Roman had been inside plenty of hospitals. There was something about them that made him sick. From the talk, everyone else ended up feeling the same way, sooner or later. Which suited him just fine. The fewer people who wanted him stopping by hospitals without a reason, the better.
There had been one or two Make A Wish kids over the years. Not many. He wasn’t their bag. And of course, for those days, he swallowed his dislike for hospitals and put on a grin and went in to see them. He wasn’t necessarily a good guy, but he wasn’t a psychopath.
And that was precisely what he was doing at that point, because there were too many problems for Mary, and too many questions to put to her when there was time. It wasn’t time now. That much, at least, he knew with absolute certainty.
His kid, his business. Maybe she meant that it was Mary’s kid, and Mary’s business. But something told him that wasn’t remotely what the girl had meant. A sick feeling in the pit of his stomach twisted. What was he thinking? What were any of them thinking? He couldn’t be the father. He’d been told, point blank, that it wasn’t his. He’d been sure to ask. And she denied it.
Which meant that one of them was lying. He had a very good idea, an almost startlingly good idea, which it was. Cara was an addict. They lied. It was what they did.
But there was no angle for her to profit from lying. Even if all she wanted was to see him squirm, she hadn’t been crowing about Peter being his, she was crowing about how badly he’d handled it afterward. But there hadn’t been anything to handle. He looked for her. Looked pretty hard, short of spending several thousand dollars hiring someone to find her.
He sucked in a breath and looked at Mary. She looked like she was miserable. Ready to pass out. She wasn’t in a position to be asked tough questions. And she wasn’t in a position to lie if he did ask.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you into bed. Your son’s going to be waiting for you.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He took her hand and led her out. Maybe he walked a little fast. Maybe he shouldn’t have. But she didn’t complain about it.
“Did the hospital get ahold of her husband?”
“Yeah,” Mary said. “He’ll be here after work.”
“Good. They’ve got some stuff to work out between them.”
“You’re right.”
He opened her door for him and crossed around the hood of the car. Maybe he shouldn’t be mad. Maybe he should just calm down and get everything figured out in a calm and rational way. But he wasn’t calm, and he was being as rational as he could, which was to say, not particularly.
“And apparently,” he said, trying to keep his voice level as he pulled on his seat belt and loosened the handbrake, “so do we.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She seemed to think that there were things you weren’t telling me.”
“She told you, huh?”
“What? That you had my child? Yeah. She seemed to suggest something about it.”
Mary’s eyes closed and she laid her head back. “Fuck.”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you curse.”
“I meant to tell you.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“There wasn’t a good time. You said yourself. It’s not like I’m in a good position to know who you really are. I wasn’t then, either. So I’m not interested in being some kind of gold-digger. I didn’t want a check, and I didn’t want to seem like I did. And I didn’t want some drunk or junkie messing with my kid.”
Roman let out a breath. She wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean that he felt good about it. It stung a little more than it should have, frankly. But he had to accept it.
“And now?”
“The lie was already there. What was the good time going to be, precisely?”
“You shouldn’t have lied to me in the first place.”
“Then you shouldn’t have asked!” She scowled. “What choice did I have?”
It was a fair question. He thought about it. Thought hard. “Alright, fine. What choice do you have now?”
“I was going to tell you. But just… the thing with Cara came up, and it just… there wasn’t a good time.”
“Okay. And what now?”
“Now… I don’t know. Can we just go home?”
Roman smiled. “We can go home. Just as long as you promise not to run off.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Mary?”
“What?”
“I missed you.”