Totlandia: Spring (3 page)

She set the girls down in their playpen and ran down the stairs and out the side door. The tow operator, a large bear of a man sporting tattoos on every inch of skin not covered by his jeans or the jacket emblazoned with
Bay Area Repo
, had already chained down her vehicle.

Jillian grabbed his arm. “Wait! That’s my car! Where do you think you’re taking it?”

The man shrugged. “Back to the dealership. Sorry, lady, three missed payments means they own it again.”

“How will I get around without it? It’s the only transportation I’ve got, and I have two toddlers! Please—”

He looked down at her. “Nothing I can do about it. Here’s a tip, though. Next time, disengage the GPS so we can’t find it so easily. Just sayin’.”

If only she’d known that earlier.

She watched as he backed the truck through the alleyway before gunning it down Pacific Street. Then it occurred to her that she’d left the kids alone inside. Both were now adept at catapulting themselves over the playpen’s side with a kamikaze flip they’d learned from their little gal pal, Zoe Thornton. She ran back into the house.

Too late. The girls were toddling toward the Christmas tree.

She grabbed them just before they hit the field of broken glass.

Now, for her cell phone. Where had she put it?

It took her a full five minutes before she realized she’d tossed it into the playpen with the girls. By the time she did, it was too late. The damn battery had gone dead.

She threw it back down into the playpen.

Big mistake. The girls climbed down out of her arms and into the playpen after it. She was just about to fish out all three one more time when the doorbell rang.

Who the hell could it be now?
Jillian wondered. Before she opened the door, she looked through the peephole.

Scott.

She slumped up against the wall. What the hell was he doing there? Well, at least his pregnant new fiancée, Victoria, wasn’t with him.

Not that she’d dare show her face round Jillian. The last time she did, Jillian slapped it, hard.

Then she ran before the police got there.

“Jillian, I’ve been trying your cell phone all morning. I know you’re in there. I saw you go in after the repo guy pulled out.”

Just great,
she thought. Knowing he’d witnessed it made her losing the SUV all the more humiliating. She swallowed hard. “What do you want?”

“I…I left something in the closet of my office. The MacBook Air, the one that looks like yours? I’d like to get it, if you don’t mind.”

“No, you’re not coming in here. Besides, if you left anything here, I probably threw it out already.” Really, she hadn’t touched the damn thing. In fact, she hadn’t been near the room he’d made his home office. It reminded her too much of him.

She was glad the girls were in the kitchen. If they heard their father’s voice, they’d be calling his name. She couldn’t bear the thought. She didn’t want to let him in, let alone back into their lives. Not after he betrayed and deserted her.

Not now that he was preparing for the son he’d always wanted.

“Go away,” Jillian shouted.

“For once, try to be reasonable. I need it!”

Fuck that,
she thought.
And fuck you.

“Jillian, please don’t make this any harder than it has to be.” He sighed. Then, as if he were trying to reason with a child, he added, “Also, I’ve got something for the girls.”

She looked through the peephole again. True, there were gift bags in his hands.

Words danced on the tip of her tongue.
What they want most is something they’ll never have again: their father
…

But what good would that do?

Besides, it had been a lousy Christmas. The girls were too young to know it, but that didn’t make it easier for Jillian.

Unless she could find another job quickly, without Scott’s support, all their future Christmases would be just as glum.

Scott had proven to be a lousy husband. But he was also the only financial lifeline she had in her life. As much she wanted to forget him, a tiny part of her still held out hope that he’d come to his senses and come back to her. That he’d realize the mistake he made in leaving them and ask her forgiveness. That he’d beg her to take him back.

Maybe…just maybe…

She opened the door slightly.

He held out the bags. “For the girls. Just a few things I saw in a store window and picked up for them.”

She grabbed the boxes out of his hand. Through the tissue paper, she could see a tiny pink and yellow plaid coat. In fact, there were two of them: double-breasted with pink and yellow bull’s-eye buttons, and Peter Pan collars.

They were adorable.

She looked at the bag. The coats were from Dottie Doolittle, a children’s boutique in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

“Scott, tell the truth. Did you pick these out yourself?”

His hesitation told her all she needed to know. Victoria had chosen the coats for the girls.

For
her
girls.

She imagined Victoria’s disgust at having been coerced by Scott to buy the gifts. Jillian knew Victoria hated her and the girls.

No way in hell would they ever wear these coats.

She threw them in his face, slammed the door, and locked it tight.

“Okay…you’re right. Victoria picked them out. But it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?”

“You’ve already gotten them a gift. It was a DNA test, remember?”

He was silent on the other side of the door.

“By the way, when are you and your pathetic brother, Jeff, going to have your tests?” Jillian taunted him. “Are you stalling because you know the results will show he’s lying? Ha! I can’t wait to see you eat crow for trying to get out of providing child support to our babies.”

“There is nothing I’d rather do more. In fact, my test is tomorrow. But unfortunately, Jeff took a teaching job in Japan. He’s not expected back until the middle of May.”

Jillian snorted. “Ha! A likely story.”

“I’m serious! As much as it disgusts me to think of you and Jeff screwing behind my back, I’d hate it even more if the girls…if the girls weren’t mine.” Even through the thick oak door, she could tell he was all choked up. “Look, Jillian, I never wanted it to come to this.”

“You should have thought about that before you got your assistant pregnant. Oh, and by the way, once again for the record, Jeff and I never had sex!” Jillian hit the door with her fist, hard. She tried to rub away the pain.

If only it were just as easy to rub away her heartache.

“Jillian, please...Can I have my old laptop now? It’s important! Please?”

She thought for a moment. Then, with a shaky voice, she muttered, “Wait out there. I’ll go and get it.”

She stumbled upstairs to his office.

The computer Scott was looking for had been purchased along with a twin, for Jillian. They were a couple of years old now. It had been a joint celebratory gift, when Scott made partner at the financial firm where he worked.

In the past, all the family photo JPEGs from their digital camera had been uploaded into her computer, which also held her favorite recipes, her email correspondence, and anything pertaining to their family life.

He should have photos of the children,
she thought.
I doubt it will change his mind about me, but some day he may regret having left the girls. I’d rather he still cared about them, even if he no longer loves me.

Jillian opened her computer. In a moment she downloaded the file containing the family photos onto a thumb drive.

She took a wild guess at the password to Scott’s computer:
JackNicklaus

Everything about him was just too obvious.

When she put the thumb drive into his computer, she noticed he’d already set up a file labeled
Photos
. So, he’s already downloaded their family pictures? She wondered.

She opened the file and opened the first JPEG.

It was a nude photo of Victoria.

She opened another. And another.

Raunch, raunch and more raunch.

In one, Victoria had a vajazzle. Its jewels spelled out
Hole in 1!

Really?
Barf. Truly.
Barf.

Jillian tried hard not to throw up in her mouth.

He hasn’t used the computer in two years,
thought Jillian.
And yet all that time he had been screwing Victoria!

She was ready to fling the computer against the wall when she had a better idea.

Scott’s brother, Jeff, was the family’s techno-geek. In fact, while surfing on their couch those few months in which he claimed to have had the affair with Jillian, he tried hard to convince both of them to open secured accounts with a digital cloud company, where the files could be uploaded for safekeeping. To get Jeff off her case about it, she reluctantly agreed. Now cloud computing was second nature to her.

Obviously, Scott had never moved his files onto the cloud, or else he wouldn’t be bugging her about the computer. That was par for the course. Scott was always of the mindset to let others do the grunt work for him.

The way he’d convinced Victoria to buy the girls’ Christmas gifts was a great example.

Well, Jillian had a gift for Scott, too.

In a flash, all the files on his computer were uploaded into her iCloud account. It took just a few moments to erase everything off his computer’s hard drive: his financial reports, work assignments, and certainly those files with the nude shots of Victoria.

The only thing she left him was the Excel spreadsheet containing his old golf scores.

She ran downstairs, opened the door and thrust the computer into his arms.

“Get the DNA test, so we can all get on with the rest of our lives,” she commanded.

She didn’t wait for him to respond, but slammed the door as hard as she could.

Then she dropped to the floor, crying.

Amelia and Addison’s tiny hands, patting away her tears, brought her back to reality. At noon, the Pacific Heights Moms & Tots Club was holding a special initiation luncheon for Onesies candidates who had successfully completed the challenges assigned to them over the holidays. She had to pull herself together and get the girls ready.

Smiling through her tears, she announced to her babies, “Let’s play dress-up!”

She watched, brokenhearted, as they squealed and nodded. Then she took one plump little hand of each girl, swinging them as they hopped in unison up the staircase.

9:02 a.m.

I love you so much that it hurts to breathe when I look at you,
Jade Pierce thought.

Her toddler son, Oliver, squirmed in his dad’s long, strong arms. Brady Pierce’s chuckle was deep and filled with the genuine pride a young father cannot hide when measuring the strength of his boy’s grip on his own thumb.

If only Brady worshipped me, too,
Jade thought sadly.

But she knew better now. He’d been just using her. As long as she did her part, as long as she played nice-nice with Bettina and the PHM&T committee, he’d allow her to stick around.

I could leave,
she thought.
I
should
leave. But if I do, I’ll never win him back.

She knew her ex-husband lusted for her. She saw it in his eyes, which followed her whenever she entered the room. She made damn sure Brady found it hard to resist her.

Still, to her chagrin, he never initiated their lovemaking.

Except for one blissful night. On Christmas Eve, after she’d presented Brady with an album filled with photos of Oliver and his new toddler friends from the club, he’d been so touched by the gift that he not only took her into his arms, but also welcomed her into his bed.

She had hoped—
prayed
—this meant he’d finally fallen in love with her.

But Brady’s not-so-subtle looks of longing for Ally, whenever she was near, was obvious to Jade.

And those admiring glances broke her heart.

Despite the PHM&T application committee’s attempts to pit all the probationary Onesies against each other, Jade felt she had bonded with Lorna, Jillian, and Ally. That is, until she saw Ally turning impulsively to kiss Brady just as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve.

That vision was now scorched in Jade’s memory.

Finally, Brady gets what he wants,
Jade thought.
Playmates for our son.

And one for himself.

Suddenly Brady glanced over at her. Did he notice the sadness in her eyes when she looked at him? Apparently not, because his gaze held no sympathy, only bemused annoyance. “Jade, hon, your cell phone has been buzzing for the past five minutes! Join the rest of us on planet Earth, okay?”

To rouse herself from her pity, Jade shrugged, then snapped open her phone. But before she had a chance to speak, the voice on the other end said, “Hey, sweet thang, so tell me, are you wearing panties?”

The question stunned her like a blow to the back of the head.

Of course she recognized the caller’s voice. It had been haunting her since she saw him for the first time in over a year this past Halloween. It belonged to Bettina’s husband, Art Connaught.

Thank God he hadn’t remembered where he knew her from. That was because most of the time they’d been together, he’d only had eyes for her G-string-clad backside. Or he’d stare at her naked breasts, which jiggled as she worked her pole on the Condor Club’s stage.

In truth, she barely remembered him, either. Like many of the club’s patrons, he wasn’t there to make eye contact, but to feel the dancers’ soft, taut skin against his lap. And to mutter shaming filth into her ear. Yes, that was her strongest memory of him.

The bouncers at the Condor Club were familiar with his dirty talk, too, which spewed its filth whenever they muscled him out of the club for breaking the strip joint’s very clear rules: look, drool, tip, but don’t touch.

It was obvious Art’s memory had cleared by the night of the Cross’s annual New Year’s Eve party. He hadn’t just whispered his typical trash in her ear that night, but also a threat: convince Brady to invest with him, or he’d tell Bettina about her past and ruin Oliver’s chances of remaining in PHM&T.