70:Understanding

He knew it.  Jon just fucking knew there was some kind of fear keeping her tied to that mushy-handed son of a bitch. 

Mindless fingers dug into her thighs as his anger threatened to come unleashed.  He only kept it restrained by reminding himself that the fucktard who deserved to be on the receiving end wasn’t here.

“Go on,” he bit out, fingers digging deeper when she tried to get up from his lap.  He wanted her close for this.  “No.  Sit right there and tell me.”

Sighing, she settled back into her straddled position and laid both open palms in the center of his chest.  “Please remember that this was a long time ago.  I was young and dumb, not much older than Noah and Jesse.”

“Okay.”

His hands stroked over the thighs he’d been so viciously gripping as though it would ease the pain in her eyes.  He would never know if it did or not, because those eyes fell shut as she began to speak. 

“I graduated from law school two weeks before Noah was born.  They only offer the New York State Bar Exam three times a year, so six weeks later, sleep-deprived and as frustrated as any new mother could possibly be, I took it and failed.  Owen...”  She frowned and shook her head in disgust.  “He couldn’t find his big music break.  We were living in a crappy, crappy apartment and ends didn’t come even close to meeting.  Without passing the bar, I was unemployable except for waitressing jobs.  Things got a little desperate.”

Jon was trying to patient.  Honest to God, he was, but his mind was trying to jump two pages ahead of where she was talking.  Half a dozen blackmail-worthy acts of desperation had formulated already – prostitution, porn, drugs, gambling, theft, forgery...  She needed to hurry the hell up before he had her painted as a Mafioso drug lord.

“And?”

Her eyes were open now but, ironically, she was looking off toward the bar behind his right shoulder instead of at him.  “I found out how to get a copy of the bar exam, borrowed money from one of my brothers and paid the guy for it.  I never opened the envelope, but there’s nobody that will believe that if Owen decides to start waving it in the faces of the Bar Association.  Even if my name eventually gets cleared, my reputation will be shot to hell in a world where divorce lawyers are a dime a dozen.”

Sliding her gaze back to him, Jon saw that doleful brown eyes were filled with sadness and regret.  “In three or four years, after I get the boys through college, it won’t matter.  I’ll file for divorce and accept the consequences.  I’m just going to get their educations and my brownstone paid for.  He can do whatever he wants with the damn test copy after that.”

This?  This is what had held her as a figurative hostage for fifteen years?  That reasoning was several shades of stupid from where Jon sat.  The counselor had never seemed unintelligent, but maybe once she got so far involved in the situation it was hard to see reason? 

Fortunately, he was here to point it out.

“That’s fucking stupid,” he stated bluntly, softening the words by once again stroking easy palms along her thighs.  “There are other ways to pay for college.  People do it every day.”

Regret turned to resentment and she forcefully pushed against his shoulders in a physical display of exasperation.  “Don’t you think I know that?  Jesus!  I’m not lazy, afraid to work or a greed-driven bitch.  If you haven’t figured that out about me yet, then this whole thing may be a mistake.”

“Goddammit,” he swore, and she shoved off his lap before he could hold her there.  It left him reduced to calling after her as she stalked the hall to his bedroom. “Don’t get your feelings all fucking hurt!  Tell me what I’m missing.”

As quickly as she departed the room, the counselor returned with fists clenched at her sides and raging with anger.  “You missed the fact that I love my sons, you judgmental son of a bitch!  I don’t give a good goddamn about the money I make as a lawyer.  It’s an afterthought in light of the real power Owen holds over me.”

“If you’d tell me what that is al-fucking-ready, we wouldn’t be having this argument!”

Unlike Chiara, Jon wasn’t mad.  He was just frustrated by the whole damn thing.  It felt too much like life happening to him and he despised it.

“If you’d give me a frigging minute, I would!  Uugh!”  She blew out a sharp breath and paced to the other side of the room, pushing an agitated hand through her hair to whirl and stand behind the couch opposite the one on which he sat.  Folding one arm across her waist as she continued to rifle her hair, the counselor demanded, “Did you think I was joking when I said I’d never told anyone this before?  I wasn’t!  If you could just show a little patience and understanding, I might not be regretting this!”

Part of those words struck a chord with Jon and had him flashing back to his bedroom in the Hamptons.  Tony and Lilah were both there, and Lilah was telling him her new theory about the counselor. 

“Be nice to her because, if you’ll show a little patience and understanding…  I think she’s the rest of your life.”

The memory creeped him the hell out, but besides that, did it make this situation worse or better?   Was Jon supposed to mentally protest that whole thing about the rest of his life again, or should he just accept the advice coming from both women and exercise what little patience he possessed?

Huffing out blustering puff of air, he rose and crossed the seating area with one hand outstretched.  It didn’t come as a surprise when Chiara didn’t reach for him, but Jon wasn’t deterred.  At least she hadn’t taken a step backward, and it encouraged him to keep going until he could fold her ramrod stiff form into his arms. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized next to her ear, reassured when she slowly returned the embrace.  “I’m an ass.”

“Damn right.”

Jon squeezed her tighter as he chuckled, and then leaned back to look into her piqued face.  “Can we try this again?”

“Only if you promise not to say anything until I’m finished.”

That was akin to asking a dog not to chase a cat, but he would do what he could.

“I’ll try,” was the best he could promise as he used one of the arms at her shoulders to guide her back around so that they could sit.  When he was settled sideways with a leg folded beneath him as she sat facing forward, he clasped one of her hands in his and willed himself to be patient.  “Go on.”

The hand that wasn’t holding his came to rub at the tension lines between her eyes as she sighed.  “There are circumstances that make the test story more compelling by painting me as a woman who was desperate enough to do anything – anything – to pass.  Those circumstances are the real issue.”

He watched as her hand fell listlessly to her lap and the thoughts struggled to come in line.  Then again, maybe it was her struggle to face those thoughts again that he witnessed.  Whatever it was pained him.  He wanted the information now, because that would allow him to start developing a solution to her problem so that she could be rid of this lazy albatross once and for all. 

The fact that Jon wanted her for himself was a side note.  A significant side note, but still just a side note. 

“The next offering was February.  I passed, by the way.  I’ll never know how, considering what a mess I was at the time, but I did, anyway.”

“Enough about the damn test,” he interrupted gruffly.  “Tell me what’s really at stake here.”

Flicking her eyes toward him with a frown, she then chose a point on the far wall to focus on while squeezing his hand with one of hers and petting the back of it with the other.

“I found out in early February that I was pregnant again.  Owen was not happy, and I wasn’t particularly excited, considering our financial situation and how young Noah still was.  He hounded me for a solid week, telling me that we didn’t need a second child.  That the timing of it was going to be detrimental to my finding a job.  That I should get an abortion.”

That obviously hadn’t panned out.  By Jon’s estimation, Caleb was that child, so he continued to wait as she traced a thumb along the cuticle of his thumbnail. 

“My parents kept telling me things would get better after I passed the Bar and got a job.  My brothers told me the same thing.  Everything hinged on that fucking test and the year immediately following it, so I caved.”

“Wait?  You what?”  That simply didn’t add up with what he knew. 

She licked lips that appeared to be dry and blinked down at their joined hands.  “He knew a cheap clinic, made the appointment and took me there before I realized what was going on.  He forced me into a decision that I will regret for the rest of my life.  I had the abortion.”

“But-“

“Let me finish,” she interrupted, her voice thick and watery.  “With guilt eating me alive, there was still that little bit of relief that there wouldn’t be another tiny person floundering with us.  I found a way to cope with the guilt by justifying it to myself with the facts that my family would never find out, God would somehow forgive me and I could get my life together before bringing another child into it.  I would adopt someone else’s unwanted child to make amends.”

Adoption?  Caleb looked so much like Luke, though, and the counselor.  If he was adopted, that coincidence was astounding.

“So Caleb isn’t…?”

Releasing a shaky breath, she shook her head.  “He’s not adopted.  He’s my living, breathing child.  His twin is the one who died.”

Fluttering eyes blinked away the dampness onto her cheek.  “When I file for divorce, Owen will tell my family, who will eventually get over it.  But he’ll also tell my sons – his own sons – that they had a sibling I chose to kill.  He’ll tell them that Caleb is only alive because of a mistake, and that he should’ve died, too.  He’ll make sure they hate me.”

Well, shit.

“That’s the real reason I’m waiting until they’re out of college,” she went on, clearing her throat and wiping away the tears that had leaked.  “By then, they’ll be adults who’ve gotten a lifetime of my love and might be able to understand when I explain it to them.”

Staring blindly down the hall, Jon considered what words might make a difference here.  What could he say or do to put this in perspective or make it right?  Was there anything?  Anything at all?

“Jon?”

A quick perusal of Chiara’s face found her watching him with a guarded expression.  “Yeah?”

“What about you?  Do you understand?”