“It’s fine, I’ll get something on the way home.”
He sighed. “I feel like I shouldn’t ask you what’s up since you haven’t said anything already, but whatever it is, it doesn’t look like being here is making it better.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I mean why don’t you just take the day off? Take a couple days off. Get over whatever is bugging you, and then come back when you’re ready?”
I could’ve argued. I could have lied to him but Easton wasn’t someone I had to protect my pride from. He knew something was bugging me and he wasn’t going to make me ask him for time off.
“That obvious, huh?” I said.
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, but does Maggie have anything to do with this?”
“More than I ever wanted her to,” I said.
“Just take some time off. I’m pretty sure I’ve been there before. It’ll pass but only if you face it first.”
He left and I thought about his offer. I seldom took time off work. In this case, though I was here but I really wasn’t. My focus, desires, everything else were somewhere else. I wasn’t getting anything done here so might as well leave.
There was another knock at my door. I yelled for them to come in. It was my secretary. She waved a stack of envelopes in her hand.
“Mail for you,” she said pleasantly. I frowned and walked over, taking it from her. The envelope on top had my name on it but no address. I picked it up and checked both sides.
“What’s this? Where’d you get these?” I asked. It couldn’t have come like that through the mail.
“It was with the rest of the letters so,” she trailed off and shrugged. It was above her pay grade to know that detail, so it didn’t bother me that she didn’t. I thanked her and she walked out. I ripped it open first because I wanted to know what it was before I threw it out. Inside was a single sheet of paper. My frown deepened. I pulled it out and unfolded it.
The words ‘medical’ and ‘Maggie Weismann’ caught my eye. Test results.
I read the form and my breath caught.
The results were positive. It was a pregnancy test.
Time stopped for a second. My mind went back to a couple of days ago. I knew that you couldn’t get results from a pregnancy test that fast. If she was pregnant, she had been pregnant for a while now. There was no way that I knew the results of her pregnancy test and she didn’t. She knew that she was pregnant and has been for a while, but she didn’t say anything to me.
Why would she do that? Was it because it wasn’t mine? I knew that there was another guy. Still, I felt like it would’ve been nice to know. What if there was a scam going on here? The thought crossed my mind and I felt guilty for thinking that way about Maggie, but it was beyond clear by now that I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.
I had a lot of money and I knew that was why I got as many women as I did. It might’ve been why I got Maggie. What if she was trying to get money out of me, blackmail me some way? Honestly, if it was money that she wanted, she should’ve said the word and I would’ve given her some.
Wait a minute, what the hell was I thinking? I just got some test results from an unmarked envelope and I was taking them seriously. Those test results were reporting something I could have confirmed with Maggie just days ago, but she didn’t mention anything. Who was I going to believe?
I went to my desk and picked up my phone.
Call her.
No, don’t call her.
No, call her. Why not? Let her tell you herself whether she’s pregnant or not.
What were the chances that she was going to give me the truth or even pickup? There was no way that she sent it. This felt like a secret. I felt like if Maggie was pregnant, Missy would know, and therefore Easton would know and the news would get to me somehow but it hadn’t. She had not sent the letter.
I decided to go another way, calling someone else. Just minutes ago I brushed away the idea of calling a P.I. After a few seconds. the gruff male voice came down the line.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Calvin? It’s Anderson. Sorry, this is out of the blue, but I need you to look at something for me.”
Calvin Ford owned a security company and had done some work for us in the past. I rattled off the details that I knew about the letter and he asked me to send him a picture with my phone to see whether there were any obvious signs of it being a fake. I sent the picture.