by Anne Eliot
My voice cracks. “Sage and I were—we are—my father’s everything. Even though we never had a lot, we always had him. It’s big and earth-moving, how we love our dad. Nothing feels better than how he loves us back.” I’m sobbing openly now. “You could have that, Royce. You could give that feeling to your baby. Yet…you won’t even hardly look at her.”
I cross my arms into an empty hug and squeeze them very, very tight across my stomach as if I could stop the rolling pain caused by this conversation. More tears unleash, but I won’t care that I’ve crumpled like this front of them later, as long as Royce finally understands how important this is to his little girl.
He shakes his head, his eyes never leaving my face. This time his voice is a shaking whisper that almost matches mine. “Please…Robin. Please…don’t cry like that. She’s…not mine.”
I put my hands up to my head. “How can I ever stop crying now that you’ve said that to me again. I’ve failed. I’ve failed her. Failed everyone.”
Royce pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Read this. It’s her birth certificate.”
I unfold the stiff paper, reading through my tears but not comprehending as I whisper parts of each line I read out loud: “Born, January 1? A New Year’s baby?” I pause to drag the back of my hand over my eyes so I can see better. “Her name is Apple?” I glance up, and then look back down, scanning the small print until I land on the signatures at the bottom. “Mother: Evelyn Marie Marcus. Father: Adam—Adam Marcus?” I gasp. “Adam? You’re the father? And…you’re married to her mother? Is this the Eve that’s on your tattoo? Adam, Eve and Apple?” I tear my eyes away from the paper and look at Adam.
“My wife, she has the most amazing, bright blue eyes,” Adam whispers, nodding. “And red hair, of course. She’s the tall girl in the elevator who was featured in the newspaper article as a,” he makes air quotes. “Paid prostitute, along with you. I’m so sorry, Robin. This is all my fault.”
Adam picks the sleeping baby up and pulls her near his cheek, then places a gentle hand her little fluff-topped head, just like he’s done every day since he met me.
“Your fault…?” The puzzle pieces crash into place so hard, it feels like I’m getting hit with a hailstorm. I remember the time Adam was drunk, moaning about he didn’t have his Eve. I replay every moment he mooned over the crib looking at the baby. How he worried about her, held her, carried her, fed her, bragged about her fluffy hair, obsessed about her. “Oh my God. Why?”
“I asked Royce to cover for me and Eve. We were about to tell everyone the truth and introduce Eve and the baby to the world, but then Eve’s mom got sick. She and I had hidden our relationship from everyone for two years, and no one knew about the baby.”
“What?” I cry out again, feeling like the floor has dropped away from my feet. My eyes seek out Vere. Because I trust Vere.
She’s nodding. “Even we didn’t know until this month.”
I perch on the edge of the couch.
Adam walks back and sits, pausing to make the baby—his baby, who has been with her father this whole time—more comfortable. “I met Eve in Wales. The year we rented this castle to hide out and record our last album. It’s a year everyone’s still holding against me for all of the shenanigans I pulled, even though I’m pretty sure Wales is where we wrote the best songs of our life so far.”
“He held us hostage in that dumb castle, and delayed our album’s completion,” Hunter laughs out.
Adam shrugs helplessly. “Her family owns a cheese farm a few towns over from the castle. It’s so removed from the world, there’s only sheep and horses. It’s got spotty internet and worse cell service. It’s like another planet, and I didn’t want to leave it. She didn’t know I was in a band, and initially I didn’t tell her the truth because I never thought our friendship or relationship, whatever it was at first, would last. After we got closer, I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth about who I was because I felt like it would change our relationship, and again, I didn’t ever think it would turn into forever. Eve’s shy. Not a little shy, like you are, Robin. But shy, because she has other things going on with her. Public attention, strangers, crowds—they can cripple Eve in ways that cause her such painful internal distress that it breaks my heart. She’s amazing, and she knows how to work through a lot of that now, but I thought I would lose her if she knew the truth.” He flushes with the memories. “The lies got even bigger on my part when she got pregnant. I’m so in love with her, and she with me, that there was no question about us getting married—well at least in my mind. So we did, right away; but I still couldn’t tell her. Kind of like this situation with you, Robin. It all got out of control.”
He runs his finger over Apple’s rounded cheeks. “Then…the baby was born and well…so many reasons came up to keep lying to her as the months flew past, but it was mostly because I didn’t want to share Eve or Apple with the world. You can imagine after all that time, when she did find out she was more than pissed off with me. But, thankfully she forgave me and decided she wanted to keep me, despite my job. Which meant we had to eventually go public. Despite Royce’s reservations on how we will bring a baby around the world, I’m not going on tour without my family by my side. Eve has agreed to take the year off and travel along with us. We all agreed to a month here in Orlando doing this series of shows for the parks, because I wanted a place here in the states for the news of our marriage and the baby to blow over. I also wanted a static place for Eve and the baby to get used to screaming fans and living in hotels and dashing in and out of limos and…well…you know, the utter chaos and lies that comes with being part of Guarderobe.” He grins. “You just went through a week of it, and you can see, it’s not an easy assimilation, is it?”
“No. Not easy at all.” I glance around the room at everyone’s somber faces. “No one knew the whole time you were dating? No one.”
Royce crosses his arms over his chest while Adam shakes his head. “Nope. And if you think Eve was mad, well, Hunter and I were twice as pissed about all of this lying, considering we’re his best friends!”
Hunter speaks next, “Adam had only told me and Royce about the baby, when Eve’s father called and told her mother was really sick. Sick as in, she’d had a stroke and might die back in Wales kind of sick. We were all in such a state of shock. Eve had to go right then, and when she left us so quickly with the baby we’d all only just met her. We didn’t know how to proceed.”
Adam sighs long and loud. “I thought Eve could get to her mother’s side if we postponed our announcement and let her fly home alone. While we waited for news, we decided to smokescreen her presence in the penthouse, lie about the baby, and basically we went into freak-out-panic mode which is how you got involved. We needed help.”
Vere adds, “They didn’t tell me at first, either. When Mrs. Felix and Gregory jumped to all the wrong conclusions and we backed their assumptions that the baby was Royce’s at first, that is how things spiraled.”
Royce nods. “Although I did want to kill Vere for all of her ‘new-daddy’ speeches, I had no problem pretending to be dirt-bag-daddy and smokscreening my grandmother for a few days because we all wanted time to think about what to do next. If the worst happened and Eve’s mom passed away, and there was to be a funeral, the plan would have been different. If Eve’s mom had to go to long term care, again, the plan would be different. But whatever the scenario, we wanted the press not to be involved. It was hard enough with Adam freaking out that he couldn’t be by his wife’s side at one of the saddest, scariest times of her life, because no one wants to bring a circus to a hospital. Had he accompanied her with a surprise baby in tow, that’s what would have happened.”
All I can do is shake my head. And shake my head more.
Adam adds, “I so was afraid that if the press discovered Eve and our baby, they’d go insane over this secret we’d kept. Which they will.” He nods knowingly. “She’d have been all alone and unable to handle the mayhem, becau
se I was here keeping an eye on our daughter. Eve…if you knew her, you’d never want her to have to face the press alone. As the days dragged on while Eve’s mom was in the ICU, we just…kept on pretending the baby was Royce’s.”
Royce shakes his head. “After you were brought in, the lies or the part where you had to hate me couldn’t be stopped. That baby, she…” He points at the bundle in Adam’s arms before continuing, “She’s so tiny. That’s why I can’t hold her. Apparently, I have pure, white-hot fear of tiny fragile humans.” He swallows. “I get anxiety attacks just watching her breathe so I try to not look at her at all. When you arrived, you were so competent I felt good about backing off and letting you work. You on the day shifts, meant we could all help Adam with night shifts. We also would keep the baby awake nights so Eve could see her and play with her over Skype. She was so sad and missing her little girl, which is why the poor baby sleeps all day long. I tried to axe you that first day, but after realizing you truly needed the job, against my better judgment we kept you on, because we liked you so much.”
Vere stands, pulling herself out of Hunter’s arms. “Even Eve agreed it was good you were around once we told her about how much you loved babies. We thought we were helping you and the baby all at once.”
“If I could turn back the clock, I would have sent you away as Royce begged us to do from the start.” Adam pats the baby’s back.
“We shouldn’t have tried to keep you for more than a day or two,” Royce says in a broken, sincere voice I’ve never heard before. “We’re so sorry.” He takes one step toward me, his eyes pulling me in so hard, I have to look away.
The pounding in my head won’t stop, but finally, from very far away I hear my own voice coming out between gasping breaths, “Is…Eve’s mom okay?”
Royce’s eyes glint like he wants to say more, but answers only, “Yes. There’s going to be some recovery to get through but overall, she’s fine. She got very lucky.”
As I glance between their staring and distraught faces my eyes return to Royce’s, and the confusion that floods my head next almost makes me pass out. “Wait. So. You—aren’t the worst person in the world, are you?” I whisper.
“The day is not over yet, Robin. Let’s wait on reversing your opinion of me so quickly, shall we?”
“No.” Hunter calls out. “Our man Royce, he’s nicest, most caring, most generous best friend anyone could have.”
“It’s true. Robin, please don’t look so sad about it all. I tried to tell you, but it was so messy and complicated. We’re sorry.” Vere untwines herself from Hunter and tries to stand, but he holds her back.
“You’re all sorry,” I mutter out, staring at the names on the birth certificate. “I can’t process all this. I feel so…so…stupid, so…”
The other words I can’t say swirl through my head: Humiliated, horrified, betrayed, relieved, embarrassed. The birth certificate slips through my fingers and floats to my feet. I’m suddenly unable to look at any of them. The grief, the stress, and my exhaustion for all I’ve been hiding is about to buckle my knees, but I won’t let it happen here.
Not where these people can watch me bawling again.
The gasping gets worse. I manage to choke out, “I need to think. Need—air.”
I push past them all, shaking my head one last time at Royce, and I run.
Chapter 36
I make it to the tree—Cara’s tree—and hold on to it for support, gasping for air until I realize I’m not alone.
Royce has followed.
“It’s about to get ugly.” I glance up at him through a waterfall of tears. “Please don’t look at me. How could everyone…have lied so much? How?”
“Robin. I’m sorry. Can you ever forgive us? We didn’t think how this situation would upset you so deeply or turn into something…so…inescapable,” he mutters, glancing over his shoulder as he walks closer. “There’s so still so much more going on that you don’t know.”
When all I can do is look at him and cry more, he runs a hand through his hair and adds, “To us, Adam having a secret baby, a surprise wife, and all of us having to cover it up for him until he was ready? That falls under the umbrella of what’s normal for us. Someone like you might not understand.”
“Someone like me.” Getting control of my voice, I pull in a long breath and throw his words back at him. “Why do you always say that, like it’s a wall? Like you think you’re all demi-gods and I’m too common to float in the clouds with you?”
“I say that with the opposite meaning, Robin.” He pulls at a low-hanging tree branch and pops off one leaf. “In my mind, Adam, Hunter and I are some sort of subhuman, messed-up, pathetic versions of how normal people are supposed to turn out. Guarderobe plus the fame, plus living under the watchful eye of the press and our fans’ social media postings, has trapped us into a world we can’t escape. Even if we stopped producing tracks right now, we’d always be followed, and photographed. We lie and make our crazy plans to try to escape that microscope. To have breaks from it. We lie to catch a few moments of what it might feel like to have a normal life.”
My tears start to fade. “I’m pretty sure no one has any sort of normal life. I know Sage and I don’t.”
“Maybe you’re right, but to me and to the band, it seems we live ‘abnormal’ on a larger scale.”
“Explain.” I wipe the back of my hand over my nose.
“Okay.” He glances up at the sky. “The first time the lies started flying between Guarderobe and the press was when Hunter, back when we were in high school, had to go hide in Colorado and get disguised as a nerd after his suicide attempt. Second suicide attempt. We had to cover for him while he hid out and got himself well, all while we took this Hunter look-alike, this dumbass-dude all the way to Paris. We held fake recording sessions there. We swore to the fans that we were locked into ‘creative mode’ while we paraded this stranger around who would hide under sunglasses and ball caps and wave and shit, pretending he was, in fact, Hunter Kennedy!”
“Okay…well, Vere told me some of that. And the fake Hunter going to Paris, that passes as a good example of very abnormal.”
“Even crazier, when the story hit that Hunter was attending high school in Colorado and everyone found out about Hunter and Vere being in love, because the whole world loves famous people in love, that story was so big, no one—and I mean no one—ever questioned us about the dude who was with us in Paris! It was like, poof, that dude, and our trip to Paris never happened. That’s how the press works. They all run to the biggest story while the little ones disappear. So that’s what we’ve been doing all week long, creating bigger stories.”
“How could Adam have hidden a relationship and a baby from you? Lied to his best friend, for almost two years and you’re not even mad about it? Explain that.”
“With Adam—the lies between us, him, and the press have been going on for years.”
“Because of how he runs away? Vere told me some about him, too.”
“Yes. He’s been taking off, or running away since we were kids and on the NewtTV shows. He’d sneak away for a few hours at first, that turned into whole days. As he got older he’d escape for weekends, then weeks, even months at a time. Now we know it’s because he’s an introvert. It’s like he needs to go away to re-fuel. But before he met Eve we didn’t understand him. We all thought he was depressed like Hunter had been. Everyone, especially me, was terrified he’d pull a suicide attempt. So, we let him have his space. We tracked if he was happy and stable when he did check in because in the end, that’s we care about. He’d always come back. Stay a week, work a week, hang out then go again. Adam’s almost five years older than we are. He owns his own home in London as well as he’s had his own place in New York City for three years. He only lives with us in the hotels while we’re doing shows or on tour. While we were in the Castle in Wales, he told us he was flying back and forth to his place in London.” He shakes his head. “Hell, he told us so much shit that year. We neve
r expected him to be two towns over, falling in love, that’s for damn sure. After we left that castle, and when he kept disappearing we never assumed he’d be going back and forth to Wales, marrying a girl, and then having a baby with her.” He barks out a cynical sounding laugh. “But when he showed up and explained it all, it made sense. He only wanted to be normal and unnoticed. Live a regular life. And he’d done it.”
“Wow. Okay. I don’t want to understand because I’m mad at all of you, but I guess… I do.” I sniffle again.
“Right?” He laughs a little more, but his eyes are scanning my face like they hope I believe him. Like they hope I’m stable and okay. He continues, “It only takes one minute of knowing Eve and who she is as a person to like her and to understand the rest.”
I smile a little, remembering Adam all drunk and saying how much he loved cheese and girls with accents, but still unconvinced, I shake my head. “I still don’t understand. Lying is never, ever good in a relationship. Never.”
“Try to see things from our side. We have a skewed view of the world. We’re not allowed to fall in love outside of the spotlight. We can’t get married quietly in a little stone church, we can’t just go out and milk cows each sunrise, ride horses, take walks along coastlines, propose on a sea cliff with only the wind and waves watching. Those are all things that Adam did get to do. If we tried that stuff—if one paparazzi gets wind that we’re dating someone, and worse that we’ve fallen in love, there’s helicopters and strangers trying to come watch the show.”