The Hate Vow by Nicole French

Thirty-One

“Thank you for coming! Sky, I’ll see you at the hotel in the morning, okay?”

I waved at the last of the bridal party who had attended the small rehearsal dinner. Eric wrapped his hands around my waist from behind, setting his chin on my shoulder as we watched our friends depart the private room of the Waldorf Astoria where Celeste had hosted the dinner. Outside, the lights of midtown Manhattan glinted like stars. Since Eric’s arrival in London, I had felt nothing but the bright halo of love surrounding us. Now, less than twenty-four hours from the big day, we had to say good night.

“Finally,” he said as he buried his nose in my neck. “Are we done with this circus yet?”

“Stop,” I whispered, though I couldn’t hide my smile. “People are looking.”

Celeste glared disapprovingly from the far end of the table, where Garrett was helping her into her wheelchair. I was honestly surprised that she had even made it. Nina mentioned the night before that she had been upping her pain medications lately.

“Let them look,” Eric responded as he continued to nuzzle.

“Also, I need a legitimately good sleep tonight. I have a whole styling team showing up to my suite for pictures in the morning, and I do not plan to have suitcases under my eyes for the Times style section, thank you very fucking much.”

“Screw ’em,” Eric growled. “Tonight’s the last night I have a fiancée, and I’m being forced to spend it without her. These antiquated traditions are ridiculous.”

I smiled, feeling my cheeks heat up at the idea of exactly what we could do to celebrate the occasion. Hmmmm. We’d spent the previous night in London reminding each other of everything in store for later, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.

I turned in his arms. “I’ll make it up to you when I’m your wife,” I said, delivering a chaste kiss that seemed to disappoint him. “You get two weeks with me on that island. No work. No people. No annoying family. Just you, me, and whatever, ah, toys you decide to bring from the closet.”

At that, I received a wicked grin. “I already sent a whole suitcase ahead of us.”

“Ahead?” I gaped.

Eric nodded. “The second the fucking reception is over, we’re getting out of here. No stops. I’m ripping that dress off you in the air, pretty girl.”

I shivered at the idea. Mile high club with Mr. de Vries? Yes, please.

“Eric! Eric, do you know these men?”

We both turned at the sound of Celeste’s withered voice that still managed to squawk. She looked very, very tired as Garrett pushed her around the table. She had taken to wearing a full nasal cannula extending from her nose and attached to her ever-present oxygen tank, and it looked like she had lost more weight. That didn’t stop her, however, from showing up to each and every event in her Chanel finest. Tonight, it was a tasteful shift dress with suede pumps and the biggest diamond earrings I had ever seen. Begrudgingly, I had to respect the old sociopath. Celeste de Vries was a grande dame in every sense of the phrase.

Eric turned toward the two men in beautifully cut suits who stood at the entrance of the private room. They looked about his age, with their wealth and, well, whiteness, practically glowing out of their perfectly tailored suits in the dark room.

One of them, whom I christened “Chad” in my head, raised his hand in greeting.

“Shit,” Eric muttered under his breath. “I’ll be right back.”

Before he left, I tugged on his hand. “Hey. Everything okay?”

He reared back at me, almost as if he was startled by my presence. Which was odd, since I had just been wrapped in his arms.

“Go keep your mother company for a bit,” he said, and strode toward the visitors without another look.

Frowning, I moved back to the other side of the table, where my mother was sipping on her cup of lukewarm green tea. She had been very quiet for most of the night, kept company primarily by Cherie, my second cousin, Suejean, and her mother, Ji-yeon, the only other family who had been able to make the trip here for the wedding. My side of the aisle was going to be woefully underrepresented.

“Did Suejean and Auntie leave?” I asked as I sat down.

My mother nodded as she folded and re-folded her napkin. “They went back to the hotel. I waited for you.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll just be a minute. Eric is saying goodbye to some people, and then you and I can probably leave too.”

She nodded again, but didn’t say anything. I frowned. My mother was many things, but taciturn was not one of them.

“Eomma, are you okay?”

She looked up, as if startled by such concern. A pang of guilt shot through me—I hadn’t been doing the greatest job of caring for my mother, had I?

“I just wished Daddy could have been here,” I continued wistfully. “To walk me down the aisle. He would have liked that.”

It was the one thing I had refused to be supplemented by the de Vries family. Tradition dictated that some man be present to give me away at the altar, but the idea of one of Eric’s uncles doing the job just seemed strange. The reality was, there was no one to give me away but myself. I’d walk that long line alone.

My mother just stared at her tea, looking troubled. I winced. I should have known better. Of course she was probably missing my father too. Christmas, birthdays. They had been hard for the last year, and would continue to be for a while, especially at major moments like this.

There was a scuffle at the far end of the bar.

“I got it.” Eric floated above the fray, a little too sternly. “You can tell Carson to mind his own business, all right, Jude? This doesn’t concern him.”

My mother and I both watched as the other two gentlemen backed off, hands held out in a joking surrender. They spoke, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“You really love him?” she asked, almost hopelessly.

I nodded, focusing on the warmth that pooled in my belly at the thought of it. “I do, Eomma. I really do.”

She sighed. It was resigned. Painful.

I tried to think of something to say that might comfort her obvious anxiety. She, however, was still staring at the men, one of whom was gesticulating wildly, baring a small bracelet with a gold token in the middle. Vaguely, I thought it looked a little like the medallion Eric wore on his father’s chain.

Eric scowled darkly, then followed the men outside.

My mother stood up with sudden vigor. “Time to go.”

I frowned. “Eomma, we aren’t going yet. Eric will be right back, and then we can go to the hotel. I want to say goodbye to him first, since I won’t see him until tomorrow.”

“No,” she said, turning to leave. “No, we have to go right now, Jane.” But not, apparently, out the main exit.

“Eomma!” I shouted as she disappeared through the service doors. I took steps after her, but was stopped by Celeste’s voice.

“Jane?” she called. “Jane, where are you going?”

“I’ll, uh, be right back!” I called back to her before I followed my mother through the back entrance of the restaurant and into a deserted alley. I paused, looking from side to side until I spotted her small, solid form trotting down the sidewalk toward Times Square.

“Hey!” I shouted, jogging after her. “Eomma, wait!”

She slowed as I approached, but didn’t stop walking.

“What is the goddamn deal?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the hotel,” she snapped. “And you should too. It’s late.”

“Eomma, stop. Eomma!”

I pulled on her sleeve, finally forcing her to halt.

“You cannot marry that boy!” she shouted before spouting a torrent of Korean.

“Eomma, come on,” I tried to cut in, though she didn’t stop. “Eomma, I can’t understand you. What the hell is going on? I thought we covered this at the engagement party. Why can’t I marry Eric?”

“Because he doesn’t know who you really are!”

I took a step back. “What…what do you mean?” Something told me a knee-jerk reaction here was inappropriate.

“Jane…my sweet Jane. Oh, Jane.” Yu Na looked up and down the street. But there was no one walking in this quiet alley.

“Eomma,” I said slowly. “What’s this all about?”

She stepped into a stream of light shining from a lamp on the corner. “Oh, Jane. Your father…Carol…he was not.” She buried her face in her hands. “He was not your real father.”

The words were like sucker punches to the gut, one after another. “What—what?”

She sucked in a deep breath like it was physically painful. I took another step closer.

“Eomma,” I said. “Tell me right now. What are you talking about?”

When she looked up at me, a tear tracked down her face, a silvery line across her rouged cheek. “It was…it was when I work for the airline,” she said. “You remember, I was in the first-class section. A lot of men. A lot of rich men.”

I screwed up my face. “What?”

“There was a group of us,” she continued. “We…we were poor, Jane. We need money to send our families. And these men, they liked us. They invite us their hotels. They give us money if we…”

I couldn’t speak. If I was hearing this correctly, my mother was telling me that she had, at one point, participated in some kind of low-level prostitution ring in Korea. My mother. Yu Na Lee Lefferts, pious church attendee and queen of chastity. A hooker.

“Sometimes they just want dinner,” she whispered. “Sometimes they want more. Sometimes we say no. Sometimes…sometimes we say yes.”

I honestly felt like my head was going to explode. Korean culture dictated, even now, that women remain “pure” before marriage. That my mother would have flouted that so deliberately in the eighties was almost unthinkable. “So you’re saying…you’re saying my real father was one of them?”

Miserably, she nodded. “When I find out I am pregnant, it was when I meet your father, Jane. Such a nice man. On vacation to Korea and Japan. He…he ask me to dinner. I think he is like the others, but he is not. He was so nice…”

Her voice drifted off. I stared at her like I was just meeting her. I guessed, in a way, I was.

“He fell in love with me, Carol did,” she said. “And I fell in love too. So when he ask me to leave with him, to come to Chicago…I said yes. It seemed like the best thing.”

I pressed my hands on either side of my head. This hurt. Every part of it hurt. Carol Lefferts. Daddy. The man who had raised me. This couldn’t be possible. It couldn’t.

And yet.

Come on, Jane Brain. You never knew? Never once wondered?

My wider eyes, hazel, not brown or stormy blue. My unruly hair, when both my parents’ was straight and sleek. My slim, almost lanky height at over five-eight, while the two of them were compact and solid.

I turned to my mother, seeing the truth all over her face and finally believing it myself. “Did he know? Did he know the baby wasn’t his?”

My mother jerked her head up. “Of course I tell him! What do you think I would do?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I?” I exploded. “You didn’t tell me, did you?”

Her face crumpled, miserable. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered. “No one ever knew.”

“What was his name?” I asked. “What did he do? Eomma, who is my real father?!” I was becoming almost hysterical as the reality of what she was saying sank in.

“I don’t know!” she cried. “I don’t know. They don’t tell us their real names, Jane! He say his name is John, okay? John. But otherwise, I don’t know anything else! He was rich. He was handsome. He have dark, curly hair like you, and his name was John. Otherwise…he left, and I don’t know what happened to him!”

We stared at each other, the both of us trying to work through this impossible situation. How could she do this to me…now?

The question begged a different one.

“What does this have to do with Eric?” I asked, almost afraid to answer. “Why don’t you want me to marry him?”

She swallowed, and for the first time, the fear I had seen that night in the Hamptons stole back into her eyes.

“That necklace he has,” she said. “The bracelet on that man’s wrist. You see it?”

Slowly, I nodded. “We’ve been over this. The necklace was a gift. An antique.”

“It’s a marker,” she said clearly. “The man—your father—he wears one too, just like it. So did some of the others with him. They all wore them that night.”

“Eric got it from his father,” I said, and then revulsion rippled through my entire body. “Are you saying…”

“No.” Her response was quick, and brutal. “No, no, no. I saw a picture of Eric’s father. No, that was not the man. I know it was not him. I would never forget.”

Relief flooded through me as my heart slowed its tempo. Jesus, that was close. And disgusting, even the thought.

“But whoever that man was, Jane, I know this.” Eomma paused, glancing back toward the streetlights like she was afraid someone would jump at us from around the shadowed brick corners. “The men who wear that jewelry, they are not good men, Jane. Your father…not a good man, Jane. He was bad, very bad. And if Eric is one of them, maybe Eric is not a good man too.”

* * *

When we reached the hotel,we disappeared into our rooms without exchanging much more than a few words. My mother was angry that I refused to take her concerns seriously. I was furious that she had kept half of my genetic code a secret for thirty years. You know, potato, po-tah-to.

But once the door of my room closed, the gravity of her disclosures raced through me all over again, and I began to cry—great, heaving sobs that shook me from head to toe. I collapsed on the floor, shaking hard as my glasses bounced onto the carpet. What was I supposed to do now? What in the hell was I supposed to do?

A knock on the door interrupted my keening.

I rose, thinking it was Skylar, but when I opened it, found Eric fussing with his shirtsleeves, his forehead wrinkled slightly with worry.

“Hey,” he said. “Where did you go? I came back and they said you and your mom took off through the service entrance—whoa.”

My tearstained face seemed to be enough of an answer, because without a word, he barged in, pulled me into his arms, and steered me toward the bed. He settled me on the end, then crouched between my knees so he could look up at me, clasping both of my hands.

“Tell me what happened,” he said in that gentle way that somehow still commanded obedience.

I hiccupped. And then I recounted the entire exchange in the alley.

“Jesus,” Eric murmured after I was finished. He rubbed his cheek with a stunned expression. “That’s…insane.”

I nodded. I was starting to feel numb. “Honestly, I don’t think she ever would have told me if it hadn’t been for you. And really…that’s almost worse, you know? Not that this thing happened, but that she was so determined to keep it a secret.”

He had removed his tie before coming, and his bright blue shirt had been unbuttoned just enough to reveal his collarbone and the glint of a thin gold chain draped over it. I reached in and pulled out the gold coin that hung there, brushing my thumb over the engraved, two-faced image.

“It was this again,” I said. “She said she saw this on one of the men you left with tonight. And that the man who—well, my real father, I guess—wore a necklace like this.”

Eric’s eyes popped open. “She thinks—”

“No, no, no.” I shook my head furiously. “Thank fucking God for that, no. We’re not committing any Ancient Egyptian inbreeding here.”

Eric relaxed visibly and exhaled. “I legitimately thought my heart stopped for a second.”

“Gives new meaning to your Petri dish, doesn’t it?”

For that, I received a sardonic look, complete with a raised brow. I contemplated jumping him on the spot. But I had other questions. And so, apparently, did he.

“Do you…Jane, if it’s too much, would you prefer to postpone?” Eric rubbed his cheek again—it was a habit I’d noticed whenever he was a bit uncomfortable. “We can call it off. This is a massive bomb you just had dropped in your lap. I wouldn’t blame you for wanting some time to process.”

“Eric, do you have any idea how much this wedding cost?”

I didn’t even want to say. It was utterly obscene how much Celeste was spending. I had tried to talk her into cutting back, but she had waved me away like a pesky fly every time.

Eric just shrugged. “Whatever it is, I doubt it’s putting that much of a dent in our accounts.”

“Your family could probably fund, I don’t know, ten African orphanages with the money going into this wedding. All of New York is turning out to watch the de Vries heir marry the weird Asian girl. It’s the event of the year, or so I’ve been assured by at least a hundred people.” I shook my head. “We can’t pull out. I won’t do that to you or your family.”

It was strange, but I’d actually developed a minor fondness for Eric’s shrewish old grandmother. Celeste was a little nuts, it was true. Sick with power, maybe. But there was some love in her dying wish to see her favorite grandchild married and happy. If Eric and I were what we had been six months ago, I’d probably still hate her for forcing him into it. But as it was now…a part of me was sort of grateful she had done it. I’d still be toiling away in Chicago otherwise.

I also wondered if she knew him better than he thought she did. Maybe Celeste knew Eric wouldn’t just choose anyone for this task. Maybe she knew he’d marry for love anyway.

Maybe, I thought optimistically, that was the entire point. Her real dying wish was to make things right with her grandson the only way she knew how.

Regardless, there was still one more thing I needed to know.

“You don’t…you don’t have any more secrets from me, do you?” I asked. “Eric, if you do, I need to know now.”

Eric looked at me for a long time, his gray eyes swirling like storm clouds. Then he framed my face with his large, graceful hands, cradling it toward him.

“You see everything about me that matters, Jane,” he said in a low, clear voice. “There would never be any point in keeping the stuff that doesn’t.”

We watched each other for several intense seconds, as if waiting for the other to break. But no one did.

“Well, then,” I continued. “The show must go on. I’ll walk myself down the aisle. My mother will keep her mouth shut. And you and I…well, if I don’t know who I am right now, at least I know tomorrow I’ll be your wife. That’s not changing, right?”

Eric smiled, and I closed my eyes, basking in that glow. I inhaled his warm, familiar scent of soap, cologne, linen, and man. God, he always smelled so good.

I opened my eyes. “You should probably go. It’s almost midnight, and it’s bad luck for you to see the bride on your wedding day.” Normally I wasn’t superstitious, but after everything that happened, I figured we needed as much luck as we could get.

Eric stroked my face and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. He smiled again, and I felt that glow inside me light a small, warm fire.

“I’ll see you down the aisle…pretty girl.”