‘What does that even mean, Mum? Didn’t it ever occur to you that I might want to know?’
‘I think your dad would be upset by this.’
Lucy snapped back. ‘No, he wouldn’t. He says he never discussed it with you and that if I wanted to know, I should ask you, and now I’m asking you and you’re not giving me any answers.’
‘That’s because I never knew,’ I shouted at her. She glared at me. I could see her judgement. ‘It’s easy to be promiscuous when you’re drunk all the time.’ I teared up, but instead of giving me an apology, I heard her walk away, stomp up the stairs and slam her bedroom door.
It hurt me that she and Jack had talked about this without me. Jack knew my situation when she was born, and when he married me. I did not like this growing alliance between them, with Jack telling her she shouldn’t be an actress and encouragingher to ask for details of her birth father, details he knew I didn’t have. When I confronted him, he said I shouldn’t be so defensive, and that Lucy was displaying normal teenager behaviour.
It continued as she got older. In the most minor of arguments, she would take Jack’s side against mine. I reckoned her birth father must have been a very bright guy because she was smarter than Jack and me both. She used her ‘mystery father’ as a weapon against me many times in years to come. She was doing riding lessons and wanted a pony, and when Jack and I both said no, she said it was a shame she didn’t know who her birth father was because she was sure he would have said yes.
50
Erin
Around Thanksgiving time in 2020, Milo turned up at my office, masked like everyone else, but I knew those sparkling blue eyes. I was startled; I hustled him out immediately. He begged me for five minutes of my time. He was jumping from foot to foot, clearly excited by something. It was a cold day and there was snow on the ground. We took a socially distanced walk around the block. Milo looked better than the last time I’d seen him outside the diner. His hair was freshly cut and his clothes were neat.
His voice was gentle. ‘Look, Erin, I don’t mean to upset you, but I’ve figured it out. I know how your sister got the DNA inside her.’
I stopped dead. ‘I am not listening to this.’
‘You have to, Eri, it doesn’t make any difference to anyone. I served my time. Please?’
I walked faster but he could easily keep up with me. ‘Look, just hear me out. That’s all I ask. Please.’ He was begging. ‘You know back in the day when I came to your bedroom, and you jerked me off –’
‘Stop, please stop, Milo.’ But he wouldn’t.
‘I cleaned myself up with tissues afterwards, right? And then I put those tissues in the trash can under your desk, right?’
I was horrified and tried to jaywalk across the street to get away from him, but traffic was flying past me.
‘I reckon that Ruby was watching us through the keyhole. She picked one of those tissues out of the trash. That’s how she knew where to get the DNA and that’s how it got inside her. She put it there.’
I was momentarily stunned. How the hell could he even think up something like that?
I whipped around to face him. ‘Milo, my bedroom door did not have a keyhole. It didn’t even have a lock. There was no key. Now please leave, and if you ever come to my office or approach me again, I am calling the police.’
‘She saw us, I’m telling you.’
I turned to go in the opposite direction.
‘Hey, did you find Nick yet?’
I hated that he knew anything about my family and my husband. I was furious. Why would he do this? It was over.
The following weekend, however, I found an excuse to visit Kathy in our old home. I reassured myself that, in fact, there was no keyhole. The door was exactly as I remembered. I lay on the floor in the hall to see if there was a gap under the door. All I could see was the carpet immediately inside the room. Why would Milo persist in this lie? It bothered me.
A few days later, a text arrived from Margie’s burner number.
What a dirty little bitch you and your sister are. A pair of dirty little bitches.
I cried.
51
In 2022, I was forty-one and Vince was fifty-seven. We played tennis in the summer, and he coached minor ice hockey in the winter. It was another year during which we had not heard from Nick. Carmine was settled in Marin County, north of San Francisco, with his wife and two beautiful girls, Abigail and Rosie. Once a month, Carmine went down to the shelters and soup kitchens in the Bay Area looking for Nick and invariably found him in one place or another. He would provide him with clothing and hygiene products and try to bring him to a diner to make sure he had a good meal. He reported that sometimes Nick was compliant and sometimes he was outright hostile, accusing Carmine of working for ‘the aliens’ or of being a clone. He’d had an untreated wound on the side of his head the last time Carmine saw him in August. He wouldn’t reveal how he got it, and when Carmine went to Walgreens to get some disinfectant, Nick was gone when he came back. Carmine could not find him anywhere. Vince flew out there and together he and Carmine trawled the streets and the crack dens and derelict houses of the Mission district. Vince was robbed twice while on these searches, and I worried that he would be shot or stabbed. These places were dangerous, full of people desperate or high enough to pull a trigger or a knife, but Vince didn’t care. He would have done anything for Nick.
I wasn’t a parent, but I understood the depth of love a man could have for his child. It was evident in the way Vince’s facelit up when he saw Carmine or when Carmine called to say that Nick was safe. But now there was no trace of him and Vince came back from California despondent.
