Jamaica

“I, well, it’s like this,” I say, stumbling over myself to think of a viable excuse for my own insanity.

Please Jesus, don’t let them stick me in the same place Fran’s gonna end up, I beg. I’ll do padded walls in Guam if that’s the only place I can be free of her.

I’m almost convinced I was semi normal before I met Fran. Just saying.

“I, it was…an accident,” I say lamely.

“What? You tripped and fell on the phone and then a demon spoke through you?” Fran asks in a sweet voice that grates on my nerves.

“I, it, he was being a dick! What was I supposed to do, just sit around waiting for him to get in touch with his inner feelings?” I yell.

“Well, I mean the guy may just need time to open up,” Mia tries.

“Time my ass. You know what? Men only respond to a sledge hammer, babe. I say you find out whatever you can and use it against him when you need leverage.”

“Francesca May Franks, that is a horrible way to look at marriage.”

“Mia honey, that’s the only way to look at marriage if you don’t want your man ruling you like a dictator. Oh, sorry! I forgot you like the dominant male.” She teases.

“Up yours! Luc isn’t dominant, he’s a take charge kinda guy and I like him taking charge because it’s sexy and that way I don’t have to do anything.”

I listen to them yell insults at each other for a few minutes before Emma shocks me dumb and yells down the line.

“Shut up! Jamaica, did you…find out anything?” she asks quietly.

“Nope. I haven’t read the package yet.”

“Good! Don’t do it.”

“Shut up, Mia! Jamaica do it, do it now and tell me!” Fran screams in a bloodthirsty way, her vicious lawyer coming out to play with a vengeance.

I ignore them both and let them argue some more before pulling the papers out of the envelope and looking through them. I don’t really have to get very far into it before an alarm starts ringing in my head and by the time I’ve read it to the end I’m dumfounded, not at all surprised - my alarms were right, damn them - and numb.

Honestly, I think I’m just so floored that it takes me a while to hear Fran yelling my name while Mia and Emma wait quietly.

“What’s wrong! What is it? Are you okay? Oh my God, is Nona holding a gun on you? I knew we couldn’t trust her,” she mutters.

I can’t answer immediately, not with tears streaming down my face and a lump the size of a boulder clogging up my throat. When I do, I feel as if I’m struggling through a sea of half set jelly, my thinking processes sluggish and uncoordinated.

“He has a kid.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What?”

They all ask at the same time. Mia sounds confused, Fran sounds, well she’s Fran so she pretty much sounds angry and Emma is so silent I feel my heart stutter a beat.

“He, he has a kid,” I say again, my voice a smidge stronger as anger starts bubbling beneath the surface.

“Oh man.”

“What a pig!”

“Jay, are you sure? I don’t see Santiago having a child and not looking after it.” Emma says softly, her natural logic shining though.

“I’m pretty fucking sure, Em. In fact, I’m positive,” I say, reeling with the entirety of his lies and the sense of almost crippling betrayal I feel.

“Oh Ja-”

“I gotta go guys. Please just, don’t say anything to anyone until I’m ready to talk about this okay.” I beg, hearing them all mumble an agreement before I end the calls and slump back in my seat, my chest aching horribly.

Gabby? Gabby is his kid? But…

It all hits me then, little snippets of the conversations we’ve had, Mia’s telling me about his wife’s death, Nona’s almost pleading hints when she filled me in about Carlos and Santiago’s wife.

It has all been right there in front of me this whole time, all of it and I never even suspected. Gabby looks exactly like a female Santiago. She smiles like him, her eyes narrow at the corners when she concentrates just like his do.

Hell, she even avoids broccoli the way he does and here I was thinking it was cute that she was mimicking him.

She’s his carbon copy in every single way because she isn’t Carlos’s kid and she isn’t Santiago’s niece, she’s his flesh and blood daughter. A child who was born of his wife Lena exactly eight months after he filed for divorce and kicked her out.

It’s all here. Information about the accident, hospital records of the birth and the day Gabby was given up. Even Carlos signed for the medical costs of the birth and right at the end where it’s sitting waiting for me like another knife to the heart is a copy of the DNA test, only this one is translated and it says unequivocally that Gabriella is the biologic offspring of Santiago Alvarez.

This whole time…

I gasp and drop the papers to my desk, covering my face with shaking hands when a sob explodes from me.

Why didn’t he just tell me, I ask myself silently, breathing through everything I feel, all at once. It’s all coalescing into this huge ball of emotions that I don’t know how to process.

Gabby is his, his flesh and blood, and while the anger is uppermost in my mind I can’t forget the anguish and desperation I sometimes saw when he was unguarded.

Those times were rare but I’ve got a better handle on Santiago now and what I know conflicts so much with what I’m feeling. If what Bill gathered is right then his wife was Lena and Carlos was married to a woman named Orla Ortiz.

She left a year into the marriage with Carlos and remarried a year later to a shop owner who gave her two healthy sons.

Lena stayed, one woman between two men. One man the husband, struggling to rescue the family fortune and another his brother, a man who hated him so much he wanted to take the only thing Santiago had left of that dream life he wanted.

I feel just as sorry for Santiago as I feel anger and resentment because the truth is that he could have had it all. The family thriving, a wife who adores him and children to fill his days. With me.

He could have had it with me because I love him and all I have ever wanted in life was the very same thing he dreamed of. Husband. Love. Family.

And now…

I don’t even know what to do now but I do know that I can’t stay here and suffer with what I’m feeling and what I will have to do if I remain. Gabby needs stability and a chance to find her footing, not me yelling at her father while he goes cold and shuts down.

I can’t do this right now, not feeling this raw and wounded. I need to go, just go for a few days so that I can get myself right and work through everything without having a meltdown.

Standing on shaking legs, I wipe my face dry and open the door, smiling at a maid who scuttles passed to answer Nona’s summons as I hear the old bird yelling out from the breakfast room.

I don’t see anyone as I move upstairs on silent feet and no one disturbs me as I throw some things in a bag, grab my purse and passport and scribble a quick note to Nona.

That I leave on the hall table before making my way outside to the small hatchback Santiago got me against my protests. It takes me forever to get to Madrid and by the time I’ve parked the car with instructions for the keys to be couriered back to Santiago I am beat.

I get lucky and only have to wait two hours for a connecting flight that will get me to the east coast and then another to Cali and it’s when I’m on the plane, squashed between a fat Brit who smells like meat and a kid who insisted on my window seat I’m so tired I fall asleep against his shoulder, ignoring the smell and the suspicious feel of fingers in my hair.

Let him touch, what the hell do I care if he’s fondling me. Far as I’m concerned he’s a better bet than what I came from.

********************************************************************

“This is so stupid, Jamaica! You left him because he has a kid? I thought you love her?” Fran yells when we walk into her apartment and I drop my bags, falling face first onto the couch with a moan.

Freaking flights are crap when you travel on anything but a jet, I think morosely, shuddering because yeah, I fell asleep on a guy who smelled like a rotten deli display and woke up with my breath smelling like salami.

I do not even wanna know what happened while I was unconscious. I’ll sleep better and not acid wash myself if I don’t think about it.

“I need time to think.”

“What’s to think about?” she asks, reclining in the easy chair across from her olive green couch and looking me over with a frown. “So he didn’t tell you about the kid. What’s the big deal? She’s yours anyway.”

I snort because that is so not the point. The fact is that he lied. He told me Gabby was his niece and then he let me play happy families with him for over a month while he…

I don’t even know what he was thinking but honestly, it’s all just too much for me. I love the guy. I have forgiven him. Worked with him - oh Jesus, technically he’s still my boss and I’m under contract to him. I stayed despite the dangers to my already battered heart and not once have I ever pulled away from him, no matter how tempting it was to close myself off and keep my heart safe.

I love him, I do, but this is the last straw for me. And what’s worse is that Nona knew all along and she didn’t say anything - okay, well, she hinted enough that I had him checked out but still.

I feel like a fool. I think that’s the biggest problem I have right now. Me, the oh so intelligent cop with the super brain and talent for investigative work didn’t once, not once consider anything other than what Santiago told me.

I didn’t question a thing just charged in to save him and find the girl and look what I got in return! I’m the fool while he just swans around merrily taking his time and enjoying all the understanding I’ve offered like a hooker offers her snatch.

And like said hooker, I’ve been fucked. Again. Only this time I have a nice rock for my pimp to lord over me and a bruised ego to go with it.

And then…it hurts, okay? I lost a baby. I lost my friend. I lost everything that I held dear loving him and he’s just all too happy to keep playing me, palming me off on his daughter as if she’s supposed to be some sort of fucking consolation prize.

“She is mine but that isn’t the issue, Fran! Christ, am I the only one of four females who thinks it was wrong of him to lie to me?” I yell, rolling over to give my poor belly a break.

“I’ll answer that after you tell me why you smell like vomit,” she says, gagging when she sees the orange stain on my t-shirt.

“The guy I was crammed up against smelled like meat.”

“So?”

“So I fell asleep and woke up with my mouth tasting like meat.”

Fran’s face goes white and I’m about to laugh when she bolts up and runs for the bathroom, the sound of her puking making me shudder and shove a pillow over my head.

When she finally stumbles in, she throws a shirt my way and almost assaults me getting a breath mint in my mouth.

“That was so disgusting. Tell me you did something,” she pleads, shifting my legs onto her lap while I sit up and pull the clean shirt on.

“I blew chunks in his face. Most satisfying minute of my life,” I say deadpan, making her laugh although I note she’s still green around the gills.

“Okay, so to answer your previous question, I’m just going to say this, Jamaica, and hope you take it the right way. I get that you’ve had it tough the last few months. You fell in love for the first time, had a crazy, mad, passionate sex affair with a guy who promised never to love again and then came back home miserable, knocked up and without a spark of life in you.”

“How-”

“Jammy, I love you baby and I ain’t no dummy. Especially not when it comes to my people. You knew going into that affair that Santiago didn’t want a long term thing.”

“Yeah but-”

“And sometimes love isn’t the all you can eat buffet cure, babe. Sometimes a person has been so fucked up that they can’t deal with ever feeling that way again. You’re strong, Jamaica, possibly the strongest woman I have ever met, and you have this strangely unflagging capacity for love and forgiveness.”

I think of my parents, Peg and Al Bundy and strongly disagree but I keep silent and just listen because one, Fran does not do being ignored well and two, I’m here on her couch so she’s got the right to at least bitch at me a little.

“You forgave him for being a prick. I respect that, babe. I’ve always admired that quality in you because I’ve always wanted to be that way but I can’t do it no matter how hard I try. If you forgave him and, like you said, told him again that you love him, then mean it, Jamaica. Love the man, flaws and all.”

“But-”

“Now I’m not saying eat shit. That’s just not something I could be down with, but running away every time he says something you don’t like or does something that hurts you isn’t going to fix a damn thing. He fucked up. But the least you can do for a man that misguided is stay long enough to get an explanation.”

“Yeah? And what if he doesn’t explain, Fran? The man doesn’t say shit unless he wants to. After that? What do I do, just let it go as if it doesn’t matter that he’s been…using me all along! I read that report Bill sent me. He needed a wife to be able to get custody of Gabby before the state would take in all the documents.”

That part is the worst, reading about how his lawyer warned him that even if he is proven to be Gabby’s father that he’d probably have had to wait and prove to be a good prospect before they’d have let her go to him.

I’m not sure how he swung everything, quite frankly, I’m starting to think that he has more than one friend in a state department but it all boils down to people rushing paperwork and approving him because…he’s a stable, married man with a good home and a good job.

Me, I’m a pawn, I think dramatically.

“Oh bullshit! That man is no dummy. If he’d wanted Gabby he’d have gotten her, wife or no wife! Be logical here, Jam. Everything points to Santiago wanting you.”

“So? He just likes the sex.” I snarl, grinding my teeth together because I do too.

I like his sex a lot. He does this one thing with his tongue and middle finger that-

“He can have sex with anyone he crooks his finger at! Hell, I’d have sex with him if I wasn’t afraid of you and your license to carry a gun.”

I glare, hating that I want to laugh when she fans her vagina and tells her to get a grip.

“I don’t really want to talk about all this right now, Fran. I’m heart sore, tired and I think that guy on the plane had a thing for kissing while eating because I got something in my teeth that-”

“Oh!” she gags and slaps my boob, making me laugh while she shudders and swallows convulsively. “Don’t. It never happened. My fragile mind can’t take the thought of it.” She whines, dropping her head onto the back of the couch while I try to pretend I wasn’t being serious about my teeth.

Gag.

“Could we maybe just can this discussion for a while and order a pizza and soda?” I ask while I shut down my mind in favor of food that I won’t eat if I don’t scrub the last few hours from it.

Fran sighs and gives me a soft look before slapping my thigh gently and reaching for her phone.

“Fine, but it’s going to happen, Jam. You can’t run away from this. You have a husband, and a kid who needs you. You can’t just bail on her because you’re angry. You need to fix things with him sooner or later and for that kid’s sake, I hope it’s sooner. She can’t afford to lose any more people.”

I nod, knowing that she’s right but incapable of thinking about it all now. I just need a day, just one full day so I can think and possibly try to understand Santiago.

If I can do that then maybe I won’t feel like killing him is my only option.