Chapter 155

[ 1,032 words ]

Katia’s POV

Thursday evenings with Gail were the one thing in my week that didn’t require management.

No agenda, no strategy, no performance. Just wine and bad television and Aiden asleep in the guest room by eight thirty and Gail on the other end of the sofa with her feet tucked under her and the specific ease of someone who had been your person for long enough that silence between you was never uncomfortable.

We were on our third glass when she said it.

“Can I ask you something weird p>

I looked at her. “You’re three glasses in. Everything you ask is going to be weird p>

“This is a particular kind of weird,” she said. She was looking at her wine, not at me.

“Go ahead p>

She was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that meant she had been sitting on something for a while and had decided tonight was the night and was now second-guessing that decision in real time.

“Aiden,” she said.

I kept my face completely still.

“His jaw,” she said. “His hands. The way he laughs.” She paused. “The way he tilts his head when he’s thinking about something p>

I said nothing.

“I know this sounds completely mad,” Gail said. She finally looked at me. Her eyes were steady, but there was something behind them — the visible discomfort of someone saying something they have been trying not to say for a long time. “But he looks like my brother. He looks like Julian, Kat p>

The television was still on. Some reality show neither of us had been watching for the last hour. The sound of it filled the room for a few seconds.

“That’s an interesting observation,” I said.

My voice came out completely level. I was proud of that.

Gail looked at me. “Katia p>

“It’s late, Gail p>

“I’m not drunk enough to be imagining things,” she said quietly. “I have been around that boy since he was three months old. I have watched him grow up. And I have watched my brother for years.” She set her glass down. “The jaw. The way they both tilt their head left when they’re concentrating. The hands.” She paused. “I’m not imagining it p>

I looked at the television.

I thought about what to say. About the wall I had been hitting for a year – I had never met Julian before the WEG partnership; it’s impossible, it has to be impossible – and about the fact that the wall was getting thinner every day. Every time Aiden tilted his head. Every time Julian laughed the real laugh, I heard an echo of something I could not place. Every time Sam looked at me across a room with that expression.

“Gail,” I said. “I don’t push on this p>

She was quiet.

“I don’t know who Aiden’s father is, Gail,” I said. That was true. That was still true. I had a feeling I had been carrying for months, a feeling that had been getting louder and harder to manage, but a feeling was not a fact. “I had one night. Six years ago. I don’t remember it clearly, and I never found out who he was.” I paused. “What I know is that Aiden looks nothing like me. He never has. He has someone else’s face entirely, and I have spent five years looking at it and wondering p>

“And now you’re wondering about Julian,” Gail said.

It was not a question.

I looked at her.

“I’m not pushing,” she said immediately. She held up her hand. “I said I wouldn’t push, and I won’t. I just needed to say it. I’ve been sitting on it for years, and I needed to say it out loud to someone p>

“And now you’ve said it,” I said.

“And now I’ve said it.” She picked up her wine glass. “I won’t mention it again unless you want to talk about it p>

“I don’t,” I said. “Not yet p>

“Okay p>

“Gail p>

“I said okay, Kat p>

We sat with it for a moment. The television muttered on. Outside Manhattan did what it always did — moved indifferently, unhelpfully.

I refilled her glass. She let me. I refilled mine.

We went back to watching the television.

But Gail’s hands weren’t quite steady when she picked up her glass.

And neither were mine.

We didn’t talk about it again that night. We watched two more episodes of the show and finished the wine, and Gail fell asleep on the sofa at some point, and I put a blanket over her and checked on Aiden, deeply, completely asleep, one arm thrown over the edge of the bed the way he always slept, and stood in his doorway for the thirty seconds I always stood there.

I looked at his face in the dark.

The jaw. The hands. The way his head was tilted slightly left even in sleep.

He looks like my brother.

I had known Gail for years. She was not a dramatic person. She did not make things up or see things that weren’t there. She was careful and warm and deeply loyal, and she had been around Aiden since he was three months old, and she had just told me, three glasses of wine in, that her godson looked like her brother.

I went to my room.

I sat on the edge of my bed.

I thought about Julian’s office. About his hand at my face and the promise he had made and the way he had said, ’I will fix this’ with the complete certainty of a man who kept his word.

I thought about a night in Las Vegas six years ago that I remembered in fragments. A bar. Two men whose faces I had never seen clearly at a bar. Something warm and real that had existed for one night and had left me with the most important thing in my life.

I looked at the wall of my bedroom in the dark.

I had never met Julian before the WEG partnership.

I said it in my head one more time.

It felt, for the first time, like a lie I had been telling myself.

I didn’t sleep for a long time.

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