Hearing Irene’s name come out of my mother’s mouth gave me chills. I knew she was serious. I could never see Russ again, even if he did someday return.

 

August 22, 2006

It was as though we’d conjured him. Three weeks after my mother confronted me, I was at work—still cocktail waitressing, even though my belly was enormous and my ankles swollen—when Estella tapped me on the shoulder and said, “There’s a man at the bar who wants an order of the conch fritters.”

“Isn’t Purcell on the bar?” I asked.

“He is, child, but this gentleman asked for you.”

I was punching in an order and I had a table with food up and a table still waiting to order drinks and Tessie was taking a leisurely cigarette break as always and I was about to snap. The restaurant was closing September first for two and a half months—hurricane season—so I only had to make it through another week. I gathered my wits, delivered one table their meals, took the drink order, ran quickly to the ladies’ room, and then, feeling relieved and refreshed, I lumbered over to the bar to see which gentleman at the bar wanted the conch fritters.

Honestly, I didn’t even think.

Russ was sitting at the corner seat.

I was torn between running straight into his arms and running for the parking lot.

His eyes became round as plates when he saw my belly. He knew, Todd Croft must have told him, but maybe he didn’t believe it or maybe he was overwhelmed to see evidence of his child with his own eyes.

“Mona Lisa,” he said.

“Stop,” I said.

“Mine?” he said.

“Don’t insult me,” I said. I turned and gazed out at the water in front of Caneel, but I didn’t see the yacht.

“Bluebeard is on Necker Island today,” he said. “I came over in a helicopter. We have…a client…with a helicopter.” He seemed proud to be telling me this, like I would care about a helicopter, of all things.

“Must be nice,” I said. My voice was stony, nearly icy, but my insides were molten. He came back. He was here. As discreetly as I could, I checked his left hand—ring still in place. At least today he was dressed appropriately. He wore stone-white shorts and a navy gingham shirt, crisp and expensive-looking, turned back at the cuffs. A new watch, a Breitling. He had a tan, a fresh haircut; he had lost twenty pounds. He looked great; there was very little trace of the sweet, bumbling man I had known. I was even more drawn to this sleeker, more confident version.

“What time are you off?” he asked. He nodded down the beach. “I got our room.”

Our room, 718. I had avoided going anywhere near the hotel rooms since he left.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

Why not. I thought about telling him that my mother had read my diary and was threatening to call Irene, but I didn’t want him to know how much control my mother had over me. I thought he’d be angry that I’d written about our relationship and been stupid enough to leave the diary in a place where Mama could find it. I thought he’d think poorly of my mother for blackmailing me—and I couldn’t bear that. Mama was looking out for me.

“You’re married,” I said. “To Irene. You have children already. I’m not going to disrespect that. You can’t ask me to. It’s not fair.”

“Rosie…” he said.

“It happened,” I said. “But it can’t continue.”

He nodded at my midsection. “Except it is continuing. You’re having my baby.”

I nearly surrendered to him right then and there. My baby. Here he was, willing to claim the child so that I wasn’t alone in all of this. And in the months since he’d left I had felt very, very alone. Mama and Huck would help me. I would live with them and bank the money that Todd Croft had given me to get me through the first year.

“I have to get back to work,” I said. I left Russ and put in an order for conch fritters.

He stayed until service ended. His mere presence at the bar—he was watching the Braves-Phillies game—made my pulse quicken and my breathing get shallow and I feared this reaction would affect the baby so I tried to stop and rest, drink plenty of ice water, and get to the ladies’ room often to splash my face.

Finally, I was finished. It was time for me to leave. I walked over to him.

“I’m going home,” I said. “It was nice to see you again.”

“Please, Rosie,” he said. “Just come to the room.”

I wanted to, if only for the air-conditioning and because I knew he would order me whatever I wanted from room service. But then it occurred to me that Russ might have been after sex and sex alone; maybe he saw me as a girl in a port, an island wife. I was nobody’s island wife.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re married.”

He nodded. “That I am.”

It pained me to hear him say it, but it also gave me resolve.

“Please don’t come back here,” I said. “Unless you get divorced and you have bona fide legal documents to prove it. It’s difficult for me to see you.” I spread my hands across my stomach. “I had feelings for you.”

“Had?”

“Had, have, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live here and you aren’t mine.”

“I’d like to support the baby,” he said.

“I received money already,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this would come as news to him or not.

He said, “Todd showed me your e-mail last week. He told me he sent you money back in May. He told me he came down to Carnival in July and that he checked in on you and that his hunch was correct: you were pregnant. The instant he told me, I made plans to come down here. I’m here only to see you, Rosie.”

Todd Croft had come during St. John’s Carnival and had spied on me? I didn’t like that one bit.

Russ had found out only last week?

“I have everything I need,” I said. “But thank you.”

“You don’t have to forgive me but you do have to let me support that child,” Russ said.

“I don’t, though,” I said, and I walked out of the restaurant, past the Sugar Mill, and into the parking lot, where I climbed in my car and cried.

The following week, a package arrived containing five thousand dollars in cash. An identical package came the week after that. And the week after that.

 

October 29, 2006

Today at 5:09 a.m., Maia Rosalie Small entered the world weighing six pounds and fourteen ounces and measuring twenty inches long. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on.

The nurse brought me a form to fill out so she could make the birth certificate. On the line where it asked for the father’s name, I wrote Unknown.

 

November 1, 2006

Maia is three days old. Today, I sent an e-mail to Todd Croft at Ascension letting him know that I’d had a baby girl and that her name was Maia Small.

 

September 4, 2012

Today is Maia’s first day at the Gifft Hill School. She marched into the classroom, head held high, shoulders back, with barely a wave to me and Mama and Huck, all of us standing in the doorway, watching her go.