by Holly Rayner
Mark did as his mother asked and then in a move that stole my heart, he kissed Eric on the head too and said, “I like you, little brother.”
Aiden smiled and Cecile gushed. I told Mark good-bye and just before they left, Cecile turned to me and said, “This was lovely, Holly. Thank you.” I didn’t even try and force out a nicety. I had truly exhausted every fraction of patience I had in my body. She knew it, and she was happy about it. She smiled broadly then and said, “Maybe next time you can be my guests.”
By the time Aiden showed them out, I had taken Eric in for his bath. While I was dressing him for bed, Aiden came into the room. He tried to give me a kiss on the check, but I pulled away. He wasn’t going to charm me out of being angry. I had every right in the world to feel the way I did after all of the things I found out today about Aiden’s lies. I didn’t have anything nice to say to him, and I didn’t want to berate him in front of our son, even though I knew he was too little to understand. I felt strongly that Eric could sense my moods. I didn’t say anything, I just watched as he cooed at and kissed Eric and told him good night.
“Daddy loves you little man,” he said. He looked at me, almost like he was going to smile, but I warned him off with a look of my own.
I finished putting the baby down and found him relaxing in the den when I came back out.
He looked up when I came in and I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t looking forward to the conversation we were about to have. That was too bad he had brought it all on himself by lying to me.
“Okay, everyone is either gone, or in bed. Now, can you explain to me how this all happened? I felt like I was in an alternate universe tonight.”
Aiden cleared his throat and said, “I owe you a big apology for not telling you that I’d been in contact with Cecile and Mark.”
“You think?” I said.
“If you’re going to be sarcastic, we’re not going to accomplish much here,” he said.
“Are you kidding? What do you expect from me, Aiden? How would you like it if an ex of mine showed up on our doorstep, pushed his way into our home, treated you like dirt and flirted shamelessly with me all night?”
“I think you’re exaggerating,” he said.
I was so mad that I was practically sputtering as I said, “She was nothing but rude to me before you got here, Aiden. Everything you saw was her putting on an act. I can’t believe you fell for it because she’s not even a very good actress!”
“Holly, I understand that you’re angry about me not telling you about talking to her…”
“Seeing her.”
“Seeing Mark.”
“Same thing.”
“You’re proving my point,” he said.
“I’m proving what, exactly?”
“My reason for not telling you. You know how much that little boy means to me. I had a chance to see him again…to be a part of his life. I was afraid you would be so blinded by the fact that Cecile was my ex-wife that you wouldn’t be able to see past that and you wouldn’t let me see him.”
“So, you think that’s an excuse for your dishonesty?”
“No, Holly. I’m not making excuses. There’s no excuse. But that was my thought process, my reason behind it.”
“And how long has it been going on?”
“She contacted me a little over two weeks ago,” he said.
“And you’ve been spending time with them ever since?”
“We spent a day at the zoo…”
That set me off again and I said, “You took them to the zoo? You spent the day at the zoo when your son and I were sitting at home starving for your attention!”
“I’m sorry, Holly. You just don’t know how badly I’ve missed him. Try to imagine someone took Eric away from you…wouldn’t you do anything to get him back?”
“Anything, Aiden? How far would you go?”
“Not that far, Holly. I told you that I’d never even think of cheating on you and I meant it.”
“Then why couldn’t you just tell me? And do you really believe that it was a coincidence that Cecile was the one who knocked hot coffee on Eric?”
“You’re not suggesting that she hurt our baby on purpose, are you?”
“I have no idea what she’s capable of, and you seem to be blinded to it.”
“I know Cecile can be a bit hard to swallow at times…”
“Hard to swallow? She’s a bitch, Aiden and she wants you back.”
“I don’t think so, but so what if she does? I don’t want her. I want you.”
“And Mark,” I said.
“Yes, and Mark. I love him Holly, I thought you understood that.”
“I do, and so does Cecile. I believe that she won’t hesitate to use him as a weapon to come between us.”
“So what? I walk away from him, again?”
“You should have just come to me before things went this far and we could have figured this out together.”
“You don’t seem to want to figure it out. You seem to want to make them both disappear. This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you in the first place.”
“So what else have you lied to me about?”
“Nothing!”
“You hired a new assistant Ryan, is it?”
Looking at me like I had two heads now, he said, “Yes, what does Ryan have to do with this?”
“He’s not Mrs. Lange from Scarsdale, is he? By the way, Aiden…where does Cecile live?”
“I panicked, I should have told you the truth then. I felt like a complete ass for not doing it. I tried; I just kept chickening out.”
“Yes, you should have. Because guess what? Now, I have to ask myself, what about all the other late nights at work? Were you with her then too?”
“What? No, of course not! I have seen her twice. I met her at the zoo with Mark one day and yesterday when I picked Mark up from school. He was with us all the time both times of course.”
“Oh, of course,” I said.
“What are you implying, Holly?”
“I’m implying that you’re sneaking around with your ex-wife and leaving me to look like a fool.”
“I’ve told you everything. It was all about Mark. It was always about Mark.”
“She’s using him to get at you, and I think she burned our son on purpose too. And then the worst part of that is you left to go be with them, instead of being with your baby in the hospital.”
Aiden jumped up off the couch then and said, “Are you crazy? I told you already, Cecile would never harm an innocent child. What would her motive have been for doing something like that? And don’t you think I already feel bad enough about not being able to be at the hospital? I couldn’t leave Mark stranded with no way home.”
“You want to know what her motive might be, Aiden? To make me look bad,” I said. “She’s been going out of her way to make me look like a bad mother.”
Aiden snorted and said, “Leaving hot coffee that close to your son helped you do that on your own.”