The Platinum Reunion

by T V Hartwell

  “Dad, I’m sorry, but can you get to the point?”

  “I am. I’m getting there,” Tom said with nervous energy. He cleared his throat and looked off to the side before returning his gaze to Jake. “So I called him and asked him if everything was okay and…I don’t even know why I’m going into this level of detail, but long story short is…” Tom paused again as he sighed and ran his hands through his perfectly trimmed and neat blond hair with its streaks of gray throughout.

  “What, Dad? Just tell me.”

  “…your mother had an affair…years ago, before you were born, and there’s a possibility, ever so slight in my view, that I’m not your biological father.”

  Jake’s mouth fell open and his face immediately flushed as he stared at Tom in stunned silence. Tom stared back at him and waited, allowing Jake to absorb the weight of his words.

  After a few passing seconds, Jake managed to speak. He was beyond incredulous. “You might not be my father? That can’t be possible,” he said with a hint of anger and disbelief in his tone.

  “I’m not even convinced myself that it’s true. I am your father…no matter what. But I felt you needed know and that you should hear about this from us and not somebody else. We’ll do DNA testing and resolve this once and for all. Put it to rest.”

  “This is crazy. I can’t believe what I’m hearing right how. So what does Reverend O have to do with this?”

  “That’s where the story gets a little murky and all the more unbelievable. Your mother did meet with him before your wedding…to admit to having the affair.”

  “Did you know about the affair?”

  “No. I didn’t. She went to Reverend O to admit to having the affair but also to reveal the name of the person she’d had the affair with.”

  “And this is the guy who might be my real father?”

  Tom didn’t answer Jake. He just looked at him grimly with his thin lips locked tightly together. His mouth trembled slightly and small beads of sweat began to appear across his forehead.

  “Who is it? Do you know him?”

  Tom sighed. “Yes…I do, and so do you.”

  “I know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Rick. Rick Climent.”

  “Rick…Climent?” Jake slowly repeated. “Am I in the Twilight Zone right now?”

  “Frankly, it feels like that for me, too, but you know that your mother and Rick have a history. Little did I know that they had rekindled things shortly after we had gotten married.”

  “This is fucking crazy. You have got to be shitting me right now. You’re telling me that all this time I’d been dating my freakin’…half-sister?”

  “This will all likely turn out to be entirely spurious—”

  “But how could this happen? How come nothing was ever said before now?”

  “Your mother was too afraid to tell you…to tell me, even.”

  “This is insane. Where is she? Where the fuck is she?” Jake demanded as he started to walk out of the living room to find Jamie. However, just as he stepped into the entry hall, there she stood. She had been leaning up against the wall, quietly listening.

  “Jake,” she said softly, sorrowfully, as tears streamed down her face.

  “How could you?” Jake yelled. “How could you allow this to happen…to let this go on for so long and not tell me?”

  “I wanted to protect you.”

  “Protect me, or were you trying to protect yourself?” Jake said, looking at her with a cutting glare, feeling contempt.

  Jamie reached and grabbed Jake by the arm to plead with him. “I never thought you’d meet Amanda. I never thought your paths would ever cross. I tried to break you up numerous times. You know that. I did everything I could to persuade you not to see her—”

  “Give me a fucking break. You did everything you could except tell the truth,” Jake said as he yanked his arm from his mother’s grip. Jake placed both hands to his face and turned away from her before he continued to speak with agony and disbelief in his voice. “Oh my God, I feel sick to my stomach right now. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  When he turned back around, Jamie walked up to him, her face wet with tears. She placed her hands softly to his chest. “Jake…I’m so sorry—”

  Jake pushed her hands away. “Mom…seriously…get off me.”

  Jamie persisted in her attempt to demonstrate remorse and regret. “Jake, you know how much I love you. I made a bad choice. I know there are no words to justify what I did. I just wanted to keep our family together…to keep everyone happy.”

  Tom stood and watched quietly. He folded his arms and shook his head in disappointment as Jamie continued to talk.

  “I felt so ashamed of what I’d done. I just thought that it would be best to put it behind me and never speak of it again. I kept this secret—the affair, the possibility of Rick being your father—to myself because I never wanted you to feel tainted or scarred in any way by my mistake. I didn’t want Tom to think that you belonged to anyone other than him, to think that you weren’t his son fully and completely. Please forgive me…I’m so sorry—”

  As Jamie reached to touch Jake again, he stepped away from her. “Mom, please! Sorry isn’t good enough. Not right now. So all this time, during college and law school and during our engagement, you would say all this shit about Amanda, how she wasn’t good enough for me, that she was too superficial, too spoiled, that she lacked talent—none of which was true—but you said all that to get me to stop seeing her instead of simply coming clean and admitting the truth? I mean…don’t you think it’s borderline sociopathic to have allowed your son to date a girl who might very well be his half-sister? First of all, I can’t even believe that it’s true, but if it is…for God’s sake, we could’ve ended up having a child together. Do you realize how fucking crazy that is?”

  Tears continued to stream down Jamie’s face as she struggled to come up with the right words to say, but she had little to offer up. “Jake…I know I owe you more than an apology. No words could ever explain away or justify what I’ve done. I was just trying to keep our family together, to keep you all from being damaged by my poor judgment. I know I’ve failed you as a mother. I don’t know what else to do. I’m so sorry….”

  As Jamie’s tears morphed into a full-blown sob, Jake felt numb to his mother’s humiliation. He was so full of bewilderment and disbelief that there was no space left for compassion in that moment. Instead, he started piecing things together in his head, namely the ostensible circumstances under which he was asked to leave Amanda.

  Jake looked at Jamie intensely with a furrowed brow as he quickly connected the dots. “Does Rick know that I might be his son?”

  As Jamie wiped her face with her hands, she muffled her response through sniffles.

  However, Jake couldn’t quite make out if that was a yes, so he asked again in a firmer tone. The irritation in his voice was apparent. “Does Rick know?”

  “Yes, yes…Rick knows,” Jamie said as if the words were being pushed out of her mouth involuntarily.

  “How long has he known? Since I was a kid?”

  “No. I didn’t tell him until shortly before you were about to get married. He knew nothing before then.”

  Jake’s eyes widened with amazement. “Holy shit! Then you must know that he was behind my breakup with Amanda. The story he told me, that’s a lie, isn’t it?”

  Jamie frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t lie to me. For God’s sake, you’ve told enough lies already. You were in on this. You knew—”

  “Yes, I knew…I mean, I had told Rick that you might be his son and that we needed to do something to stop you and Amanda from marrying, but I don’t know what he said to you or what he did. He said that he would handle it, so I let him. I assumed he paid you off—”

  “Oh, so you just assumed that he paid me off?” Jake said sarcastically. “You really think I’m shallow like
that?”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. He called and told me that you had agreed to call off the wedding. He didn’t tell me what he had offered you or how he’d convinced you do it. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t dwell on it much. I was just relieved that it worked, but then—”

  Jake trembled with anger. “Do you want to know what he told me? What he and Mike Wallace told me?”

  “What does Mike have to do with this?” Tom interjected upon hearing his best friend’s name.

  “Mike was involved, Dad. I guess you wouldn’t have known. Everything was kept strictly confidential, but he’s Rick lawyer, or at least one of his lawyers. Mike was the first person to approach me about breaking up with Amanda. Rick asked him to do it.”

  “Really?” Jamie said with surprise at this news.

  “So what did he tell you?” Tom asked.

  “They said that Amanda suffers from multiple personality disorder.”

  Jamie balked, appearing completely stunned.

  “Yeah…exactly,” Jake retorted in response to the expression of befuddlement on both Tom’s and Jamie’s faces.

  “So Rick told you nothing about this?” Jake said, looking at Jamie.

  Jamie didn’t verbally respond. The perplexity in her face said it all.

  “First Mike told me. Well…he didn’t exactly tell me what she allegedly had. He just said that it was a very serious, life-threatening illness and told me that the Climents thought it was in Amanda’s best interest for me to call everything off and break up with her. Of course, I refused at first, so then Mike, Rick, and I met at The California Club, and that’s when they said Amanda had an alter ego named Maggie who was threatening to harm her if she got married. Supposedly, Maggie is a twin sister Amanda had and that I never knew anything about—who died when they were still kids from some rare blood cancer. They said Amanda was so traumatized by her twin’s death that she started acting as if she were Maggie while she was still a child and has continued to do so off and on throughout her life, but in a detrimental way.”

  “Did you ever see any signs of this…split personality?”

  “That’s the thing, Dad. Not at all. They said she only acts out this way around her family, mostly Rick and Camilla. I couldn’t believe it when they told me, but then they said that when Amanda becomes Maggie, she harms herself, and that Maggie was threatening to harm Amanda, to kill her if she married me, because she was jealous of me and felt like I was taking Amanda away from her.”

  “That’s the most outlandish story I think I’ve ever heard,” Tom said.

  “I know it is, but then they pointed out that when Amanda was in boarding school at Cate, she became anorexic after she’d gotten involved with this dude she’d started dating. She became so severely sick that she had to be admitted to a treatment facility.”

  “And you know that to be a fact?” Tom said.

  “Yes. That is true. Amanda told me that she had suffered from anorexia during boarding school and received treatment for it. The surprise to me was hearing from Rick and Mike that the reason she became that way was because Maggie was, quote, ‘starving’ Amanda because she didn’t like that she was this guy Raoul. They told me that Maggie was now threatening to harm Amanda again if she proceeded to marry me. I know it sounds really crazy, but they were so convincing and the situation seemed so dire and grave. That’s how they made it sound, that it was urgent, and time was of the essence to act quickly.”

  “Oh my God. How bizarre,” Jamie finally managed to say, sounding and looking genuinely astonished.

  Tom looked to her to clarify what she knew. “So Rick told you that he’d handle getting Jake to call off the wedding but didn’t give you any indication of how he planned to do it?”

  “No. Absolutely not. I mean…I trusted him to a certain extent, but he said nothing of getting Mike involved. I thought he’d offer you money,” she said, looking at Jake.

  “Well, he did. He told me this story and offered me money to walk away and keep quiet about everything. That would be my compensation, so to speak, for taking the fall and looking like a jerk for dumping Amanda at the last minute.”

  Tom widened his eyes, his curiosity obvious. “How much did he offer?”

  “Five million.”

  “Oh,” Jamie said as she raised her eyebrows in amazement. However, it was unclear if she was amazed because she thought it was a good offer or a lowball offer. Tom, on the other hand, was more clear and unambiguous in expressing his opinion.

  “That cheap son of a bitch. He should’ve offered you fifty million,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I can’t believe Mike was in on this.”

  “I must admit, that was clever to get Mike involved,” Jamie said.

  Tom turned to look at her with scorn. “So this whole thing has to be a lie. That’s what they told Jake to get him to call off the wedding. Rick, like you, didn’t want to have to tell the truth and admit to the affair he’d had with you, so you conspired with him to concoct this ridiculous scheme, which, at the end of the day made Jake look like the biggest prick on the planet for dumping his bride at the last minute. How could you have let our son suffer like this?”

  “Tom, I swear, I had no knowledge of this. I knew that Rick would speak with Jake and try to get him to end his relationship with Amanda, but I didn’t know anything about this story and about Mike’s involvement.”

  “It really doesn’t matter that you didn’t know. What matters is that you deliberately conspired to deceive Jake and you let him take the fall for your indiscretion. You say you wanted to spare him any harm from your mistake and yet you laid the burden of it squarely on his shoulders so you wouldn’t have to suffer any consequences for your actions—so you could maintain your squeaky-clean, morally upright image, which we now know for certain is a complete fraud. I can’t believe that you could be so heartless and so…utterly bankrupt of any sense of moral culpability in all of this.”

  “I do feel morally culpable. I do, I do,” Jamie cried.

  “But it’s too damn late. Don’t you see? The damage is done. Our son was made to look bad after breaking up with a girl he probably shouldn’t have been engaged to in the first place. Had you told him, told all of us, the truth from the very beginning, this whole fiasco could have been avoided. We could have at least determined paternity years ago, but you allowed this to go on for so long without saying anything. As I’ve said, I have my doubts, but what if Jake and Amanda turn out to be half siblings after all? What if they’d had a child together?”

  Jamie’s face turned white. She covered it with her hands in shame and sighed hard before she spoke. “They did.”

  “What do you mean, ‘They did’?”

  Jamie burst into sobs again. “Amanda was pregnant.”

  “Amanda was pregnant?” Jake said with alarm.

  “She miscarried. Oh God, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

  Jake’s anger quickly turned to heartbreak and disbelief. He became overcome with emotion. “She miscarried? When? How do you know this?”

  “Rick told me right after you broke up with her. She was already pregnant and dealing with morning sickness a few days leading up to the wedding.”

  “Oh my God,” Jake said as he slapped his hands to his forehead in disbelief, recalling that indeed, Amanda, had not been feeling well just days before their scheduled nuptials.

  “Rick said that she miscarried after about five weeks. It was in October.”

  “Jamie,” Tom said with resignation. He needed to say no more. It was as if his profound disappointment in his wife and her secrets was beyond the utterance of any additional words.

  “Oh, no…no…no…no….” Jake moaned, turning to walk away as he rubbed his hands through his hair and held his head in anguish and despair.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Amanda was on the hunt for an apartment to lease while she was in New York. She was leaning toward a place in the East Village where her best pal Lucy lived. Amanda loved
her condo in LA, but the more time she spent in New York, the more she contemplated moving there permanently. After all, that’s where her business was based, and as the fashion capital, New York was where she hoped to make her mark. In the aftermath of her breakup with Jake and her lost pregnancy, Amanda’s focus had shifted from being a wife and mother to being a full-time entrepreneur and business woman. Her Novel handbag line had quickly become her number-one priority. Adam had a place in New York, too, and traveled all the time anyway, so she figured a potential relocation wouldn’t hamper their budding relationship.

  It was just before noon, and Amanda had a handful of apartment viewings that had been lined up by her real estate agent. Amanda had arrived right on time for her first viewing—a newly renovated walkup just steps from Union Square. On the way over, the agent had called to inform Amanda that he was running a few minutes late. However, he’d arranged to have the building’s super let her into the unit so she wouldn’t be delayed.

  Amanda walked through the bright, airy space alone. She liked what she saw and began to imagine herself living there. She’d had gotten so caught up in her thoughts about how she’d decorate the place that she almost didn’t notice her ringing phone. She decided to answer it when she saw who it was on the caller ID.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Camilla got straight to the point. “Guess who called me yesterday?”

  “Who?” Amanda asked curious and eager to know.

  “Jake!”

  “Jake?”

  “You won’t believe. I am so beside myself. I almost didn’t tell you but I couldn’t help it. I figured you needed to be warned.”

  “What did he want?”

  Camilla huffed in her demonstrative, haughty way before she answered. “To tell me that he regretted his decision to break up with you and that it was the wrong choice to make and that he wants to get back together with you. Can you believe that? The nerve of him to call here after what he did…”