Way Down We Go

Chapter Sixteen

"Hey," I answered the phone quietly, wrapping my legs around themselves behind me. I nestled into the soft chair in which I sat-lay upon, as if a babe seaking comfort from her mother's breast. I sat in the private plane in which I owned, everybody bar the pilots and myself asleep from the long journey from Europe, a few weeks after my bombshell announcement.

"Hey, Marie." Stephane Narciesse said into my ear. "Are you on your way back from wherever?"

"Switzerland," I clarified uselessly. "and yeah, we took off a couple hours ago." I said, fixing my oversized white hoodie and picking at a stray piece of thread from my black leggings, briefly looking towards the darkened sky and the dim lights of the seating area, before focusing on my rather uncomfortable phone call.

"Good." he said, or rather breathed. "The lawyers and I are in NY, we're meeting you here, right?"

"Yeah, we'll get some food and see what we should do from here." I said, my voice soft and sad. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I hadn't had contact with my husband for weeks, but had been told by Kenna that he had moved some of his stuff in with her and Sebastian, in one of their guest houses. After our fight about Lola, he had left, and later, so had I. I had some European work to get done, but had been advised to pretend that nothing was wrong with my marriage or my relationship until we figured out the next steps of our plan.

"Okay," his voice was unusually sad and almost defeated. I frowned a little. Narciesse was an ambitious viper of a man, anything less was almost as unsettling as when he was on form. "There's a chance, a fifty fifty chance, that the baby could-" he stopped. I nodded, understanding his silent words better than I did his spoken ones. There indeed was a fifty-fifty chance that Lola's kid was her husbands, and not mine. 

I also knew that if the child did indeed belong to it's mothers husband, it wouldn't exactly lessen my husband's betrayal, but would lessen the long standing consequences of his drunken choice. Perhaps we could get past what had happened if the child didn't belong to Francis. Maybe Lola and Stephane could get past her infidelity if she was pregnant with his child, and not Francis'. I could only hope and pray that that was the case.

I looked towards the sky again, watching the silver twinkling stars in the dark raven sky. I inhaled slowly, leaning my head back into my cell phone.

"Yeah, I know." I whispered. It was so strange, to have to comfort a man like Stephane. It was even stranger the possibility that he and I may -one day, someday soon, no less- share a step child. The subject of children was odd to the two of us. Of course, it had came up plenty of times, but neither of us thought the reality would be so soon.

Even as a teenager, when I had lost my own baby, more than one in multiple different circumstances, I knew I wanted to be a mother. One day, I did want to have a child, many children, and a big family. To give them what I never had and share a life with the man I swore myself to. But I never wanted to even start trying until I was at least thirty years old, when I had achieved enough fame and stardom and success that I could slowly fade into the shadows to play mother and wife, for those two things to overtake the role of celebrity. But I was so young now, although my eyes and my soul were old, I was still so technically young. I wasn't ready to step up and be a step mother. I didn't even know to raise a child, not having had a childhood myself. How could I do it, now? Help my husband and my friend raise their child, make it my step child? To love it as if it carried my own blood? How could I do that?

Stephane on the other hand was different. He had children already. Had them young and rared them as their mothers died and left. The most notable were the eldest, Eduard and Luc. The eldest were older than Lola herself. How could they have a sibling -possibly siblings- that was so much younger than them? Why was the situation so complicated, and Francis and Lola being the commodity to make it so? Stephane didn't want any more kids until he met Lola, and I'm not quite sure he wanted them now. She was always a broody girl, having to practically beg her husband to even think about procreating with her, she had told the girls and I on multiple different girls nights and trips. But to fight so hard for the mere prospect of a child, only to give it up in an instant? What did that make her?