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get to experience the entire speed dating panel. That is what
they paid for.”
“Screw the speed dating panel,” I say, loud enough for
Casey at the other end of the table to dart her eye contact
away from her turn with young Denzel and over toward me
instead. She furrows her brow like a mom telling her child to
knock it off from across the room. I lower my voice. “Gemma,
come with me please.”
As I escort Gemma away from the speed dating area, there
is a look of panic that washes over the moderator’s face. I know that look well. It’s the look related to what happens when
your data gets screwed up. When the outcome you expected
and worked toward has suddenly been thrown to the dogs.
And for that, I deeply apologize to her because I understand
that gut-wrenching feeling. I make a mental note to grab her
business card before I deboard the ship and send her an email
with notes on how to adjust her metrics in the event she’s ex-
pected to do a report-out of this dumb event.
We find a quiet nook adjacent to one of the mobile bars and
I attempt to interrogate her without scaring her off.
“You brought my dead husband into this. Now’s your turn
to prove that you aren’t just blowing smoke up my ass. So
I’m going to ask you one more time: Who’s lying to me and
about what?”
She says nothing, just stares at me blankly.
I shake my head and look to the sky. This bitch opens a can
of worms but won’t pour them out? What’s her deal?
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the fact that you apparently slept with my husband and got
pregnant with his child?”
“No, no, no. That’s not at all what happened. This was long before you were ever in the picture, I swear. My son is twelve
years old. This…this happened in college.”
“What exactly happened?” I probe.
“It was an accident. A stupid one-night stand and I got
pregnant. We both agreed that we weren’t ready to be par-
ents and we weren’t going to be together, so the plan was a
closed adoption. He said his mother would never let that hap-
pen, especially if she knew it was a boy. Her only son having
a son? Yeah, no way was she going to let the Austin name slip
away that easily.”
For what it’s worth, that does sound like Debbie. But I’m
still not buying this bombshell.
“So I told him not to say anything to anyone and I would
just handle the adoption on my own. This was my fault. I was
his TA and even though I was only two years older, I should
have known better. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s life over
some drunken night,” she goes on to explain. “I thought I
could go through with the whole adoption thing, but as my
pregnancy ticked on, I just couldn’t do it. I’d gotten used to
the idea of being a mother. I couldn’t imagine just handing
over this sweet thing, this piece of me, to a perfect stranger
and agreeing to stay out of its life forever. What if I never got pregnant again? So I backed out last minute and didn’t tell
anyone. In my head, I rationalized that it wouldn’t change
anything. I was just trading one secret for a different one. I
still wasn’t going to be with Decker, so he’d never know. But
then, things ended up getting kind of out of hand.”
Gemma begins to cry and blot the tears with the soft spot
of her ring finger. She angles herself toward the wall.
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I position my body to the side of hers and put my hand on
the small of her back. “Why? What happened?”
“I gave up my job as a TA and dropped out of school as
soon as I started to show and stayed as far away from USC as
I could. I moved out of my neighborhood. I went off the grid
completely. Then, once my baby arrived, it was like complete
chaos mixed with no sleep mixed with a dark cloud of regret.
I messed with the fate we had already decided and the guilt I
felt from that was super intense. It’s never gone away, actually.”
“So nobody ever knew you were pregnant except for
Decker? Nobody knew you had a baby?” It sounds far-fetched,
but I need to get her facts straight.
“My parents knew. But I’m not close with them, they live
in Florida.”
“Well, who did you tell them the father was?” I ask.
“I said I didn’t know.” She cries harder into her hands. “And
that didn’t exactly motivate them to help me out at all. In fact, the only thing it motivated them to do was swear I’d tell anyone who asked that I got a sperm donor as part of some femi-
nist movement I believed in. I’m still really pissed about that.”
“Okay, so if your mom and dad weren’t part of this, then
someone else has to know about your son. I mean, you said
they lied. Is it his parents? Do Debbie and Kurt know about this? Is that who the ‘they’ are?”
“Charlotte, I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Just know,
I didn’t plan for this. Any of this. I wasn’t prepared for this, I shouldn’t have opened my mouth and I’m sorry to leave you
hanging. I have to go.”
“Where are you going, Gemma? Huh? We’re on a boat in
the middle of the ocean right now. Just stay here. Talk to me,
will you? Talk to me woman to woman. What’s his son like?”
It’s my last-ditch attempt to data-mine.
“Loved,” she says, turning away from me and marching
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over to where the ship has set up something called “Privacy
Pods.” They are little makeshift cabanas people can go in to
get away from the crowd and continue forming their connec-
tions. She finds an open one and locks herself inside, which
couldn’t be further from the point of those things. How con-
venient it is for her to end the conversation on her own terms, barricading herself like a coward so she doesn’t have to deal
with me. Little does she realize, I don’t need her to come out
to get my answers. I’ll compute this on my own. She’s deal-
ing with a Numbers Queen.
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Follow-up questions start f lowing through my head like
white-water rapids surging down a rocky river. My skin is
hot to the touch. I blink twice to clear the dark spots, but
I just feel dizzy. I want to refuse what I’ve heard tonight in
every single way, and I believe that I can. But only if I can
discredit the authenticity of what Gemma has told me. I can-
not do that without my app, my algorithms, and at the very
least, some goddamn internet access.
When Brian came to my door with the news about Decker,
I froze up, I broke down, and even though I couldn’t believe
it, I believed it. With no data or facts at all.
This time, it’s different. This isn’t news, this is garbage. I
don’t believe. And so, I’m remaining in control. There, I said
it. I just don’t believe her.
Do I believe Gemma knows Decker? Yes. That’s obvious
from her ability to piece together elements of the past on the
spot. Did they sleep together? I mean, it’s possible. Decker was entitled to a history with other women before me just like I
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had hookups and exes myself. Did Gemma have a kid? So she
says. But did she have his kid? No. There’s no way.
Perhaps there’s more truth than she cares to admit behind
what she told her parents. She told them she didn’t know
who the father was. How convenient, to pin paternity on a
dead guy who can’t be DNA-tested, who can’t defend him-
self, and whose family is a complete and total cash cow. All it would take on Gemma’s part to pull this off is what it takes
me to go on a date with any guy. A computer, social media,
and ample time to research. It’s really not that hard to have
targeted Decker.
But despite the holes I’m already poking in Gemma’s story,
it doesn’t change the fact that she’s put this out there. So one way or another, even if just for this moment, the thought that
my own husband, the man I was supposed to have children with, already had one, independently of me and without my
knowledge, is weighing on my mind. I think now about the
fact that there could be a piece of him still alive.
I pause for a moment knowing full-well I must regain my
composure. The only way I can do this is to bathe myself in
the cold, hard facts. What do you know for sure, Charlotte? I grab on to the low-hanging fruit: I know Decker. I know him better than anyone else and there is no way he had a child, acci-
dent or not, adoption or not, and didn’t tell me.
I spot my favorite cocktail waitress and order another drink.
This time, a gin and tonic, as well as a few sheets of paper from the back office. I pace back and forth, cracking my knuckles.
She comes back a minute later with a stiff cocktail and stack
of bright pink Post-Its. Those will do. I give her a ten-dol-
lar tip before retreating to a bathroom stall. I’m not trying
to take a page out of Gemma’s book and isolate myself, but
until this boat gets back to shore, I need a home base. I need
a place where I can be alone and think. In my day, I’ve had
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many makeshift offices. This one—a plumbing-challenged
women’s restroom on a boat—is a new low. But this one is
also far more necessary than all of the others.
I’m offline until we dock—I’ve accepted that. So for now,
I’m taking advantage of what limited resources I have and
writing down everything I can remember about Gemma and
our conversation that may come in handy with linking her
to what is bound to be a big, fat lie. Decker wasn’t the kind
of guy who would have a drunken one-night stand with his
TA. Even if he did make that mistake, he also wasn’t the kind
of guy who would just accept that some chick he knocked up
was going to put their unwanted child up for adoption and
never follow up to see how that went, or how she was doing.
He had morals. And a conscience, too.
I start making a list of things to look up later, writing each
on a separate Post-It and sticking it to the back of the stall door.
Are blondes more likely to lie than brunettes?
Boob job…pre or post Decker?
Mutual friends?
Double check the timeline…
Nearly two hours later, I feel the boat jerk to a halt in the
middle of scribbling another rapid-fire note on a Post-It. I’ve never been so happy to be back on land and immediately peel
them all off, keeping them in order, and place them inside
my bag.
I locate Casey by the sight of her red patent leather shoes
and head straight toward her. She is conversing, laughing, and
drinking with one of the guys from the speed dating table.
“Hi, excuse me, sorry,” I interrupt the two of them. “We
need to leave, Casey. Now.”
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“Why? Did you get your period or something? I have tam-
pons…”
“What? No. We just need to go home. I can’t explain it all right now, but someone on this ship claims to have known Decker,
slept with him, got pregnant, and now I’ve written down all this data that I have to put through my system so I can prove there
was no connection between the two.” I fan the fluorescent Post-
Its her way to drive home the point.
“So…why do we have to leave?”
I can’t believe how oblivious she is being. I’m telling her that a bomb has been dropped and she’s showing no sense of urgency to move with me to get out of the way of it detonating.
“Umm, because I need to know if the two of them could
have possibly ever hooked up and I don’t have my algorithm
set to run like that right now and I can’t tweak the code un-
less we are off this boat.”
Was that all one sentence?
“So you need to see if they were compatible?”
“Exactly.” She’s finally getting it.
“Isn’t that the same thing I asked you to do with me and
Justin before we left tonight?”
“Who the hell is Justin?” I ask.
“The librarian. The drummer. The guy I had the one-night
stand with. I sent you his profile, you told me you’d run him
through your app after you were finished getting ready. Did
you do it?”
“Not yet, Casey. You know Brian came over right after you
asked and then I had to hurry up and get dressed for this stu-
pid thing. When would I have had time to do that?”
“I don’t know. But you said you would do it.”
“I’m sorry, but I think this is just a tad more important
than seeing how things with your hot hookup might work
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out in the long run. My life has literally just been turned up-
side down. Again.”
By now, the guy who was lingering around her has left and
it’s just she and I bickering in front of the bar.
“You want to know what’s so funny, Charlotte?” she says,
a little too cool for my liking.
What could possibly be funny right now?
“Nothing about me is ever important enough for you, ex-
cept for the whole facet of my being,” she spouts off.
“I have literally no idea what that even means,” I say of her
philosophical-sounding statement. “I’m just going to order
myself an Uber.”
I pull out my phone and she pushes my arm down.
“No, take a second and think about it. You’ve never once
been to any of my oddity exhibits. You never ask me anything
about my life unless it somehow m
akes yours easier—if I can
walk your dog, if you can have some of my wine, drink one
of my LaCroixes. And you don’t do what you say you’ll do…
even the little things. I mean, I bring your freakin’ mail up
for you. I pay our tab at the bar with my hard-earned cash. I
ask you to come with me to things like this for free. And you
can’t even take five minutes to tell me if Justin was husband
material? But at the same time as you not giving a shit about
me, you need me. For everything. You needed me to keep
you from being alone when your husband died. You needed
my furniture to replace the stuff you bought with him so you
wouldn’t have to sit on a sad memory every time you watched
TV. You needed me because I’m a homebody, but also not
the type to ask you to go to barre class, or talk about what
happened on Grey’s Anatomy last night. I’m all that you need, and nothing that you don’t so that you don’t have to be inconvenienced by your past. Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re a random Craigslist roommate who I happen to not
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have been killed by yet,” I say as if delivering the final line of a rap battle. “Now if you want to stay here with these losers,
so be it. I’m heading home.”
“Bullshit. There’s nothing random about me. You picked
me on purpose, and you know it. I’m an escape route for you
and I’m not going to be that anymore. So I guess you better
call that Uber and leave me here with ‘these losers.’”
I stare at Casey, the queen of questionable decisions. How
could she completely tune out everything I just said about
Decker having a child? It took a lot for me to open up to
her about him, and now the story has just taken a turn for
the worst and she couldn’t care less. If anyone is being self-
ish here, it’s her.
“Suit yourself,” I say. “And also, I don’t need to run that
Justin guy through the algorithm. Librarians tend to like peo-
ple who actually think before they speak.”
As soon as I get home, I pop open my laptop, fire up my
spare double monitor, and begin going down the almighty
Gemma rabbit hole. Tonight, I’m in the market to prove some-
thing.
As I get settled in, I determine that there is no information
too insignificant to feed into my algorithm. So I begin stick-