late to save Danielle. Her beautiful soul had already vacated her violated body, so I don’t look at the headstone when I speak to her. I know she’s out there somewhere listening to me; I come here so that she can find me.
“After George, I swore that I would never let another man hurt me.”
Talking to my sister is like telling myself a story for the first time.
“I thought Bash was different, Dan. I thought… I don’t know… I thought that we had a connection, but I guess I was wrong. I fell for the good looks and the charm because I’m fucking gullible.”
I smile so that she knows I’m alright.
“And now I’m pregnant. Twins. I expect you already know that if you’ve been following me around.Twins!I can barely remember what day it is. How can I be responsible for two little human beings?”
I pop another candy into my mouth and chew. They’re sickly sweet. My sister always had a sweet tooth like our dad, and I preferred savory like our mom. I like to think that Danielle can taste them through me, like Ariel drinking wine when she knows that I can’t.
There’s a reason why I came here first; talking to my sister gives me clarity. We didn’t always get on when she was alive. Like all siblings, we fought over clothes and games and magazines. Danielle once poured an entire mug of hot chocolate over my head because I had the last one and she wanted it.
But now she always seems to put the right thoughts into my head when I need them most.
