The Divorce by Freida McFadden - 64

64

Jeremy was a bit panicked when I showed up at his apartment building, holding an infant. He was dressed in a designer suit and power tie, clearly on his way to work, and he looked shocked to see me and the baby. He made a few phone calls to reschedule his morning meetings, then quickly shepherded me back to his apartment to talk in private.

“We used a condom,” he insisted. “Always.”

“They aren’t one hundred percent,” I reminded him.

“I know, but…” He fiddled with his tie, his eyes darting everywhere. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I said. “I wasn’t even sure if I would keep him. But now I know that this baby needs a father.” I adjusted Teddy’s grip on my body so that Jeremy could get a better look at him. The tiny baby had started clinging to me when I held him—I loved the way he trusted me implicitly. “He looks like you, doesn’t he?”

Teddy did look a bit like Jeremy. That was a happy coincidence. But Jeremy didn’t seem to want to look. He was looking everywhere else but at the baby.

“Naomi,” he groaned. “I really wish that you… Anyway, look, we need to get a paternity test.”

“You don’t believe me?”

He shot me a pained look. “Like I said, we were careful.”

We were careful. And also, I was infertile. But he didn’t know that last part.

I expected this request though. And I would never have approached him with the baby unless I had a way to handle it.

Jeremy wanted to send in the swabs himself. He didn’t trust me, and I couldn’t say his instincts weren’t correct. He asked me to give him a swab from Teddy, and he would mail everything in himself.

I met him a week later at a coffee shop, just him and me. He handed me a swab with a small envelope to hold it and said we could meet again tomorrow after I swabbed the baby. That same day, I hopped in my car and drove out to Long Island, to the house that later became mine, after Jeremy and I got married. But at the time, Jeremy’s parents were living there. He told me about it once while we were dating, and he also mentioned his father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.

When I got out to that house, I parked down the road. I waited in my car until Mrs. Roth headed out to do errands, leaving her husband behind. When I approached the house on my own, Mr. Roth was only too happy to invite me in. He babbled about things that only partially made sense, once referring to Jeremy as a little boy. When I told him that I needed to do a test where I had to swab his cheek, he was only too happy to let me do it .

After I had the swab, I drove back to the city. I handed the little paper envelope to Jeremy, who sent it in with his own swab for results. When the results came back, it showed nearly 100 percent certainty that the two swabs belonged to father and child, just as I knew they would.

Jeremy thinks I’m stupid. He doesn’t say it outright, but he doesn’t have to. But this one time, I outsmarted him.

Jeremy married me. He wanted Teddy to have two parents living in the house together, and although he didn’t say it, he didn’t trust me to raise Teddy on my own. And for a long time, we were happy together. Well, I was happy.

And now here is Veronica. It all makes sense now, with the drug charge in her records. She is clearly the wife or girlfriend of that junkie who was passed out in the front seat while Teddy was screaming in the back. She was a neglectful mother. She didn’t deserve to have Teddy.

She still doesn’t.

And there is absolutely no way she is getting him back. There’s no way I am allowing this drug addict to take my son away from me.

No, Veronica has to die. And once again, I have to be smart about it.