Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
She is eight weeks old.
Her name is Paisley.
Sincerely,
Rachel
I read the letter once, twice, five times, ten times, twenty. I wanted it to be lies. I wanted to deny I’d ever known a Rachel. I wanted to pretend I didn’t remember the boozy weekend we’d spent in her downtown hotel room after blowing off the boring tax law seminar we were supposed to attend.
But I couldn’t.
My vision clouded.
I have a daughter.
She’s eight weeks old.
Her name is Paisley.
I swayed forward.
Is Paisley even a name?
I thought it was a tie pattern.
I prefer stripes.
Something was wrong with my legs.
“Well?”
I looked up from the letter to find Emme staring at me intently. “Is it true? Is the baby yours?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice cracking, my world cracking. “I think she is.”
And then I fucking fainted.
Three
Emme
“Oh my God! Nate!”
His eyes had rolled back in his head, his knees had buckled, and he’d dropped forward in a heap, his upper body slumped over the car seat. I hurried over to him and knelt by his side.
“Nate. Hey, wake up.” Hitching the baby over to one arm, I slapped his face a few times, not too hard, but not too gently either.
He moaned and his eyes fluttered open.
“Nate, can you hear me?”
“Yeah.” He blinked a few times and sat back on his heels. “What happened?”
“You fainted.”
He looked distressed. “No, I didn’t.”
I bit my tongue—he had so fainted—and took his hand, helping him to his feet and then leading him over to the couch. “Here, sit down. Do you need some water?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He scratched his head, which left a few pieces sticking up in the back. His eyes were still dazed, and he was sitting in a way I had never seen him sit before, sort of slouched over, defeated. He looked like he’d been hit by a bus.
“I’ll get you some water,” I said, heading for the kitchen. The baby was finally quiet in my arms, as if distracted by the show. I found a glass in a cupboard, threw a few ice cubes in it, and filled it from the water dispenser in the freezer door.
Part of me simply couldn’t believe it. Nate didn’t seem like the kind of guy this could happen to—he was too clever, too together, too lucky. Another part of me wondered if, when you had as much casual sex as Nate did, your luck was bound to run out at some point.
I looked down at the baby in my arms. Her expression seemed to mirror Nate’s—a mix of befuddlement, anger, and fear. I searched for a resemblance and thought I found one in the shape of her big gray-blue eyes. Holy shit, maybe she really was his daughter.
Back in the living room, I handed him the water and watched as he downed the entire glass without taking a breath. Then he lowered it to his lap and stared at the baby, blinking repeatedly as if he thought maybe he’d imagined the whole thing and she simply wouldn’t be there when he opened his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I perched at the other end of the couch, but as soon as I sat still the baby started to fuss, so I stood up again and started twisting at the waist from side to side—one of my old nanny tricks for calming a fussy baby.
“I’m fine,” Nate said, but it came out as more of a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m fine.”
“Okay. But you should stay seated. Sometimes after you faint, you—”
His brow furrowed. “I didn’t faint. I tripped, that’s all. On that thing.” He gestured toward the car seat.
Again, I bit my tongue. “So what did the letter say?”
But Nate didn’t answer. Instead he stared straight ahead, murmuring something that sounded like this can’t be happening to me. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to tell me anything, I went over to where the note had slipped from his hand when he’d “tripped” and scooped it up off the floor, which wasn’t easy while holding a baby in my arms. Planting my feet wide, I had to do sort of a grande plié, keeping my back upright and blindly reaching for it with my free hand. I made a mental note to thank Maren for dragging me with her to ballet class all those years.
I read the letter a few times, and found my heart beating faster each time through. “Holy shit, Nate. You’ve got a daughter.”
He finally looked at me. “I changed my mind. I’m not fine. I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying.”
“I am. My life is flashing before my eyes.”
“You’re not dying.” I glanced at the letter once more. “You’re just…a dad.”
He groaned and clutched his stomach. “Don’t say that word.”
“Fine, I won’t. But I think it might be true.” I put the letter on a table near the door, right next to Nate’s keys. “Who’s Rachel?”