by MV Ellis
“Look, she had her reasons. I’m not saying I agree with her decisions, but I respect that they’re hers to make, and I support her in whatever she chooses to do.” He looks at me like I’m something he found lurking at the bottom of a sewer. You don’t have to be a genius to read the accusation in his eyes. I guess he’s right—I can’t say I’m currently feeling as supportive toward her as he is, but then he’s her best friend, not her surprise baby daddy.
I think about the different ways I could end him, and how I would dispose of his rotting corpse. He carries on, oblivious to how close he came to being hacked to pieces and ground into pig feed.
“Look, I know I literally just said I respect her decisions, and I do.” He sighs, closing his eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was struggling with his conscience. I’m intrigued.
“She’ll probably kill me for telling you this, but…” He glances hesitantly at Jourdan, but if he’s looking for reassurance or reproach, he’s shit out of luck. She’s a perfect vision of bored indifference. If she has any opinion about what Marko is about to say, she’s keeping it well hidden. Shit, her poker face is better than mine. I do remember London saying Marko may have met his match with Jourdan. Good. From one asshole who’s been there to another, it serves him the fuck right. I hope he gets what he deserves, just like me. Karma very clearly is a massive fucking biatch.
“I feel like you should know that she isn’t relocating to Australia for good. She was going half out of her mind here before she left. You saw her. She was run-down, exhausted, and over it. She needed a change of scene, and some home-cooked food will do her good, now that she can keep it down. More than anything, I honestly think she just needed a hug from her mom, and some time to clear her mind. She has an open-ended return ticket, but I’d bet my balls she’ll be back in a few weeks. Let her cool off, rest up, and get her head straight over there, and then the two of you can talk.”
I need to get the fuck out of this apartment before I do something we’ll all live to regret.
I hate hearing all of this from Marko—partially because I suspect he’s right, but more so because he’s not London. The fact that he is so involved and… invested in the lives of my girl and my baby guts me to the core. London hadn’t been wrong when she’d said that our life together was a wild ride. She doesn’t have the monopoly on suffering from emotional whiplash. The difference is that when shit goes down between us, I’m drawn closer to her, while her instinct is to push me away.
“In the meantime, you know how stubborn she can be. My advice is to leave her be. Let her do her thing, work through her ‘process,’ and she’ll come back to you. I’m sure of it. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know what’s going on with her.”
Having to take Marko’s advice is a bitter pill to swallow, but I guess he’s right. She’s gone to Australia at least in part to get away from me, so I need to let her have that, at least for a little while.
I nod my agreement and leave. My shoulder is busted and bruised, but not as much as my ego. Whoever said that mighty things come in small packages was right—London may be half my size, but she has the power to cut me down like a chainsaw to a dying tree.
Outside the apartment, I fire off a text to London, which I know she won’t get for hours—the flight to Sydney is ridiculously long, but I want her to see it as soon as she lands.
Me: Found the ultrasound, and spoke to Marko. I love you and our baby. I’ll always be here to catch you both, even when you push me away. AJ
Chapter Eleven
Sleep evades me that night. My shoulder is inflamed and raw, but it’s not the only cause of my insomnia. Instead of trying to force rest, I gulp down a bunch of pain meds I’m not even sure are mine and drive to the studio. If nothing else, while I’m playing, I’m focusing on just that, not thinking about whatever’s eating away at me. So, often I play, and by the time I’m done, I’ve forgotten what I was pissed off about, or I remember, but I no longer give a fuck. It’s what got me through the years after my dad died without ending up in jail, or worse.
Tonight I pace the makeshift stage in the studio’s recording booth like a prisoner waiting out his time on death row, allowing my anger to erupt like hot lava from a long-dormant volcano and pour into the words I sing. Some of the songs have been building in my mind over the previous weeks and months, but the rest are brand-new, developing organically as I let the lyrics pull me where they want to go. It’s a stream of consciousness, but the outcome is better than some of the shit we worked on for months for our previous albums.
Fueled by endless coffees, cigarettes, adrenaline, and prescription narcotics for my shoulder, I go through the night and into the morning. At a reasonable hour, I decide to call Mom, aware of the utter hypocrisy of the move. Two days earlier I tore the guys new assholes for calling her on my behalf, and here I am now doing the same myself. I may be a hypocrite, but I’m also going to be a father—that fact puts a lot of other shit in perspective. Big-time. Mom would know that more than most people. Besides, I guess I feel like I owe her an update after our last call. She picks up on the first ring.
“Hi, Arlo.”
“Hey, Mom.”
“How are you?” Why does her voice sound like she’s bracing herself for bad news?
“Been better.”
“London?”
What else would it be? I wouldn’t normally speak to Mom on the phone twice in the course of a year, and here we were on our second call in as many days. Of course London.
“Yeah.”
Mom says, “She’s pregnant,” at the exact same time I say, “She’s gone.”
“Gone? Where?”
“Pregnant? How did you know?” We speak at the same time again, laugh nervously, and fall silent.
“You go first,” Mom concedes.
“She is pregnant, but how did you know? I only found out yesterday.”
“I don’t know, I just knew. When we met at the gallery, remember I mentioned she had that glow? I had a feeling in my gut right away. That’s why I was urging you to speak to her. I figured if she hadn’t told you by now, she must have been close to… assuming she wasn’t planning on keeping it from you indefinitely, or….” She lets her voice trail off and I know what she’s hinting at.
“I haven’t spoken to her. I mean, I have, but not about this. I called her like you said, and I was surprised when she picked up and agreed to see me. We met up, talked, and it turns out she wanted to end it officially in person. We went back to my place for old time’s sake, and when I woke up the next morning, she was nowhere to be seen. That’s when I found her ‘calling card.’”
“What do you mean?”
“I looked across to her side of the bed and found an ultrasound photo on the pillow.”
“I don’t understand.” She’s not alone.
“She’s pregnant with my baby, and she’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Australia.”
Mom sucks in a sharp, shocked breath.
“You said you haven’t spoken to her.”
“I haven’t. As soon as I found the ultrasound, I sped to her place, but she was already on a plane. I spoke to Marko, her best friend, and he told me everything. Namely that she doesn’t want anything to do with me right now. Not that I needed him to tell me. Bailing to the other side of the world without warning sends a pretty clear message.”
“When was all this?”
“Yesterday.”
“So if you haven’t spoken to her, you don’t know if she’s…. Or if she’s going to….” Tearful, she lets her sentence trail off again.
“You can say the word, Mom. Abortion. No, technically I don’t know if she’s planning to, or even already has terminated our baby. But to leave that photo and disappear without a word knowing that she had or was about to do that would be cruel. That’s not her style. If she loves you, she does it with her whole heart. Likewise, if she’s pissed at you, she’ll let you know in no uncertain terms, e
specially where I’m concerned—she’s never been shy to tell me exactly what a douche she thinks I am.” Despite the pain in my chest, I smile a little at the thought. Like Gramps said, I have finally met my match with my little hummingbird. More than anyone, she’s happy to give it to me with both barrels when I screw up.
“You know she struggled with the idea of the two of us for a long time, but she’s never done anything in the past to lead me to think she would be vindictive, no matter what I had done to her. I just don’t believe she would ever go out of her way to hurt someone. Even me.” Especially me. Especially under these circumstances.
“But she is hurting you. I mean—”
“No, Mom, let me finish. I get that it’s her body and her decision, and I respect that. I just know if that’s the decision she made, she wouldn’t drop it on me that way.
“Apart from the fact that it would be out of character for her to do that, when I spoke to Marko, he told me that she’s had a rough ride with the pregnancy so far.” I pause momentarily at the foreign feel of the word on my tongue. It’s not a word I ever thought would be associated with me, but now that it is, I really want it to stay that way.
“He helped her deal with the sickness, but it has taken a toll on her. She’s apparently over the worst of it, but needs time….”
“A baby is supposed to bring you closer together, not push you further apart.”
Is that so? I have no fucking idea. All I know is that when every fiber of my being is telling me to stay and fight, she always wants to take flight.
“I’m hoping that like Marko said, she just needs to be near her mom, and not to have to deal with my shit. He was talking like she was pregnant and staying that way. If she was planning to have an abortion, he would know about it.”
“Are you sure that you could trust him to tell you even if he did know?”
“Yeah, Ma. I mean, I want to fucking kill that pretentious cocksucker stone dead most of the time—”
“Arlo!”
“What? You know I’m no altar boy. Do you want me to put a couple of hundreds in the swear jar to cover this conversation?” I know she hates to hear us cursing, but it’s not the first time, and it sure as shit won’t be the last. We both know that. I have no idea why she still insists on trying to ‘fix’ this—all four of us curse like drunken sailors, and no amount of nagging or guilting is going to change that. “My point is he loves her almost as much as I do. He’s really been there for her, when I couldn’t be.”
“Because she wouldn’t let you.”
Because she doesn’t trust me. When she needs something or someone, he’s the one she turns to.
“I know, but the fact still stands. She needed him, and he was there. Always has been, and says he always will be. I hate him, but I believe he keeps his word. Case in point, he’s been throwing me a bone too. Since all that shit happened with you-know-who, I’ve called him every day, and he’s played along, given me updates on how she’s been doing without letting her know.”
“But he didn’t mention the baby, so…?”
“What kind of friend would he be if he betrayed her trust like that and told me she was pregnant? Think about it. It’s bad enough that he was taking my calls behind her back in the first place, without totally double-crossing her. And if she didn’t have him to rely on, then what? Then I’d have kicked his ass. For now, he’s my only connection to her, so I’m rolling with it.”
“Okay, son, you know best.”
“I don’t know shit. I was clueless when it was just the two of us. What the hell do I know now that there’s a baby in the mix?”
“You run the band, and not one but two successful businesses. Even though you behave otherwise a lot of the time, you’re a smart guy. Your problem is that you act before you think when something gets to you. You let your heart rule your head way too often.”
What? Where does she get this stuff? That’s total bullshit.
“You’d do well to apply some of the smarts you’ve used to get so far in business to your personal life. Oh, and the other thing is that you need to grow the hell up.” Her tone sharpens. Looks like understanding gentle Mom is gone, to be replaced with kickass Mom.
“Excuse me?” Between Mom and Gramps, I don’t need to wonder where I got my bluntness from.
“You heard me. You need to man up. Fast. A small part of me is not surprised she ran. A woman’s instinct is to protect her child—and by the way, that instinct never goes away, no matter how old or stupid that child gets. This whole time, London’s been trying to shield herself from you, but now it’s not just her she has to look out for. You can see why she doesn’t want to drag an innocent little one into the hot mess of your life. To be honest, I’m glad she’s doing the right thing. The way things stand, I wouldn’t want my future grandbaby caught up in all this.”
Ouch.
The women in my life sure know how to slay me with their tongues. If I had to choose between going head-to-head with Conor McGregor, and taking a verbal beating from the two of them, I’d risk it with the prizefighter every time—broken bones heal quicker than a bruised ego. Not that I don’t need to hear it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle.
“If you want her and the baby, you need to show her you can be the partner and father they need in their lives.”
Then I’ll work out how to move matter backward through time and space. In fact, that sounds simpler.
“Easier said than done. How the fuck do I do that?”
“I wiped your butt for years when you were a boy. I have no intention of starting again now. You were my baby once, but now you’re a grown man and you’ve made a baby of your own, for Christ’s sake. Time to start thinking like a man and a father.”
Word.
My phone beeps with another call. I pull it away from my ear to see the caller ID.
“Oh shit, Ma, I gotta go. I have to get this, okay?” I really need to take this call.
“Okay. And Arlo?”
What now?
“Yeah?”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
Chapter Twelve
I hang up quickly and pick up the incoming call.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Jones.”
“Yeah?”
“Hello, it’s Adam Gottfried from Gottfried, Fry, Pierce. Do you have a moment to talk?”
“Sure. What do you have for me?”
“We have an update on the whereabouts of Ms. Harloe, and another key development in the case.”
“Okay, so shoot.”
“Mr. Simons, our private investigator, has just traced Ms. Harloe to a property on Long Island, registered in the name of one Mrs. Cathleen Gardiner.” Marnie’s grandmother. Thinking back, I have a very vague memory of her spending a summer or two with her grandmother on Long Island when we were kids.
“So you’re going to serve the papers now?”
“We can, but we are now in possession of further information that will affect our next steps. In addition to locating her, we have also been trying to trace the origin of the message sent to Miss Llwellyn’s telephone the day the video first appeared in the press in order to establish a link between Ms. Harloe and the video being circulated. This is fairly crucial to the case in terms of suing for what essentially amounts to ‘revenge porn,’ in layman’s terms.
“In short, and without going into too much unnecessary detail, Mr. Simons’s technical team uses complex software, allowing them to extract the metadata from an image or a video, which can yield some very detailed and informative results. On this occasion, they have analyzed the data associated with the video to help pin down some of the specifics of the case.”
Without getting too technical. Right.
“The first news is that the information retrieved indicates with about 99 percent certainty that the video was recorded with Ms. Harloe’s cell phone. Each device has a set of markers that embeds code into the photographs or videos shot on it.
This code is almost as unique as fingerprints, so the chances of the data originating from a different device are slim to none.”
Motherfucker.
Although I knew it in my gut, it still smarts to have it officially confirmed. I had already had my security team sweep the house several times for bugs or any kind of recording devices, and as anticipated, each search came up empty. So then the only other logical explanations were that a third party had physically been present in the room, or Marnie shot the video.
The two of us have never had a threesome—she doesn’t play well with others, or like sharing her toys, so I ruled that out instantly. A review of the CCTV from outside Rosemond House over the past few years confirmed that she had been alone every time she visited. Therefore, all roads led back to Marnie as the shooter. Still, part of me had hoped for some other unforeseen explanation, even though I had no idea of what that could even be.
“Additionally, the origin of the message received by Miss Llwellyn has been traced to a web-based SMS client via an IP address in China.” I have no idea what he is talking about, but figure if I listen long enough, something will start to make some kind of sense.
“This address is known to authorities both in China and here in the US to have been involved in illegal spamming and click farm activity, as well as celebrity phishing and hacking scams in the past.”
Fucking lawyers. They charge by the minute, then spend hours spitting out hot air before they get to the goddamn point. Not that money’s the issue—I just don’t have the patience for long-winded bullshit.
“So what are you saying?”
“Essentially, although she more than likely shot the video, it is highly unlikely that the video was distributed by Ms. Harloe herself, either to Miss Llwellyn or to the press. In order to be categorically sure, we would need to subpoena Ms. Harloe’s phone records for further analysis as part of the legal proceedings. However, Mr. Simons’s opinion at this stage is that the most likely explanation for the chain of events is that the video was obtained unlawfully from Ms. Harloe’s phone and then distributed to the press and to Miss Llwellyn by this third party. I tend to agree with him.”