I forbade Brian Simmons from bringing the housekeeper's daughter home to live with us. He agreed to my face, then kept her tucked away in a private place behind my back.
Everyone said how lucky I was. Married into money, and carrying twins on top of it.
But the day I gave birth, I hemorrhaged, and Brian was off celebrating that woman's birthday.
My mother sat collapsed in the hospital corridor, crying as she called him over and over. His phone stayed switched off the whole time.
It was only later that I learned the housekeeper's daughter had been his since she was eighteen.
I took the twins back to my mother's place. When Brian came after me, I was in the middle of changing a diaper.
He stood in the doorway in a tailored suit, a baby toy dangling from one hand.
"Fee, come home with me."
He held the toy out. "I know I was wrong."
I looked up at him and gave a small smile. "Wrong about what?"
He froze, as if he hadn't expected me to ask.
I took the toy and dropped it into the trash right in front of him.
"Wrong about…"
I dusted off my hands, my voice very quiet. "You should have married her in the first place, instead of tricking me into having your children."
…
Brian bent down to fish the toy back out.
The trash can tipped over. Baby wipes and a used diaper rolled out and stuck to his handmade Italian leather shoes.
He didn't move.
"Fee," he said, dropping his voice low, "I know you're angry…"
"I'm angry?"
I scooped up the younger one. The little thing had just finished his bottle and let out a milky burp. "Angry about what?"
He straightened and glanced around the living room.
The changing table, the formula tins, baby rattles scattered across the floor.
His mother had come by last week, said the place was too cramped, told me to move back.
"The thing with Sloane, I handled it badly."
"Sloane."
I repeated the name. "What's her name?"
Brian's face changed.
"You don't even know her full name, and you rented her a place at the Sandalwood Residences?"
I patted the baby's back. "Thirty-eight hundred a month. More than the rent on this whole building of my mother's."
"The place is in her name," he said.
My hand stopped.
The baby started fussing, so I shifted him to my other shoulder and kept patting.
"In her name," I said. "Brian, you bought her a house?"
He was silent for two seconds.
Those two seconds were enough.
The older one suddenly started crying in the crib, his voice cracking, arms and legs kicking everywhere.
My hands were full. Brian stepped over on instinct, leaned down to pick him up, then pulled his hands back halfway.
He didn't know how to hold a baby.
We'd always had a nanny at home. He'd never changed a single diaper.
"You should go," I said.
He stayed standing by the crib.
The older one was crying himself red in the face, and Brian just looked on, helpless, his suit cuff brushing against the dried milk on the crib rail.
"Fee, the doctor said your recovery's been rough. Two children can't go without their mother."
I set the younger one in the rocker, walked over, and lifted the older one out.
The moment he was in my arms he went quiet, his little face burrowing into my chest.
"They never had a father to begin with," I said.
Brian's head snapped up.
"How many times did you sign?"
I soothed the baby, my voice low. "The checkup when I fainted, the nurse called you. You were in a meeting. The time he ran a fever and was admitted, Sloane answered your phone. And the day I was hemorrhaging, where were you?"
The older one started chewing on his hand. I gently eased it out.
"My mother knelt on the floor and called you forty-three times."
Brian's throat moved.
"That day was Sloane's birthday."
"You went to Miami with her," I said. "A helicopter there and back, just to have dinner."
