The Name She Stole

The name hit the yard like broken glass.

Damon turned slowly toward my mother. “Reid who?”

My mother realized what she had done the instant the word left her mouth. Her hand flew to her lips. Beatatrice let out a strangled sound that was half sob, half fury.

But it was too late.

We all knew only one Reid.

Reid Calloway.

Damon’s cousin.

Best man at their wedding.

Trust adviser for the Calloway family fund.

Married father of two.

For a second I thought Damon might actually collapse. Instead, he straightened.

“No,” he said, shaking his head once. “No.”

Beatatrice stepped toward him. “It’s not what you think.”

He laughed—a single ugly, breathless laugh with no humor in it. “Then this is your chance. Tell me what to think.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

My mother grabbed her arm. “We need to take this inside.”

“No,” Damon said. “You don’t get to move this somewhere comfortable.”

His voice had changed. He wasn’t pleading anymore. He was looking at the wreckage and deciding whether to set fire to what remained.

Andre touched my elbow. “Do you want to go in?”

I shook my head. “No. This ends now.”

Beatatrice turned on me like I had pulled a knife on her. “You promised me.”

I laughed softly because that, more than anything, was the line she thought still mattered. “You don’t get to hijack my shower, steal my baby name, and still cash in an old promise.”

She froze. “What?”

Damon looked at me. “What did she mean—steal your baby name?”

I held his gaze. “Charlie Anne was on a list in my journal. A baby-name list I’ve kept since college. Beatatrice saw it when she came over in March.”

Beatatrice’s eyes flashed. “That is insane.”

“It was folded between the prenatal receipts in the purse you left behind.”

Cory muttered, “She really can’t help herself, can she?”

My mother’s face tightened. “Jodie, not everything is about you.”

I stared at her.

There it was again—my whole childhood distilled into one sentence.

Beatatrice could walk into my milestones and make a home there, and I was still expected to be gracious about the furniture.

Damon rubbed a hand over his face. “I want the truth. Start from the beginning.”

Beatatrice swayed slightly and lowered herself onto one of the folding chairs like she might faint. No one moved to help her now.

I remembered the night she had shown up at my house.

Rain had been coming down hard. Andre was working late. I opened the door to find Beatatrice mascara-smeared and shaking, clutching her handbag with both hands.

“I messed up,” she said.

I took her in because despite everything, she was still my sister.

She sat at my kitchen table and cried for twenty minutes before she could say it clearly.

“It happened once,” she whispered. “One night. Damon was away. Reid was drunk. I was angry. I don’t know.”

I had stared at her in shock.

Then she put both hands over her stomach and said the sentence that lodged under my skin and never left:

“If this baby is Damon’s, I’m safe. If it isn’t, my life is over.”

Safe.

Not happy. Not honest. Safe.

She begged me to give her time. Swore she would tell Damon after the first trimester. Swore she had only stayed quiet because she needed to know the dates for sure.

I believed her.

Or maybe I wanted to believe that even Beatatrice had a line she wouldn’t cross forever.

I was wrong.

Back in the yard, Damon looked ill. “She came to you with this?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“No,” I said honestly. “Because I kept waiting for her to do the right thing.”

His eyes flickered with hurt—not because I had betrayed him, I think, but because he was measuring how long everyone around him had been living with pieces of his humiliation.

My mother started crying then, quietly and neatly.

“I was trying to protect this family.”

Damon looked at her. “From what?”

She swallowed.

“From scandal.”

He let out a cold, disbelieving breath. “You mean from consequences.”

No one corrected him.

And as if the day had not done enough damage already, Cory stepped forward, took out her phone, and said:

“I didn’t want to do this at a baby shower, but since we’re here…”

She turned the screen toward us.

It was a photo.

Beatatrice stepping out of a black SUV outside Harbor Crest Hotel.