Chapter 9: The Handkerchief

“Do not answer it,” Zola said.

“If I do not answer, he will send a car, and then he will send two, my father does not understand the word no,” I said, and I pressed the button.

“Is it true?” Gordon asked, with no hello.

“Father, I can explain,” I said.

“I did not ask for an explanation, I asked whether it is true, I have just read my daughter’s name in a gossip column next to the words father unknown,” Gordon said.

“It is true that I am pregnant,” I said, and I closed my eyes.

The silence on the line lasted so long that I checked the screen.

“Come to the house, now, and come alone,” Gordon said.

“She is not coming alone,” Kade said, taking the phone gently out of my hand. “Good evening, sir, this is Kade Voss, we will be there in twenty minutes.”

The line went dead.

“He hung up on you,” I said, staring at him.

“Then I will have to be more charming in person,” Kade said.

“I will stay here with ice cream and a bad attitude, text me if you need me to bring a frying pan,” Zola said, hugging me so hard that my ribs creaked.

In the back of the car, my hands were so cold that I tucked them under my legs, and I watched the dark highway slide past the window.

“He is going to say I am a disappointment,” I said.

“Has he said it before?” Kade asked.

“Every year on my birthday, in a card, it says congratulations on another year of hard work, and he thinks that is a compliment,” I said.

“Tonight he can say it in front of me, and you do not have to fight him alone, that is all I am offering,” Kade said.

“Why are you being so kind?” I asked quietly.

“I am not kind, I am rude, I told you that, I am only rude to everyone except you tonight, and I do not know why,” Kade said.

My throat tightened, and I reached across the seat and held his hand in the dark, and neither of us said rule three.

The study smelled like cold coffee and old leather, and my father sat behind his desk with the headline printed out in front of him, his reading glasses low on his nose.

“Sit, Mina,” Gordon said.

“I will stand, thank you,” Kade said.

“I was not speaking to you, Voss,” Gordon said, without looking up.

“Then I will speak to you, sir, the baby is mine,” Kade said.

Gordon took off his glasses slowly. “I see, so the merger I arranged has a new clause.”

“This has nothing to do with the merger,” I said.

“It has everything to do with the merger, you were supposed to meet him once, shake his hand, and sign a paper, and instead the whole city is reading about it, do you know what the banks will say when they see this headline, do you know what the board will say?” Gordon asked.

“Is that all you can think about, the board?” I asked.

“Somebody has to think about it, you certainly did not,” Gordon said.

“I did not plan this, Father, I did not plan any of it, I found out my boyfriend was cheating, I went out for one night, and now I am pregnant, and I am scared, and you have not asked me one time if I am all right,” I said, and my voice broke open on the last word.

For the first time in my life, my father had no answer, and something crossed his face and was gone before I could name it.

“Are you all right?” he asked, in the stiff voice of a man reading a word from a language he did not speak.

“No,” I said. “I have not been all right for a very long time.”

Kade moved a step closer, not touching me, only near, like a wall I could lean on if I chose to.

“Marriage will fix the headline,” Gordon said, looking at the desk again. “A Hale carrying a Voss child, in wedlock, the papers will call it a merger of two families.”

“I was going to say that,” Kade said.

“I did not ask you,” Gordon said. “Mina, you will marry him, and you will do it quietly, and you will do it as a Hale, with a Hale agreement, and if you refuse, I will take back your seat at Hale Living and you will have nothing but your name.”

“Then take it,” I said.

“Mina,” Gordon said.

“Take it, Father, take the seat and the office and the title, I have been running that company since I was twenty two, and I did it because I wanted you to look up from the numbers and see me, and you never did, not once, not even when I made you forty million dollars in one quarter,” I said, and the tears ran down my face and I did not wipe them.

“That is enough,” Gordon said.

“It is not enough, it has never been enough, you took me to the office when other girls went to the park, you gave me a company when I wanted a hug, and when I finally made one mistake, one, the only thing you can say is that it will hurt the board,” I said.

“You will not speak to me that way,” Gordon said, and he stood, and then he coughed.

It was a short, dry cough at first, and then it came again, deeper, and he turned his back to us and pressed a white handkerchief to his mouth.

“Father?” I said.

“It is nothing, a cold, I have had it for weeks,” Gordon said, waving a hand behind him.

“You should see a doctor,” I said.

“I said it is nothing, go home, both of you, we will discuss the wedding tomorrow,” Gordon said.

I stood there with my heart pounding, and Kade touched my elbow, and I turned to leave, and Gordon’s desk lamp caught the handkerchief as he lowered it and shoved it into his pocket.

There was a red stain in the center of the white cloth, a dark red stain the size of a coin.

“Father,” I whispered, but the door was already closing behind us.