The Magnolia Affair (22 page)

I
rode home on my bike, although I didn’t see any of the houses or the cars on the street. There was a way to digest the information I had been given, but I wasn’t sure I had the skills to do it.

The fact that Pax had lied to me again seemed less important than the lies his father and Becky had participated in. Theirs were detrimental.

How was I going to tell him he had a twelve-year-old daughter?

Security met me at the door. “Ma’am, I didn’t realize you went out.”

“It was to meet a friend. I’m sorry. I should have told you.” I closed the door, leaving him on the front steps to scowl and shake his head at me.

I poured a glass of wine then dumped it down the drain. I needed to be clear. If I was going to convince Pax that we take in a daughter he never knew existed, I had to have a plan for him. Something that would ease his fears and answer questions to all the political roadblocks that existed. The problem was, I was a teacher, not a legal strategist.

I sat at his desk and flipped over the next page on his notepad. This was where he brainstormed. I had watched him make lists and full-proof proposals. He won over CEOs of the most influential companies with his speeches. He convinced voters to change their votes. I sank into the leather and closed my eyes.

She said it started in her right ovary then spread to the left. At first, the doctors assured her they had caught it early enough. There was time to fight. Time to attack the disease that had invaded her body. But they were wrong. Becky told me there was a history of breast cancer in her family, but she always thought she’d be the generation it skipped. Her mother and aunt were both struck early by the disease. She never knew her father. There was no one left. No family members that could take her daughter.

After a year of her diagnosis, she started to face her mortality. She needed a plan. Lyla Voight was her college roommate. Despite the distance, they had kept in touch. Lyla was the only one who knew about the baby.

I was skeptical at first, but after a second latte, I believed Becky when she told me Lyla never intended to write about the ski trip pictures. She had one purpose during that interview and that was to scout me out. If Lyla thought I could be a mom, provide a good life for Becky’s daughter, then she would reach out to me. I never asked what the plan was if I failed the maternal assessment.

I told her I’d call. Told her I needed time to talk to Pax. She reminded me she didn’t have much of that left.

I was going to make dinner and give him the whole story. I would lay it out in front of him in a diagram, layering the reasons we should take her in on top of each other. But the instant he walked through the door, I abandoned it. The only thing that mattered was the truth.

“Pax, I have to talk to you.”

“Hey, to you too.” He loosened his tie. “I really need a shower. Farm reform isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. How about I meet you on the deck with that new bottle of red?”

“I-I wanted…sure. That sounds good.” I smiled.

“Care to join me?”

“I’ll get the wine. See you in a few minutes.”

“I guess so.” He looked disappointed and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

The wind had calmed and the beachcombers were sifting through the surf, looking for ocean trinkets. I wondered if their lives were as complicated as ours. Not likely, I thought as I waited for my husband to join me.

“So, what’s going on? How was your day? Did Todd get in touch with you about what you want on the bus?”

“Bus?” I had ignored my phone the rest of the day.

“Yes, the bus we’re going to use for the campaign. We could fly or take a car, but the bus will be more comfortable going county by county. And get this. We’re at seven million so far with the super pac. Can you believe it?”

“No, I can’t. Seven million dollars and we’re going to buy a bus? Sounds like you had quite the day.”

“That’s right.” He twisted the corkscrew. “I did. Between what’s happening in the senate right now and working our supporters for the campaign, I’m exhausted.” He closed his eyes.

My timing might be off, but he was headed back to Columbia in the morning and it would be two more days before he’d be home again. Becky needed to know if I could convince him to raise his daughter.

“You’ve always said you would listen to anything I had to say, right?”

He handed me a glass. “Of course.”

“Well, this is one of those times. Just listen to what I have to say. And don’t interrupt until I get to the end. Can you do that?”

His eyes narrowed. “What’s this about?”

“Just say you’ll listen, Pax.”

“Ok. I’ll listen.”

Twenty minutes later, after I had relayed everything I knew about Lyla Voight and Becky. All about the dealings she had with his dad, how Becky had moved to Europe to raise her baby in secret, and how now she needed us to take her, my mouth stopped moving and I waited for him to respond.

“That is the craziest, most ridiculous story I’ve heard yet.” He gulped the wine. “And there are some real bullshitters out there.”

“It isn’t just a story. It’s true.” I hated he was struggling with it.

“You’re telling me some woman calls you then shows up in a coffee shop, and you believe this shit? Honey, I know you’re new to this, but come on. She wants something. There are a lot of opportunists out there. We need to be careful whom we let in our circle. Very careful.”

I reached for the file I had placed under the chaise, and flipped it open. “Look, Pax.” I handed him a picture. “Her name is Corinne. She has your eyelashes.”

He studied the girl and held the picture close to his face.

“It’s not possible. I can’t have a daughter. For this to be true would mean my father would have lied to me. You’re saying he paid that girl to abort my child?” His face was flushed and beads of perspiration appeared at his temples.

I wiped at his forehead, and then stroked his jaw. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through to be betrayed like this.”

“My father isn’t this kind of man. He wouldn’t do something like that. He certainly wouldn’t do that to me. I don’t care what this woman told you.”

There were stories Paxton had told me about his dad. How he helped pull some strings to get him into the Citadel. How he donated money to his law school to make sure Paxton was the one giving the graduation speech. It didn’t seem like such a big leap to me, but he couldn’t see it.

Pax stared at the picture. “It just can’t be. He wouldn’t.”

“Becky has volunteered to complete a DNA test. She has a copy of the check your dad wrote. She’s being completely transparent. She’ll answer any questions you have.” His eyes lifted to mine. “I’m sorry he hurt you like this.”

“God, Audrey. I-I have a daughter?” He held the picture up to the candlelight flickering on the table between us.

“I think you do.”

“And you think we should raise her?”

“Yes, I do.” I watched as he tossed Corinne’s photo next to him. There was no mistaking the resemblance. DNA testing might solidify things for Pax, but I didn’t need the results. I believed Becky.

“It’s impossible. If I admit that this happened, then I admit I was lying. I have vehemently denied any association with Becky repeatedly for twelve years. It will expose my father, the bribe, everything. It can’t happen. As much as I despise him right now, I’m not going to ruin him. There’s too much at stake. It would undermine everything we’ve done for the governor’s office. I can’t. I’ll make sure she’s taken care of however I can, but that’s it.”

“You can’t be serious, Pax. She’s your daughter. Her mother is dying. We have to help her.”

“I don’t know her. She doesn’t know me. She won’t know the difference.” He looked at a runner jogging in front of us. “I’ll take care of her. I promise.”

“But, at one time you were willing to leave your fiancée and raise that girl.” The fight in me felt foreign. There was adrenaline stirring me.

“When Becky called and told me she lost the baby, I gave up. I moved on. I married Sarah. I don’t feel this attachment you want me to feel, Audrey. It was a long time ago.”

“We can adopt her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not saying I like using these methods, but I think I can get Becky to agree to it. We’ll legally adopt her. We can tell the press we’ve been trying to start a family, and when we were looking at adoption options, we heard about Corinne, a girl who recently became parentless. We can even say we found out about her through your parents’ foundation. You can get your people to fix the paperwork trail, make sure it doesn’t come back to Becky.”

“You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“I have. Ever since I left the coffee shop, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this work. I don’t know how to make the things happen that have to happen, but I know you can. We can do this together.”

“And you want her to live with us? This is something you want?”

I nodded. “I do.”

“But every time I ask you about having a baby, you try to change the topic. Has that changed too?”

“That’s different.” I shifted in my seat.

“I don’t see how. You’re telling me we’re going to raise this girl together, bring her into our home and become her parents. Why not start our own family?”

“We have a long campaign ahead of us. I can’t think about getting pregnant now. What if I have morning sickness and I’m supposed to go to a luncheon, or I need to give an interview but I’m throwing up? It would never work. After you’re governor seems like better timing.”

He tucked a flyaway curl behind my ear. “If you’re pregnant, I won’t ask you to do any of that stuff. I’ll take care of you.”

“You act like it’s simple. A baby changes everything.”

“It does. We would always have a piece of you and me. You know what having a baby with you means to me.”

I nodded. I had been resistant to this discussion for over a year. “I do have my appointment tomorrow.” I looked into his eyes, knowing this was the one thing he had always wanted from me.

He took my face in his hands and kissed me. His tongue darted in and out as if we were kissing for the first time, discovering each other’s lips, and the newness of how we tasted. He pushed me back onto the chaise, straddling my chair.

His hands coasted over my breasts and my hips. I nipped at his neck. “I don’t think we want pictures of this online,” I warned. “There’s probably a reporter in the sea oats, ready to sell this for millions.”