I stiffened. “What did she tell Molly?”
Ruby shook her head. “I don’t know. She closed the door on me.”
“Where is she now?” I asked urgently.
“In the living room.”
“And Molly?”
“In bed,” Ruby replied.
Ella came running behind me.
I turned to her. “Sorry. I have to deal with this. Give me a few moments, okay?”
“Of course,” she said, looking at me worriedly.
In the living room, I found Penelope leafing through one of my architectural magazines. Something she had never done when we had been married. She heard my footsteps and looked up. She had changed a bit. It was only two years but her face had lost its youthful look. Her eyes looked tired. As if life had disappointed her.
It should have pleased me to see she hadn’t been happy since she left us, but it didn’t. If life had been good to her, she would have left us well alone. That would have been the ideal situation.
“Luke!” she cried and stood up, her face arranged in a pageant-winning smile. The same smile that had won her the Miss Connecticut title.
I had come to learn that Penelope could summon any emotion she needed at will. She could cry on cue, laugh convincingly, and show emotions she wasn’t feeling.
So I was extremely skeptical of her over-enthusiastic reception. “Penelope,” I said formally.
She ran towards me and looped her hands around my neck.
Her strong perfume made me feel sick. I grabbed her hands and pulled them away from my neck.
She pretended she didn’t notice the snub, took a step back and grinned at me. “It’s so good to be back. You’ve done well for Molly, Luke. You got her a nanny who seems like she knows her job.”
It jarred me to hear her praise me on the job I’d done with Molly. “Ruby is not her nanny. She is her babysitter for the night. Molly’s nanny is Ella. It’s her who managed to bring back a smile to Molly’s face.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. So… were you out… on a date?” Penelope asked.
I tried to control the tight knot of anger in my stomach. How dare she? She had broken our daughter’s heart and for that, I would never forgive her. “What are you doing here?” I asked her bluntly, tired of playing catch up when I had no interest whatsoever in knowing anything about her life or telling her anything about my life.
“I came to spend some time with my daughter and husband,” she said and sat back down.
I frowned. I didn’t like where this was going. “Ex-husband.”
She waved a dismissive hand.
I wanted to shake her. Hard. To remind her she had left her daughter for another man without a backward glance. “Do you know what happened to Molly after you left?” My voice was deceivingly casual.
She looked at me with interest. “What?”
“She stopped talking, Penelope. For nearly a year. Then she went into her own little shell. You fucked up our daughter when you left without a word of goodbye. When you chose a man over her.”
A sob broke out from her. She covered her face with her hands and stood there as still as a statue.
I tried to dismiss it as acting, but it looked too real. I waited for her to regain her composure.
“I was a fool Luke. A damned fool and I hate myself for it,” Penelope said, dropping her hands, her eyes filling up with tears. “That’s why I'm here. To make amends.”
I was a fool. A damned fool. Where had I heard this before? Oh, my God. It was a line from one of those daytime soaps. I shook my head. For a moment there, I had almost believed her. Still, I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was back. No one had told beautiful, spoilt Penelope that life did not work like that. You didn’t do something like she had done and then retrace your steps when you decided you’d made the wrong choice.
“That’s not possible,” I told her, my voice calm. “You don’t get to walk back into our lives now. Not after what you did.”
She tilted her chin. “Molly is my daughter.”
“Wasn’t she your daughter when you took off for a better life, somewhere else? You never called once to check on her wellbeing.” My breath came out fast.
Her cheeks colored. “I admitted that I made a mistake. A huge one. But I’m back to make amends. Everybody makes mistakes. I’m not perfect. I want to get to know my daughter and I want her to know me. Every girl needs her mother.”
That last sentence penetrated my brain. Penelope was Molly’s mother and I couldn’t do anything to change that. The anger that had fueled me ebbed away. I thought of my Molly and the shell she had wrapped herself in. Even though we’d made progress in the last few weeks, maybe she still needed to have her biological mother around her. Maybe that was a sacred bond too. One that I had no right to cut off. That should be Molly’s decision.
I would do anything for Molly, even having Penelope back in our lives.
“Please, Luke. You were never a cruel man. All I want is to spend time with my own daughter. The child I carried inside my body for nine months. I still have stretch marks to show for it. Remember, it was me who breastfed her. Not you. So, I made a… mistake. Are you going to punish me forever for it?”
The image of Penelope on all fours getting banged from the back by her mistake came into my head. A lot of women, if caught in that situation would have been ashamed and terrified. Not Penelope. She had looked at me as if she had felt pleased that she had been caught.
I looked at her now and felt pity for her. No anger and no pain remained inside me. I was truly over her betrayal. In fact, for the first time in my life, I felt truly happy, but it was
