Last Summer(81)

Amira: Let me rephrase. What about something you did that hurt someone else, something you regret? Imagine the guilt you feel. Imagine eliminating that guilt like this. [Sound of finger snap] Would you block what you did from your memory?

[Pause]

Ella: I’m pregnant.

Amira: Congratulations. How far along?

Ella: Five weeks. I just found out.

Amira: Does your husband know?

Ella: Yes, of course. He’s ecstatic. We both are, but . . .

Amira: But?

Ella: Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.

Amira: Why not? Is something wrong with the baby?

Ella: No, not that. It’s . . .

[Pause]

Amira: It’s what?

Amira: You can tell me. Ella, darling, there’s no one in this room but you and me. Nothing we say gets out that door unless you decide to publish it.

[Pause]

Ella: My husband isn’t the father.

Amira: Does he know?

Ella: Yes. He’s okay with it. More than okay, surprisingly.

Amira: Interesting. What about the baby’s biological father? Does he know?

Ella: No.

[Pause]

Amira: You aren’t going to tell him.

Ella: My husband doesn’t want me to. I agreed not to at first, but now . . . I don’t know.

Amira: You feel guilty keeping your pregnancy from the father.

Ella: Yes. How did you put it? Guilt. It’s the devil.

Amira: Mm-hmm. It is. Do you wish you could forget that you told your husband the baby isn’t his?

Ella: No. Not that. The opposite.

[Pause]

Amira: [Gasp] You want to forget that the baby isn’t your husband’s.

Ella: Yes.

Amira: [Low laughter] My, oh my. That is something.

Ella: You don’t even know the half of it.

Amira: There’s more? Do tell.

Ella: [Expletive]

Amira: What is it?

Ella: We’re still recording.

[End Recording]





CHAPTER 36

Six Weeks Later

Late May 2019

Damien sits in his office chair in PDN’s San Francisco headquarters. He faces the window that overlooks the murky gray water. The Bay Bridge sprawls below, grappling the shores like an Olympic gymnast doing the splits. On the other side of the bridge, planes take off from the Oakland Airport. They lift into the sky, disappearing into low-lying clouds.

In his hand, he flips a flash drive end over end. A backup to the drive he gave Ella. He always keeps a second copy. It’s the nature of his business. Files can crash and data can corrupt in a snap. One string of bad code can erase a lifetime’s worth of work. Ella’s motivated forgetting was not part of their original plan, the one they devised last summer when she first received the Nathan Donovan assignment on their return from the Maldives.

If there’s anything Damien regrets happening on their trip, it’s telling Ella about his issue. Unlike what he told her when she got back from Alaska, he had actually revealed his sterility when they were in the Maldives. He told her in a heated reaction to Ella’s own confession: she’d admitted that she always wanted kids. She’d forgotten to pack her birth control and thought it would be a good time to try to have a baby. They’d been married for a while. She’d thought maybe, by then, he might be open to the idea. Maybe he’d want to start a family.

Ella had blindsided him. He had no idea she wanted children.

He should have confessed he couldn’t give her any before they married. He should have stuck with his usual refrain: he didn’t want kids. Because as soon as the confession about his sterility left his mouth, he regretted it. Ella would leave him, just like Anna had.

To his surprise, she didn’t. Yes, she was angry he didn’t tell her—she felt betrayed. She also didn’t speak to him for two days. The longest two days of his life. But she came around, and better yet, she was understanding. She was open to adopting, or they could foster. They could also find a donor. There are a million ways to have a baby, she had said.

A million ways.

And the best way for them came in the form of Nathan Donovan.

Damien’s plan was spontaneous, but his wife was on board and it had worked. Perfectly. That was, until Ella let the guilt over what they’d done consume her. Because something had happened while on assignment that neither Ella nor he could have predicted: Ella had fallen in love with Nathan. And after everything he’d been through with Carson, after she found out she was pregnant with Nathan’s son, she felt they could no longer deceive him. Nathan had a right to know he was going to be a father.

Damien adamantly disagreed. Nathan could never know the truth. If he did, Simon would no longer belong to Damien and Ella. Nathan would be a part of their family, too. They argued for months until everything came to a head that fateful November evening. Damien distinctly remembers how, after a dinner of pork loin and rice pilaf, Ella said she planned to call Nathan, how she grabbed her car keys and slammed their front door in his face. Then everything changed. The accident. Her emergency C-section. Simon’s death. Nathan’s audacity to show up at the hospital a few days later and insist on the truth. Was he Simon’s biological father?

That night after the hospital staff forcibly removed Nathan, Ella, devastated and racked with guilt, confessed the last thing Damien ever expected to hear from her. She still loved him, but she also loved Nathan.