The Mistress
“Good. Let’s talk. But work while you talk. Clear the dishes.”
Nora glanced up at Fat Man, who nodded at her. With his permission, she pulled herself off the floor and started piling dishes in her arms.
“You can answer my question anytime now,” Marie-Laure said, sipping her tea again.
“Um...Kingsley and I, we’re complicated. No, some days he doesn’t like me very much. Some days we’re thick as thieves.”
“Why is that? Because you aborted his child?”
Nora almost dropped the dishes on the floor. With only force of will did she manage to keep the dishes and herself from shattering.
“I did, yes,” she admitted without shame. “But no, that’s not why he doesn’t like me sometimes. The pregnancy was an accident, his and mine. He’d never be petty enough to hate me because of that.”
“Then why does he hate you?”
“He doesn’t. Not all the time, anyway. If he’s mad at Søren, I’m his partner-in-crime, the only person on the planet other than Kingsley who can get to Søren. If he’s...if he’s remembering what he and Søren used to be and missing it, he sees me as the enemy.”
“Are you?”
Nora put the plates on the sideboard.
“No, I’m not the enemy. Even if I didn’t exist, I doubt Søren would let them have the kind of relationship they had back when they were teenagers. Hard to tell that to someone still a little in love after thirty years. So yes, Kingsley might be in the ‘I don’t like Nora club’ but you should know, he’s very much in the ‘I don’t let bad things happen to my people’ club. And I’m definitely one of his people.”
“The threat is duly noted.”
“Can I ask you a Kingsley question?” Nora picked up a napkin and started wiping at the crumbs on the table. Marie-Laure’s dark eyes glinted with dark pleasure.
“Please do.”
“Kingsley and Søren have been friends, for lack of a better word, for years. Barely a day passes without them talking to each other. And despite that, Kingsley’s managed to move on more or less. He has someone he loves and shares his life with—”
“Oh, yes, that. I’m a little disgusted about her. The Haitian woman? My brother could do better.”
Nora briefly envisioned stabbing Marie-Laure in the eye with a fork. She might have done it but didn’t have a fork handy. She’d left them on the sideboard.
“There is no one better than Juliette. Besides, what do you care about Kingsley or Søren or anybody they f**k? That’s my question. It’s been thirty years. Of course, Kingsley still has feelings for Søren—they’re together all the time. But you...you disappeared thirty years ago. Why are you back? Why now? Why not five years ago, ten years ago?”
“That’s an interesting question, and I have a more interesting answer. You’ll find it especially interesting considering your history with my brother.” Marie-Laure sat her teacup down and adjusted her robe. “You see...a certain nostalgia overwhelmed me last year. I’d been living in Brazil on my estate and quite happy. And yet, I did miss France. Every August when we were children, my parents would take my brother and me to a lovely seaside town in the south of France. I adored those times in that tiny village. I decided to go back for a few days. Self-indulgent, I know...but I thought it would be nice to see some old ghosts.”
“Did you see any?” Nora brushed her napkin off in a small trash can.
“I did. I walked the narrow winding streets, along the beach, down the dock. I stopped for coffee in an outdoor café. And there...I saw him...”
“Who?” Nora asked.
“I saw Kingsley.”
Nora shook her head.
“No way. Couldn’t be him. He never goes back to France anymore. He says he has too many people there who’d like to see him dead.”
“But it was Kingsley. I promise you it was. I’d wondered for years how Kingsley grew up after I died. I wondered what he looked like at age twenty, twenty-five, thirty...and there was Kingsley walking down the street with a beautiful girl on his arm and secrets in his eyes. You see, I found out about my brother’s true inclinations by accident. And by that I mean, I met one of his accidents.”
“Accidents?” Nora wasn’t quite sure she heard right. Kingsley...had a...
“I assume he wasn’t planned. My brother’s son, that is.”
The entire room rattled with the sound of the dishes in Nora’s hands clattering on the sideboard. Marie-Laure glared at her. Nora ignored it.
“Kingsley has a kid?”
“Non, not a kid, as you say. He looked to be in his twenties. A son he doesn’t even know exists.”
“Oh, my God. Kingsley has a son,” Nora repeated. And for whatever reason, a reason she didn’t want or need to think about, that knowledge gave her renewed hope. She would have wept for the joy of it had she learned this news in any other context. Kingsley had a son? A son in his twenties and handsome as his father? It seemed too good to be true, and yet she believed it. And once she believed, a wound she didn’t know she’d had suddenly closed up and healed over.
“Are you sure he’s Kingsley’s? Completely certain?”
“I doubted it, too, at first,” Marie-Laure said. “Although the resemblance was uncanny it was possible he was a distant relative...or merely a doppelgänger. So I had someone do some digging on him. Turns out my brother had been feeling nostalgic, too, about twenty-four years ago. He’d met a woman and spent a few days in her bed. A married woman whose husband had gone to Paris for a week of business. She kept the boy’s parentage a secret even from his real father.”