by Nancy Adams
Claire went to lift herself from the chair to reach it, but someone placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
“Give her air,” Annabel exclaimed as she ushered everyone away. “She’s perfectly okay. She just had a little turn is all.”
Some of the customers were asking if it was the food that had caused the episode and the waiting staff were at pains to explain that this certainly wasn’t the case.
“Annabel,” Claire said in a low tone, retrieving her friend’s attention, “can you get me my phone? It’s on the floor over there.”
Annabel turned sharply to the space Claire weakly pointed out and, spotting the device, went over and grabbed it.
“There’s someone on the line,” Annabel said as she brought it over to Claire. “It’s Ted. Did you faint because of him?” she asked when she handed Claire the phone.
Claire ignored her friend’s question and immediately applied the phone to her ear, her whole body shaking as she did so.
“Sam?” she said meekly into the mouthpiece.
“What happened?”
“I fainted.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true then? That we have a son?”
“Yes.”
The phone went dead and Claire burst into tears.
She recalled very little of what happened next, but she was soon whisked into a taxicab. And before she knew it, she was sitting in Annabel’s lounge with a large glass of whiskey clasped in her trembling hands, her friend sitting beside her.
“You know you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” Annabel softly informed her while rubbing the forlorn girl’s shivering back.
“It’s okay, Annabel,” Claire replied in a rasping voice, an effect of the tears upon it. “I feel like I need to get it off my chest. I’ve held it there so long that my heart aches so much from the weight of it all.”
“Sounds like you’re about to make a confession.”
“I am.”
“Then I shall be your confessor.”
The two were silent for a time while Claire appeared to be weighing everything up in her head and readying it for her friend’s ear.
“I don’t exactly know where to start,” Claire began in a desolate tone, tears dropping relentlessly from her long eyelashes.
“Work your way back from what just happened in the restaurant if you like.”
“But that’s the point: what just happened has everything to do with the beginning.”
“I don’t think I quite understand.”
Claire gingerly lifted the whiskey to her lips, her weak arms finding much effort in the action, and took a large sip of the burning spirit. As she did, she breathed in deeply and felt the liquor warm her chest up, finding some courage in the feeling.
“Nearly six years ago I began an affair with Sam Burgess,” she suddenly blurted out, beginning her tale.
Once she had begun, Claire went on to tell Annabel every detail of the affair and her subsequent pregnancy. Not one piece was left out of it; falling in love with a married billionaire; the affair behind Marya’s back; the secret hospital rendezvous; losing her virginity to Sam at the Cliff Face; their split; the shame and guilt she felt as a result of it all; the abandoned trip to the abortion clinic; her missing a year of college in order to have the child; Paul’s support through all of this; the adoption; her keeping it all from her parents—even now—and them all being none the wiser. It was all there without embellishment. Claire didn’t let herself off at all—she told it all as objectively as she could.
At times she would have to stop and cry for a moment, Annabel holding her the whole time, asking very few questions, allowing the girl to get it all out, giving her an ear and no more. And with each new word that flittered from her lips, Claire felt something release from her, as though the mere act of talking about it, hearing it out in the open as opposed to in her head, set her free from it all somehow, made it all appear much smaller than it really was, shrunk it through the simple act of sharing it with someone else. Each new word, each new confession, was like a stone being released from her heart. For so many years she had kept so much of herself locked up inside where only she had access. All these secrets and lies that she’d kept had eaten into her. Now that they were being released, it appeared that she too was somehow being released.
When she had finished, Annabel held her for some time as she cried bitterly; the last part of the story having been Sam’s recent discovery of the secret child.
“What do you think?” Claire asked after crying the last drop of herself out of her.
“About what!? There’s so much!”
“About me not telling him when I was pregnant.”
“Well, in hindsight it appears to have been a mistake, because fate brought it back to him in spite of your secrecy. You should have told him from the start. I believe that it was your body and your choice, but the father still should have been informed.” Annabel paused for a moment and studied Claire’s abject face, before going on in a softer tone, “But then I’m starting to sound like my old ethics professor. It’s all well and good in theory, but we can never judge people for the split-second decisions they make under immense pressure, especially at such a young age. When someone has to think quickly—and the results will be life-altering no matter which way they turn—can we blame them whichever way they went? I can talk about ethics all I want, but I wasn’t the nineteen-year-old girl who’d been left pregnant from her first real love affair; a love affair that had recently ended. In most cases, I believe people would have acted in a similar way to you.”
Claire afforded herself a half smile at this, but no more.
“Who told him, anyway?” Annabel asked after a moment.
“He didn’t say, but I suspect it may have been Paul.”
“Could he be so cruel?”
“I think it was more about a lesson than an act of cruelty. I never told you, but he came by the hospital last night. He was acting really strange and I was scared that he’d make a scene. So I took him to the paramedics station at the back of the hospital.”
“And he was cool? He wasn’t abusive?”
“He wasn’t in the friendliest of moods, but he didn’t act up. He just told me some fable about keeping secrets from our partners and lying to ourselves about it. I suspected something then, but ignored it. I think he was trying to warn me—to get me to confess to Sam before he went and told him. Sam’s call came just over twenty-four hours after I met Paul last night—doesn’t that say something?”
Annabel momentarily closed her eyes and let out an almost imperceptible groan. The callousness of it all bit deep into her. What right had Paul to tell Sam? she thought to herself. It was Claire’s secret to tell, and Claire’s alone.
“He had no right to tell Sam,” Annabel suddenly blurted out, the thought no longer restrained.
“Paul was hurt so bad,” Claire put in his defense, “and, whether he had a right to or not, he needed some sort of vessel for all his anger. I just hope he got it. He needed to show Sam and I the same misery that he feels we’ve shown him.”
“And has he?”
Claire’s bulging, sad eyes gazed forward into space. She took another sip of whiskey, felt it burn, and turned to Annabel.
“I hope not,” she muttered with a sad look. “I hope not.”
CHAPTER TWO
Sam’s teeth were so fiercely clenched together that his jaw ached from the stress of it all. He was pacing back and forth across the whole of his office, a tempest raging in his head. He’d only just gotten off the phone to Claire, and Paul had left a mere ten minutes before. After the young man’s departure, Sam had spent what felt like an hour—but which was only a minute at the most—gazing at the piece of paper with the details of his child on it. The thoughts in his head were gathering such momentum that time appeared to slow down to a sloth’s pace and the words and numbers on that piece of paper brande
d themselves into him, until he wore every mark on that paper upon his heart.
St. Patricks Hospital, Ellsworth, Maine. D.O.B: 10/07/2001. Maine Adoption Placement, Waterville, Maine.
Having stared at the paper for long enough, a merciless anger had coursed through him and he had grabbed his phone so violently that he’d cracked the screen. As he’d waited for Claire to pick up, he had found himself no longer seated on the couch, the piece of paper nowhere to be seen; he was pacing the room, his body desperate for something to do, a coiled spring feeling ready to burst into action inside of him.
It had only been when she’d fainted that his anger had abated momentarily. It sounded as if she’d dropped the phone, which she had, and he heard the light scream of a woman. He had felt a chasm open up inside of him for a moment as he listened to the worried voices echo through the phone, and his heart had felt like it were about to be poured into the yawning abyss. A terrible worry overtook all his anger and he waited impatiently for word that she was okay. When he heard her voice on the other end and found that she was, the chasm abruptly closed, and he was once again washed over by his former anger.
Now he held that anger inside him, gripped it tightly in the fist of his heart, and threatened to wear the flooring out as he stomped around. A sudden thought hit him and he swooped to the intercom on his desk.
Pressing the button, he said, “Karl, come see me.”
That was all, and soon his assistant was standing before him as he sat at his large oak desk.
“Has he gone?” Sam asked, referring to Paul.
“He left the moment he walked out of this office. Street cameras picked him up getting into a cab about three blocks from here. Do you want him followed?”
“No. Leave him alone. Paul Bishop is to never be touched by us.”
“What did he want?”
Sam took in a deep breath, before nonchalantly stating, “He told me I have a son who is out there somewhere.”
Karl screwed his face up into a look of confusion at the news.
“A son!? I don’t get it.”
Without another word on the subject, Sam asked Karl to get in contact with John Ryan and have the man meet Sam there at his office. Twenty minutes later, John was sitting in a chair opposite Sam, who remained behind his desk, his expression distorted by his current state of perplexity.
“What is it, Sam?” he asked his boss.
“Can you find adopted children?”
“It depends where the kid was adopted from, and where to.”
“All here in the U.S.”
“Makes it a lot easier. What else have you on the child?”
“Date of birth, hospital he was born in and the name of the adoption agency.”
“Then in that case I should have it done by this afternoon.”
“But I want this all done extremely quietly. I don’t want anyone turning up anywhere asking any direct questions. Just find him discreetly, and then I’ll make a decision after that.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure the adoption agency uses Techsoft software to store their records. That means we won’t ever have to go within a thousand miles of the place to get what we need. I’ll just have our boys hack them.”
“Okay, I’m texting you the details now. Get on it and inform me of every development.”
“Sure thing.”
Sam took his cracked phone and texted John the details. Once he had, the head of security departed on his mission and Sam was left to ponder everything. Was it the right decision to go searching for the child immediately? Had he really thought any of it through for long enough to warrant going in search of the boy so soon? And what would the media make of all of this if they got a sniff? His affair with Claire during Marya’s last days was sure to get out if he found the boy and presented him in some way to the world. And what were his plans when he did find the child? Would he immediately attempt to enter the boy’s life? Or would he hold off, introduce himself gradually? What would he say to Jess?
His mind spun in ever-increasing circles and, feeling heavy, he rested his head onto his outstretched arms, which lay across the desk. Soon the weight of everything got the better of him and he fell into a deep sleep.
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NANCY ADAMS is an Amazon bestselling author of contemporary romance. She's currently single and dreams of one day meeting her prince charming and starting a family. She loves people and loves life. A real "people-person" who sometimes can't stand the noise. During those times, she curls up, shuts the door, and drifts into beautiful fantasy and welcomes all along for the ride. She expresses how she feels and what she wants to feel through her writing, and she doesn't know what she'd do without it. The mere fact that she is able to share her gift with the rest of the world is simply a bonus, and one that brings her nothing but pure joy!
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