“Hmmm,” he coolly responded. “Would you be speaking about my daughter? Or the fact that you kept her from me for the past three years?”
“Fuck you. She’s not your daughter.”
“I think you’re wrong. I have a great idea. How about we let the paternity test decide that fact.”
“Did you forget that you fucking raped me?”
“My, my, Whit. I sure hope you don’t use that word around my daughter. You seem to speak it in every sentence.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I want my daughter. That’s what I want.”
“Stop saying that. She’s not your daughter. You have no rights to her. You raped me. My daughter is a product of you raping me. I will ruin you. I won’t keep it a secret any longer,” I threatened.
He laughed. I wanted to shove my fist down his throat. He laughed? Really?
“I look forward to you making a fool of yourself.”
“Fuck you, Alex. You stay the fuck away from me. You stay the fuck away from my daughter. And FUCK YOUR PATERNITY TEST! It will be a cold day in hell before I submit to that.”
“I hear the temperature in hell is just about to change,” he replied and hung up.
The bastard hung up on me. I called right back, but of course his gatekeeper wouldn’t put me through again. I looked down at the court order: June 22, that was in three days. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening. The sad part was; I knew he was right. I couldn’t cry rape after all these years. Who would believe me? He was going to make me out to be the bad guy, who had kept him from his daughter. He wants his daughter? What did that even mean?
“Lawyer, I need a lawyer,” I said to myself again, starting a new search. I knew nothing about any of this. What kind of lawyer did I need? I didn’t even know what he wanted. Did I need a custody lawyer? Yeah, I guess a custody lawyer would be what I needed to retain. Did I need one in River County where I lived or one in Lincoln where he lived? Oh My God. My dad. My dad was going to freak, I thought, as that too dawned on me. Why me? I didn’t deserve any of this. Maddie didn’t deserve this.
Maybe I should have scoped out a better attorney. I set up a consultation with the first one I called. Oh well, at least she could steer me in the right direction… hopefully. It was going to be a long two weeks. She wouldn’t see me until I got the results back, even after I explained that I didn’t need to wait for the results. I knew that Alex Wesson was indeed Madelyn’s biological father.
I was extra loving toward Maddie that night. As soon as Naomi showed up, I took my baby girl home and gave her my upmost attention. I didn’t even care that she was a whiny brat all night. I didn’t care that I would be cleaning the fish aquarium again in the morning, because she decided that they needed to eat gummy worms. Fish ate worms, so therefore she fed them worms. The water was red before I caught her. I didn’t even care that she didn’t want her hair washed. Her hair could be dirty as long as she was safe with me. I held her in my arms as we watched The Princess and the Pea, again.
When I carried her to bed I kissed her sleeping lips a thousand times, and then covered her up before turning in for a long night myself. It must have been three in the morning before my thoughts settled and I fell asleep.
I wasn’t asleep long when I heard Maddie screaming. She didn’t normally do that. She just came and crawled in bed with me. I went to her, sitting up on her bed as she leaped, clinging to me.
“What’s wrong, baby? Did you have a bad dream?”
“No. A gemin under my bed,” she assured me.
“A gemin?” I repeated, not sure what the heck she was talking about.
“Uh-huh, I go in your bed, K?”
I carried her back to bed with me and snuggled her little body close to mine.
“A gemin under you bed?” she asked.
“What is a gemin?” I asked, wondering if she knew herself.
She rolled to her back so she could demonstrate with her hands.
“It dat big,” she gestured. “Dem can’t have no water.”
“Oh, my God!” I said, sitting up, reaching for my phone. I didn’t care that it was after two in the morning.
“What the hell, Whit?” Jaron answered on the third ring. “Do you know what time it is?”
“YES! You freaking let her watch Gremlins?”
“They’re cute,” he said.
“They’re monsters. She’s three for God’s sake.”
“I’ll tell her they’re not real tomorrow. Sorry, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jaron said, hanging up on me. Grrrr. I couldn’t believe he let her watch the Gremlins.
<><><>
I lied to my father and told him that I couldn’t work Monday afternoon, because I had a doctor’s appointment. I was a horrible liar. He didn’t understand why I would be taking Maddie along with me.
“Cowboy boots!” I yelled as the lie came to me. “Um, I want to take her with me, so that we can go to the shoe store and get new boots.”
He looked at me peculiarly as I buckled Maddie’s sandal, avoiding eye contact. He could always tell when I was lying. I was going to let him down again. I was eventually going to have to tell him about this mess. There would be no way around it. I just wished I knew what the hell Alex was up to. Did he think he was going to get visitation and take her to Lincoln without me? That would never happen. I would shoot him between the eyes first.
Maddie and I went into town to the clinic where they swabbed her mouth. She cried at first, thinking she was at the dentist when the nurse wanted her to open her mouth. She had just had her teeth cleaned the week before, and it was still fresh in her memory and mine. What a nightmare that was.
We had lunch at Chucky Cheese in the mall and walked to the shoe store at the other end. I tried my best to talk her into a cute little pair of saddle shoes with pink laces. She wanted no part of them. She wanted the eighty dollar, not red, but green cowboy boots. Green. Ugh. They were going to go great with all of her pink and purple outfits. And why do size 10, little girl’s shoes need to cost eighty bucks? She wouldn’t wear ten dollars of them before she outgrew them.
I should have declined the spaghetti supper at my dad and Dana’s that evening. I should have known that my non-filtered daughter would blabber.
“I go to the dentists, Papaw,” Maddie stated, sucking a long strand of spaghetti through her lips.
My dad looked right at me. “You did?” he asked, turning back to Maddie.
“Uh-huh, dem didn’t hurt me. Dem just did dis,” she simulated the swab brushing the inside of her cheek.
“You didn’t tell me she went to the dentist. Wasn’t she just at the dentist?” my dad asked.
“Yeah, it was just a fluoride treatment. She didn’t have an appointment. We just stopped in to see if they could do it while we were there,” I lied. I was proud of myself. I pulled that one right out of my ass and it worked. He believed me.
<><><>
I’m not sure why I was so nervous opening that certified letter, exactly seven days after the test. It wasn’t like I didn’t already know what the results were going to be. Maybe I was just hoping there was a mix up or something. There wasn’t: 99.9%. That was a pretty accurate fact. I knew that though. What I didn’t know was what Alex’s intentions were. I hadn’t heard one word from him or anyone else. Maybe he decided to let it go. Maybe he realized how ridiculous he was being.
It wasn’t until three days later that I panicked. He wanted sole custody. He would be in Split River the following Friday for our first court date. There was no way any judge was going to take her from me, and give her to a man that she didn’t even know. I actually found it a little comical. I was sure my attorney would agree when I saw her the next day.
“It seems that you have gotten yourself in quite the pickle, Mrs. Bradshaw,” Jackie Summers said from across her desk.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not understanding.
“I received some interesting information from Mr. Wesson
’s attorney. Why didn’t you tell him that he had a child? Why did you hide that fact from him?” she asked. I wasn’t sure I liked her. She was cold with a stern persona about her.
I dropped my eyes. It’s what I did when I was avoiding the truth.
“Ms. Bradshaw, if we are going to work together, you need to be honest with me.”
“You’re not going to believe me,” I said, looking up.
“It’s not a matter of me believing you. It’s a matter of the courts believing you. Try me,” she requested, removing her glasses.
“Alex Wesson raped me. Madelyn was conceived during that rape.”
She didn’t falter. Did she think I was lying? She only stared, contemplating me.
Finally, she took a deep breath and dropped her red glasses to the desk, crossed her arms and leaned back. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I was scared and young; I wasn’t even supposed to be at that party.”
“How old were you?”
“17.”
“And how many people have you disclosed this information to?”
“One, just you,” I replied.
“I do believe you, however, nobody else will. You waited too long for one, and I have done some background work on this guy. He’s golden. Never been in trouble, straight A student in not only high school, but college as well, very successful business, beautiful home in the suburbs, and comes from a good family. I don’t think you have a leg to stand on with that story. I don’t think we should even try. It’s just going to make you look worse than you already do.”
“What do you mean? He’s not going to be allowed to take her there, is he?”
“I’m sure that he will. And I mean this,” she said, plopping a manila folder to the desk in front of me.
I noticeably gasped. I was going to kill that mother fucker. “This is all lies. None of this is what it seems,” I tried, looking like the biggest liar on earth, not to mention the worst mother. The bastard was spying on me.
The first picture was Maddie, standing up in the truck seat as I drove us down the dirt road. “She only does that until we get to the stop sign.” I explained. Jackie didn’t respond. She only observed me while I flipped to the next one. It was bad, Jaron was holding a beer bottle to her lips as she took a drink. “She took a bite of some spicy chili. That was the only thing there to cool her mouth.” Still nothing, she just stared at me. The next one was of me hitting a joint with Jaron, while Maddie played in the water. “I don’t smoke weed. I had a headache and Jaron talked me into hitting it. He said it would help.” Still nothing. The next one was me again, only this time I was topless and Jaron was between my legs on the steps, outside of my house. Yeah, it was another one of my drunken nights with my friends. “I am entitled to my own time. My daughter wasn’t with me. She was with my dad. They keep her twice a month so that I can have somewhat of a life,” I explained. “This one doesn’t need an explanation,” I assured her, looking at the picture of Maddie standing in the shallow river, butt naked. “She’s three. I was trying to put dry clothes on her when she ran back into the water.”
There were more. Maddie standing on top of the counter with no one around in the dining room. Maddie laying in the parking lot, screaming and throwing a fit because I wouldn’t let her ride her bike around the cars. There were too many cars coming and going. Maddie asleep in her car seat alone in the truck. I was carrying in groceries. Me dancing pretty provocative with Naomi, holding a beer. It was bad. I knew it was bad.
This was suddenly real. I was scared and afraid of the unknown. I had to tell my dad now. There was no other way around it.
“Mr. Wesson feels that you are unfit and thinks that his daughter would be better off with him.”
“She wouldn’t be, he can’t take her,” I demanded, unable to control the tears that streamed down my face. He couldn’t take Maddie from me. He just couldn’t. I would die without her. She couldn’t live without me.
“Ms. Bradshaw, do you want my honest opinion about all of this?”
I sniffed and wiped my nose with the back of my hand and nodded.
“I really think the best thing that you could do, would be to talk to Mr. Wesson and work this out between the two of you. You don’t want this to go to court.”
I drove home in a fog. How could this be happening? How could he do this? Was he really that callous? Did he not care what this would do to Maddie? I wanted to call him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop crying long enough to breathe, let alone talk.
Chapter 4
I should have wanted Maddie with me. I did want her. I just didn’t want her to witness the state of my emotions. I called my dad and told him that I didn’t feel well and was going to lie down for a while; of course he was fine with it. He loved her. This was going to kill him. What have I done?
Most of the day, I laid around in a daze. By four o’clock I thought that I had finally cried the last of my tears. There just couldn’t be any more. It was impossible. I had already thought that many times over the past few hours, but the tears just kept coming.
I finally picked up my phone and dialed the dreaded number.
“Hello, this is Whitley Bradshaw. Could I please talk to Mr. Wesson?” I took a deep breath waiting for Alex to pick up.
“Good afternoon, Whitley. I told you that the temperature would change in hell. I have a way of making things happen.”
“What do you want, Alex?” I asked, sounding defeated. I didn’t want to sound that way. I didn’t want him to think he had the upper hand. Truth was, he did. He was a slime ball, but was no doubt holding the control.
“I want my daughter. The one that you chose to keep from me for three years.”
“What does that mean, Alex? You want to take her from me?”
“Yup, I want you to see how that feels. Let you see how it feels to be kept from your own child.”
“Alex, you raped me.”
“Yes, yes, Whitley. I think we have established that. I apologized for that.”
“You apologized?” I asked. Really? He apologized for raping me?
“Yes, now let’s move past that. The paternity test is the same no matter how you look at it.”
I shook my head. This guy was unbelievable. “I don’t want to go to court.”
“I was hoping you would see it that way. I want Madelyn this weekend. Here at my house. I can come and pick her up or you can bring her to me. It’s your choice.”
“Alex, please don’t do this. She doesn’t even know you, I can’t just drop her off to you.”
“She doesn’t know me, because you chose that. Not me, not her, you are the one that did that. Have her here by two on Friday,” he ordered and hung up.
“I’m not a bad mom, I’m not,” I said to the silent phone.
My tears were replenished. I couldn’t breathe as I heaved in sobbing breaths. How was I supposed to just take her there and drop her off? I couldn’t do it. I would run with her. I would go to Mexico or some place that he couldn’t find me. I would change our names and dye our hair. He was never taking her. Over my dead body, would I let this happen.
<><><>
I should have told my dad. I guess I was just hoping that after Alex realized what a handful Maddie was, he wouldn’t want her anymore. Maybe it would all be over after this weekend.
Maddie jabbered from her car seat beside me as we drove to Lincoln. I tried to pay attention to her and answer her silly questions. I was just having a hard time staying focused. I was taking her to her dad, whom she didn’t know from Adam. It was messed up. This whole thing was messed up. I tried to talk to her about it and tell her that she was going to spend the night with a man named Alex. She didn’t understand. She wouldn’t understand until I left her. Oh, God. I couldn’t do it.
Thank God for Kylie. I knew I couldn’t go to a hotel and keep my sanity without her. Kylie knew now. Kylie knew that Alex Wesson
was her dad. She, however, didn’t know that he raped me. She thought that he and I went out a few times after she moved. I told her that lie.
“Why that light turn green?” Maddie asked.
“Because, it means we can go now,” I answered.
“Where we go?”
“Remember, you’re going to spend the night with a very nice man that loves you. He wants to play with you.”
“What him name?”
“Alex,” I answered the same question for the tenth time.
“Where that truck go?” she asked, on to the next three-year-old question.
My heart couldn’t have been heavier as I listened to the GPS letting me know that we would arrive at our destination in ten more miles. Ten more miles and Maddie was going to spend an entire weekend with a man, I despised. I had never been away from her. Not for one day. Yeah, she stayed with my dad and Dana some, but I saw her all day and first thing the next morning. I trusted my dad. He loved her. I had no idea what this guy’s motives even were.
I held my breath as we pulled into the drive of the most elaborate house I’d ever seen, right next to the white sports car. The garage alone looked to be bigger than my house. The lawn was flawlessly kept with fresh straight lines. It was early, not even noon yet. I didn’t want to bring her at Alex’s required two o’clock time. I didn’t want her to fall asleep and wake up crabby, which she was known to do.
“I here?” she asked, leaning up.
“Yeah baby, you’re here,” I smiled with a broken heart.
Alex walked out to the concrete landing in front of his house. His girlfriend stood beside him. She didn’t look extremely happy about the situation. I never thought about her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her being around my daughter. Yes, I was; I didn’t like it. I lifted Maddie from her car seat and sat her on the blacktop, while I reached for her backpack. I held onto it, not about to hand it over yet, giving Alex a hateful glare as he squatted to Maddie.