Indiscreet by Nicole French

5

“Where is he?”

A pair of heels clicked over the shiny wood floors, announcing the arrival of Tricia Owens-Baker. Her sharp voice came again, echoing the same question again and again with rising levels of hysteria.

“Where is he? Where is my son, Benny?”

She swept into the room, a flurry of designer clothes and flashy yet tasteful jewelry. Even if I hadn’t already been told who she was, I still would have known this was Will’s mother. I had seen pictures of her, of course. Tricia Owens-Baker was a beautiful woman who looked somewhere in her mid to late fifties, with a head of thick blonde hair that had the same wavy texture as her son’s. Hers, of course, was perfectly groomed, falling around her shoulders in manicured tresses that bounced slightly as she walked. And while I knew that Will’s physique—his lanky height and swimmer’s shoulders—came from his late father, the man who stood next to this woman in most of her photos, his face was one hundred percent inherited from his mother. Same knife-straight bones, same full mouth, same penetrating green eyes.

Only hers contained none of the warmth I usually saw in Will’s.

She was dressed down in that way that only rich people can do while still looking like their wealth, in a crisp, sleeveless button-down blouse that didn’t have a trace of a wrinkle, dark denim jeans that looked like they had never been worn, and black pumps without so much as a scuff. Her nails were French-manicured, and her jewelry included a diamond pendant, a collection of gold bangles around one wrist, and a very expensive-looking watch that gleamed in the afternoon sun.

Still at the elevator, Calliope glanced between the woman and the rest of us with an alarmed look and mouthed at me, “Should I stay?”

Though I wished she could, I shook my head. Will didn’t know Calliope, and he wouldn’t want an audience for this reunion. So, with regret, I watched the elevator doors close over my friend, then turned back to the new arrival in the apartment, keeping my hand wrapped securely around Will’s as we both stood up.

“Benny.” The woman traded air kisses with Benny, then smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles out of her shirt and turned to Will and me. “Oh,” she said. Her voice dropped a full octave. “Oh, here he is.”

Will swallowed and stepped forward. “Hi…Mom.”

They stood about five feet apart, eying each other warily. I was reminded of watching cats meet––generally solitary creatures that never seem to expect to run into the other, but when they do, fur, whiskers, ears, tails, everything is on high alert. I half expected one of them to meow.

I took a step forward, unable to do more with Will keeping his tight grip on me. “Hi, I’m Maggie, Will’s friend,” I said, extended my other hand.

“Girlfriend,” Will quickly corrected me. “Right?” He looked down at me hopefully, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Right,” I murmured, then turned back to his mother. “Girlfriend. Sorry.”

His mother completely ignored me, and after a few seconds standing like an idiot with my hand hanging in the air, I stepped back beside Will and waited.

His mother took a step forward, then another. She examined Will like he was an exhibit at a museum, scanning his body, his clothes, his face, his hair for the tiniest details. Her hand floated out like she was about to stroke his face and pull him in for a hug. But instead, she reached it back and slapped him across the cheek. Hard.

“What the hell?” I cried out, while Will touched a hand to his cheek and glared at his mother.

“Trish, Jesus Christ,” Benny put in. “Really?”

“Well, I see some things haven’t changed,” Will remarked as he rubbed his face.

“How could you do that to me?” she shrieked. “Four years. Four years we thought you were dead! Thought our boy had drowned. We had a memorial. What you put your father and me through, I can’t even begin to talk about it!”

She pulled her hand back again, and instinctively, I stepped in front of Will, raising my own hands to stop her.

“Don’t even think about it,” I warned.

“Tricia, back off.” Benny’s voice was more serious than I’d heard it yet.

“Mom.” Will’s voice cut through all of the noise, and immediately everyone shut up and turned to him.

“You killed him,” Tricia said. “You broke his heart and killed him, and I had to handle everything myself!”

“It’s not like you were much of a help to him,” Will snapped back. “How long has it been since you two lived together? Fourteen, fifteen years now?”

“That is none of your business. And don’t even think about pretending you cared enough about him to be in his life, Fitzwilliam! My husband is gone now, and it is all your fault!”

Will wilted. I already knew from his previous disclosures that he did feel responsible for his father’s death. His mother’s accusations told me exactly where that came from.

“That’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “How can he be responsible for something he wasn’t even there to do?”

Tricia turned to me, like it had just occurred to her I was present. “And who are you?” she asked, as if I hadn’t already introduced myself.

I straightened to my full height of five feet, five inches. I was still at least five inches shorter than this woman, who loomed over me in her heels, but I wasn’t cowering to her.

“I’m Maggie,” I gritted out. “Like I said two minutes ago.”

She looked me over with the evaluative gaze she had also given Will. “What are you? Hispanic? Filipino?” She looked over my shoulder to Will. “What are you doing, getting involved with trash like this?”

My mouth dropped. “Are you serious, lady? I am right here.”

“Tricia, you can get the hell out if you’re gonna start with that kind of racist bullshit,” Benny broke in, the first time I had seen him look or sound anything but unruffled. It was apparent that there was no love lost between him and Will’s mother. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to it than Will’s disappearance and Benny’s apparent aid with it. Of course, considering that Benny wasn’t white either, I had to wonder if he’d gotten his share of this garbage from her too.

Tricia glared at him for a long time, then turned back to Will.

“Whatever,” she snapped. “What do you think she’s doing here right now? Providing moral support? She probably knew who you were from the start.”

“Maggie had no idea, Mom,” Will said bitterly. “And when she found out, she left me, if you have to know. I’m only in New York because I was looking for her. Not you. Not Benny. Not anyone else. Her.” He looked down at me, and the fierceness of his gaze practically knocked me over. “I’d find you anywhere, Lily pad.”

I couldn’t breathe. Every cell in my body wanted to celebrate his words—wanted to welcome him back and show him that I felt the same way. And I wanted all these people to leave immediately so I could do it right.

“Will, you can’t possibly be this naive.” Tricia pulled our attention back to her. “I don’t even recognize you right now. I didn’t raise you to throw away your career. I didn’t raise you to be stupid. And I certainly didn’t raise you to align yourself with every desperate little thing that gloms onto you.”

“You didn’t raise me at all,” Will growled. “Or did you forget? Five different nannies. Four separate tutors. Every single director I ever had. Too many production assistants to count.”

Tricia’s wide green eyes, with their strange lack of anything resembling age, widened. “You ungrateful brat. You always were, too. Who do you think was the one carting you around to auditions while your father wasted his life away on that stupid boat? Who do you think paid for headshots? Networked and schmoozed and did whatever it took to make you a star. It should be my name on the Walk of Fame, not yours. You would have nothing if it weren’t for me. Nothing.” She started to pace, and we all watched her, as if we were entranced by the rhythm of her heels on the parquet. “You’d be some smelly fisherman, just like your father, with high blood pressure and a bad heart, talking about nothing but flounder and lobster while battling the bottle. They’re a dime a dozen, Will. You’d be common. That’s it.”

A slight accent emerged the longer she spoke, belying a working-class history underneath Tricia Owens-Baker’s picture-perfect exterior. And in that moment, I knew her secret. Tricia Owens-Baker was a woman who, deep down, hated herself. Hated the town she came from. Hated her lack of manners, education, or refinement—the little things that marked a person who grew up with money from someone who grew up without. The hair, skin, nails, teeth, clothes, jewelry—all of it was a mask, things used to hide a woman who, deep down, was as common as her late husband. As common as me, or anyone else.

But there was something else that struck me in her little speech: the casual use of Will’s name. I hadn’t heard Benny call him Fitz either—then again, he hadn’t really called him anything at all, except maybe “F,” which sounded more like it was to get under his skin. Will was telling the truth—he was Will, at least to anyone that mattered.

“Common,” Will said quietly, “would be better than fucking miserable. But I never got the chance to choose? Did I…Mom?”

Tricia opened her perfectly painted mouth, then closed it tight before whirling around to Benny.

“And you,” she hissed. “You knew about this the entire time, didn’t you? I should sue you for fraud, you ungrateful little shit! My son and my assistance made your career. You’d have absolutely nothing if it weren’t for me, and then you had to steal away my most important asset.”

“Come now, Trish, let’s all take a breath,” Benny said smoothly, holding his arms out like he wanted to give her a hug. “I did what my client asked, from the time he was eighteen and allowed to make those decisions for himself. You can’t really blame me for that, can you? It’s not my fault he didn’t want his mother to manage his career any longer.”

He smirked, like he was really enjoying this. Tricia looked like she wanted to tear his head off.

“That’s all I was anyway, wasn’t I, Mom?”

It was amazing, really, the way with just a few words, all the attention in the room went right back to Will. I was willing to bet that more than anything else, that was what had made him a star. No amount of headshots or auditions could give someone that kind of presence. They called it the “it” factor. Star power. You either had it or you didn’t.

“An ‘asset,’” Will repeated acidly. “I wasn’t a person. I stopped being your son the second you signed my life away to that fucking television show. You want to know why I disappeared? It was that. Right fucking there.”

Tricia’s mouth dropped. “What?”

Will sighed. “What do you want, Mom?”

Tricia examined him again, took a deep breath, and smoothed her hair.

“To start,” she said. “I wanted to see you. See if you were real. That you were—that you were actually alive.”

Will swallowed again, and when he spoke, his voice was thick. “Well…here I am. What else?”

She looked him over once more. “You look like you’ve been living in a dumpster for four years. Honestly, Will, didn’t they have clothes where you were hiding? What have you been doing out there all this time?”

Will frowned. “Is that all?”

Tricia sighed, then took a deep breath. “No. No, it’s not.” She took a step forward, and when she reached out again, Will flinched, leaning away from her fingers.

“I’m sorry I slapped you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Still nothing. Slowly, like she was reaching toward a wild animal, she tried again, and placed a hand lightly on his cheek—the same hand that had hit him earlier, now fitting its fingers to the red print splotched over his skin. Will closed his eyes, as if the touch caused him more pain than anything else. Her fingers lingered for a moment, and then he pulled away, taking a half step behind me.

Tricia started, like the tenderness caused her legitimate shock. Almost as if she was less in control of her actions than when she had physically hit her son.

“Dinner,” she said abruptly. “I want dinner. I deserve that at least, Will. At least.”

I wanted to tell her no. That there was no way in hell Will was going to spend an hour sitting across from a woman who had assaulted him at the first opportunity. I didn’t need more than fifteen minutes with Tricia Owens-Baker to imagine what had driven Will to fake his own death. The woman was positively awful.

But right as Will opened his mouth to respond, Benny’s phone rang.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Hey. Yeah, we’ll be there soon. Okay, sure. Yeah, bye.”

He stowed his phone back in his pocket and turned to Will. “Broker’s waiting. They are going to show the apartment to someone else if we don’t get over there now.”

“Apartment?” Tricia’s green eyes were wide, innocently blinking, like a lost puppy’s. “You’re staying in New York? Can I come?”

Gone was the furious, intense woman whose first reaction to seeing her son again had been to slap him across the face. It was clear that Will had also inherited his mercurial nature from her––her emotions changed on a dime. One minute she was ready to slap him again, the next she wanted to be close. Was she moody or sociopathic? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Will studied her for a long time, and she waited patiently, as if she knew it was only a matter of time before he broke down. I didn’t like the feeling. Not one bit.

“No,” he said finally, as if the one word cost him most of his energy. “No, I think we’ll do this one on our own, Mom.”

Fury bloomed again on Tricia’s face—you could practically see her temperature rising. For a second, I thought she was going to slap her son all over again. My fist flexed involuntarily. I wanted her to get the hell away from us.

But then she took a deep breath, reached back to fluff her hair, and exhaled.

“Dinner, then,” she snapped, already flouncing toward the elevators. “Eight o’clock. Le Corbeau. I’ll tell them to have the back entrance open for you, like always. Don’t be late, and don’t go disappearing again.”

The elevator opened as soon as she pressed the button, and the three of us watched as she sauntered into the car. After the doors shut, Will shuddered, then slid down onto the couch and bent over, dropping his head into his hands.

“Will,” Benny said, checking his phone again. “I’m sorry, but we need to go, man.”

“I need a minute,” Will said, his voice shaking slightly.

I sat beside him and slipped a hand over his shoulders, a feeble gesture of comfort. He turned and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me onto his lap with no regard for the fact that we had an audience.

“Don’t leave me again, Lil,” he whispered as he buried his face into my neck. “I can’t do this without you.”

We rocked silently together, ignoring Benny’s pacing, ignoring the way the rest of the world already seemed to be closing in on us.

“I love you.” His voice was muffled by my skin, but the words were clear enough. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed to hear them again until they were out there. Maybe they were said in desperation, but I was feeling pretty desperate myself these days.

He loved me. Fitz. Will. Whoever he was, whoever he had to be, that simple fact hadn’t changed.

“I’m here,” I said as I stroked his hair. “I’m here.”

Slowly, Will’s shoulders relaxed, though he didn’t move his face for several more minutes. It was only when his heartbeat, pounding next to mine, reached a somewhat normal cadence that he finally released me from his stone grip and blew a long breath out between his teeth.

“Okay,” he said with closed eyes. “Okay, let’s go.”