She chuckles, batting her hand before toying with the clay, star-shaped necklace hanging over her sweater-covered bosom. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s my fault. I’d meant to give you his number but it must’ve slipped my mind. Here he thought you stood him up. He’s going to get a kick out of this when I tell him you were just primping and preening in the ladies’ room. You want to try again this week? Same place, same time?”
“Um, sure.” I force a smile, not sure if I’m in the mood for a do-over after the events of the past week.
To be honest, I’m still reeling from Bennett Schoenbach’s kiss Saturday night—mostly struggling with how much I enjoyed it, but also trying to wrap my head around his PG-rated “f-you.”
I get it—he was angry that we’d flirted all night and I refused his advance … but the way he looked at me when he pulled away, like he was shooting daggers into my soul, is burned into my mind. I’ve replayed that kiss, that look a hundred times since that night and for whatever reason, I can’t get it out of my head.
I can’t get him out of my head.
“Could we try a different place?” I ask. “Something besides Ophelia’s?”
“Honey, of course. That’s up to you two. I’ll email you his number when I get back to my room and you guys can sort everything out.”
The first morning bell chimes and the hallway begins to fill with shuffling sneakers, bouncing backpacks, and giggling youth.
Mrs. Angelino leaves me with a finger-wave before scurrying out of my classroom. With five minutes until the tardy bell, I decide to check my email. I spent the entirety of yesterday talking myself out of it. Telling myself once he discovers that I knew who he was Saturday night, that I was the anonymous sender of the emails, no good could come of that.
But curiosity has chipped away at my resolve and I’m finding it difficult to focus—a problem seeing how the school day starts shortly and my kids deserve my full, undivided attention.
I type my password and press enter.
No new messages.
Exhaling, I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or if this puts me more on edge as I anticipate an unknown inevitable.
Either he’s yet to read it, he’s read it and deleted it … or he’s biding his time until he comes up with the perfect response.
If it’s the latter, something tells me it isn’t going to be kind.
Fourteen
Bennett
* * *
I re-read my response to Astaire on Monday morning, my index finger grazing the return key.
* * *
FROM: Bennett.Schoenbach@SchoenbachCorp
SUBJECT: RE: re: re: Condolences
Astaire,
Congratulations—you’ve managed to render me speechless for a record thirty-two hours and change. Now that I’ve had some time to wrap my head around this fucked-up situation you’ve placed me in, I had a few thoughts of my own I wanted to share.
Never in my thirty years have I met someone with such an impressive ability to weave a pithy, trite fiction tale with the audacious intentions of inserting themselves into a complete stranger’s personal affairs.
But you didn’t stop there.
You proceeded to show your face at Ophelia’s again, accepted drinks from me, acted like some ethereal, light-bringing Virgin Mary despite eye-fucking me for hours—all the while knowing that it would be a brief matter of time before I would read your email and know exactly who you were.
I’m not sure what your end game is. If you’re looking for money, sympathy, or an idiot to fall for your ploys, you’re wasting your efforts. My financial generosity is nonexistent, I couldn’t care less about your counterfeit tragedies, and pussy-whipped has never been my style.
Please, do yourself a huge favor and find another jackass to fall for your scams.
I’ve got more important things to do with my time.
Not yours (and never will be),
Bennett
P.S. Thank you for bringing my predilection for cruelty to my attention—I had no idea. Will definitely be working on that from here on out.
* * *
“Mr. Schoenbach, your 9 AM is here,” Margaux’s faux-cheery voice blares over the intercom speaker on my desk phone, forcefully pulling me out of my moment. I press the orange button and tell her to send her back before hitting ‘send’ on my email.
A moment later, Jeannie with the Department of Family and Social Services strides into my office, a thick case file shoved under her arm.
“Jeannie? Bennett.” I extend my hand, but I don’t say it’s a pleasure to meet her. This isn’t some bullshit work-related meeting, and we’re not here to become friends. We’re here to sort out the mess Larissa left behind in the form of an orphaned child. “Come on in.”
She takes a seat in my guest chair, and I return to the other side of my desk.
“I appreciate your willingness to meet with me,” she says. “I understand that this must all come as a shock to you given the fact that you weren’t aware of Honor.”
She speaks slowly, choosing her words with careful tenacity. I’m not sure she believed me at first.
Still not sure she does.
But it’s beside the point.
Splaying a manila folder, she hands me a form. A quick scan and I deduce that I’m holding a copy of the child’s birth certificate.
Honor Elizabeth Smith: Born March 5th.
Birth Mother—Larissa Cleary-Schoenbach.
I hand it back. “There’s no birth father listed.”
Jeannie winces. “Correct. She refused to give a name. Said it was complicated, that the father wasn’t aware of the child and wouldn’t want to be in her life if he was.”
I release a hard breath, teeth clenched. Based on the kinds of losers Larissa was spending her time with, something like that wouldn’t be implausible.
“Smith,” I read the girl’s last name aloud.
Jeannie shrugs. “She didn’t go into details, but legally, a person can give their child any name they want. There are over two million Smiths in the United States—the most common surname in the country. I imagine she chose that to avoid giving the child the father’s last name? But of course it’s impossible to know.”
She hands me another sheet of paper—this one bearing a photocopied, black-and-white photo of the child. Grainy, but not grainy enough to deny she shares her mother’s smile—one that takes up half of her face like Larissa’s always did. Her hair is dark. I can’t tell if it’s brown or black. Larissa’s hair was so pale it was translucent in the right light, at least when she was a kid. It darkened a bit as she got older, but it was never this dark.
Appearances aside, she seems like a happy kid, for whatever that’s worth.
“Honor lives here in Worthington Heights,” Jeannie says, “in a temporary placement with a local foster family. She’s been in the system off and on most of her life. There were times Larissa was able to meet the custodial requirements given to her by the courts … but it always seemed like she’d take one step forward, only to fall ten steps back. She wasn’t always able to stay clean, wasn’t able to provide safe, acceptable housing for the child. Was in and out of jail for drug and prostitution-related—”