Monday, January 12, 2015
It's the most mundane of things that can ignite the spark of change in a person's life; perhaps it's the ringing of the phone, taking the long way to work, or in this instance it was a doorbell. The simple ringing of the doorbell. Rob wasn't aware of any visitors that he, Soledad, or his daughters were supposed to have this evening. Sol was still at work, Rob had gotten home early to relieve Cassie after she had picked up the girls from school who were mulling over their homework or at least pretending to. So Rob wasn't exactly sure what waited for him when the doorbell rang. His expectations weren't anything he ever could have imagined once he opened the door that fateful Monday.
It was one of those moments where in retrospect, everything appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary. Rob thought maybe it was a neighbor coming over or a friend of Hayden's dropping by as they often did out of the blue. Once he opened the door, the latter seemed to be the correct answer when he looked at the young redhead girl on his porch holding a box. His first inclination was that Hayden had some cheerleading related project and had the honor of helping one of the older girls on the squad with it. But something in his gut told him otherwise.
"Hi, how may I help you?"
There was a lull before she introduced herself and began talking. Rob wished that he could open his mouth, ask questions, or say something remotely intelligent but he was at a loss for words once she said the words that would change his life in this very moment: "Hi, my name is Kelsey Wright, my mother is Kassidy Wright, and I'm your daughter." His eyes widened, he was left stunned, and the wind had been knocked out of him. She seemed to take notice of his absolute surprise, how he stood there and looked like he had witnessed a car accident and everything had just happened so fast that he didn't have time to react. The girl whose name was Kelsey started talking again before she gave him a box. The box was a treasure trove that took him back to another time, particularly the year 1993 where Rob had been a senior in high school. And maybe it had taken a minute but Rob had remembered the name "Kassidy Wright" once he was given a moment to process.
It had been around the beginning of his senior year when his sister had started hanging around with Kassidy and brought her over to their house, much to the disapproval of his parents. Kassidy was doe eyed and blonde, joined at the hip with his sister who was only an underclassmen, and was not what his parents considered to be suitable dating material. Naturally, this only made Kassidy all that much more alluring to him when they had gotten stuck in study hall together and every day, she sat in front of him. Every day, she would knock her pen off the desk, let it roll under Rob's, and they would both go to pick it up at the same time. The song and dance went on until she finally acknowledged him while visiting Katherine when he had caught her on the patio smoking; she freaked out thinking that the prodigal son was going to rat her out but instead he asked if he could bum one off of her. He had thought about kissing her until Katherine pounded on the sliding glass door and then asked Kassidy why she was hanging out with her brother. "He's nice, I like him." And so, the next day, Kassidy passed him a note in study hall asking him to meet her under the bleachers. Rob obliged, they made out for thirteen minutes until almost getting caught by a coach, and thus began the story of Kassidy and Rob that unceremoniously ended before Rob went off to Princeton when Kassidy broke up with him.
She got a daughter and mementos of a relationship past to remember him fondly by and Rob had an on/off smoking habit to remember her by. Such is life.
Still incapable of intelligent speech, Rob simply led Kelsey into his house and closed the door before they headed to the living room and he finally had a chance to open the box to examine the "evidence". Kelsey had called it "evidence", maybe that was an indicator that she really was his. He had assumed that Kassidy had dumped him because he was going off to Princeton or perhaps for someone else but that was in August, he remembered. He picked up one of those mall photobooth pictures of him and Kassidy, looking from it to Kelsey: she definitely had her mother's eyes.
Evidence. That was how to win a case. Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that something was true. Rob was faced with a mountain of evidence that had erased any reasonable doubt. The twenty year old that sat in front of him was like staring into the future, seeing what Hayden would look like at that age. Kelsey had his chin and her mother's eyes. The box of her mother's items had to be the most damning evidence of all; polaroids of an eighteen year old Rob and a seventeen year old Kassidy, letters that they had wrote back to each other during study hall, ticket stubs from seeing Jurassic Park together at the drive in, and the picture of them in yearbook club standing right next to one another. The proof was there, all he needed was a confirmation.
"Kelsey, I need to call your mother," Rob placed a polaroid back in the box. Kelsey looked away from Rob and fidgeted.
"She doesn't know I'm here."
Surprising. The Kassidy that Rob had known during his teenage years had a certain flair and love of the dramatic gesture. It wasn't hard for him to picture Kassidy getting his information thanks to the internet and send her daughter on a journey to just drop on by her estranged father's house out of the blue. Rob looked up to see his two daughters hanging out at the top of the stairwell. "Hayden! Rebecca!" Rebecca scurried away the instant she was caught. "Go to your room." One dramatic eye roll later and Hayden dragged herself down the hall.
"Kelsey, you're not in trouble." Dad mode kicked in. "But if what you're saying is true which... feels very likely," Rob swallowed hard. "I really need to talk to Kassidy. The sooner, the better. Please." The young girl dug through her purse to retrive her phone and reluctantly gave it Rob after she pulled up her contact information. Same blonde hair, same blue eyes that he remembered. The other line rang as Rob put the phone into speaker mode - anything that Kassidy had to say to Rob, she surely could say in front of her own daughter. Three rings later and a woman picked up, the dull sounds of an Arlington bar in the background.
"Honey! You know better to call mommy on Margarita Mondays," the voice on the other end complained over rowdy music. "Someone better be dead right now or I swear to god---"
"Hello, Kassidy," Rob greeted his high school girlfriend on the other end. "Long time, no talk. Maybe you remember me. Robert Falco? I have your daughter right here with me or should I say... our daughter?"
Kassidy groaned, paused to possibly knock back her drink, and returned to the conversation at hand. "Congratulations, it's a girl," Kassidy remarked. "Do the math, Rob. She's twenty. Birthday in March. Take a trip down memory lane, Rob, does the summer of '93 ring a bell? Possibly the backseat of a---"
"Telling me I had a daughter would've been a really good idea, Kassidy," Rob scolded. "It would've been a good idea to tell me twenty years ago instead of having her show up on my door step after she's grown up."
"You were off at college, okay? I couldn't ruin your precious track to being a great lawyer. Your mommy and daddy wouldn't let me."
"What are you talking about?" Rob felt himself getting flustered, his cheeks red as he rubbed the back of his neck. He knew that Kassidy had gotten a certain joy out of making people feel uncomfortable, him in particular, but he didn't know she had still retained the desire nearly two decades later. The other end remained silent, save for some music in the background. "Kassidy! Talk to me."
"Think about it, Rob. What do your parents do when there's a problem? You used to complain about it all of the time when we'd spend time in the dug out behind school, splitting a pack of camels and a six pack of keystone..." Kassidy sighed. "Look, before you accuse me of screwing around behind your back..." Not that he would've. "She's yours. That's why you called, right? To make sure?" Pause. "It's happy hour, Rob, I've gotta go. But it sure was nice talking to you." The other line went silent and Rob listlessly handed Kelsey her phone back.
"Sorry, she's always like that..."
Rob nodded, "I know."
"What do we do now...?"
Rob mulled over the possibilities: a paternity test, a call to his parents to ask them what the hell Kassidy was talking about, a strategy on how to tell his wife that he had a daughter not much younger than her that he had fathered in high school and plead that he had absolutely no idea that she existed.
"I'm trying to figure that out."
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
"Come on, Kelsey, let's go sign in."
The car ride to Labcorp had been laced with awkward silence as Rob tried to make small talk to Kelsey and keep Soledad's attitude in check. He didn't have to ask, he knew that at first blush there was something fishy about the whole scenario. A twenty year old girl shows up on Rob's door step, announces she's his daughter, and Rob had no knowledge of it. But Rob knew that it wasn't him that Soledad had her suspicions about, it was Kelsey. He looked at the young girl and he could see himself and Kassidy in her, he could see how Hayden would look at her age after she got through her teen years.
The receptionist at the front desk looked at Rob's scrawled signature as well as Kelsey's on the sign in sheet. "It's a good thing you made an appointment," She noted blandly. "It's busy for us today." She pulled up the request information that Rob had submitted the other night. "Results are usually in forty eight to seventy two hours, it costs extra to have them rushed---" Without blinking, Rob handed over his credit card and noted that he'd like them courier delivered, reciting the address of his firm. "Alright, sir, it'll be about twenty minutes."
Once they sat down, there was that awkward silence once again among the pitter patter of the Labcorp waiting room. Rob folded his hands in his lap and then glanced over, noticing Kelsey had done the same exact gesture as she looked focused on a poster on the wall. "They used to do blood work for tests like these but now they can do a buccal swab. It's as accurate but less painful, obviously." Rob cleared his throat. Suddenly he wished he hadn't kicked his smoking habit over a year ago because he could really go for a smoke right now.
"I know."
Soledad looked up from the issue of Good Housekeeping she had snatched, the magazine was probably at least a month old. Rob was sure she wasn't really processing anything it had to say but was trying to pass time as she sat to Rob's left and Kelsey was to his right. "I'm going to go get a bottle of water from the vending machine. I'll be back," She excused herself.
"Can I ask you something, Kelsey?"
"Okay."
Rob sighed, "Did you ever ask your mother about me? At all? I'm curious."
Kelsey fidgeted away from Rob, her eyes focusing on her shoes. Rob felt a tinge of guilt that maybe he hadn't earned the right to pry so soon when they didn't even have the test results in front of them to confirm or deny Kelsey's claims that were supported by mountains of evidence. "Um, once," Kelsey finally answered. "I asked about you and my mom said you never wanted anything to do with me. I didn't ask her again after that."
"What?" Rob didn't need Kelsey to repeat what she had said, those words would forever be etched in his mind. Her mother had lied. That part wasn't surprising if Rob thought back to high school, Kassidy having a flair for distorting the truth - something that had been beneficial for keeping their relationship discreet. This was unforgivable: to lie and to tell a child that her father had never wanted to be a part of her life. Rob swallowed hard. "Kelsey, your mom never told me about you," Rob started off gently. "She... She broke up with me before I went off to college. I had no idea she was pregnant with you." He shook his head, his anger simmering as he tried to keep it at bay. Kelsey wasn't at fault here. "I would've stepped up to the plate if I knew. I would've been there for you because that's what a father's supposed to do; take care of his children. Your mother was wrong, I would've wanted to be in your life and raise you. I..." Rob tapped on the edge of the chair. "I'm sorry. I don't know if it makes things better knowing that because it means your mom had lied to you. I would've been there though, had she asked, had she told me."
Processing. That was the word that Rob always used when he had been fed some hard to swallow piece of information and needed to mull it over before he could react. Rob looked to Kelsey for a reaction and she seemed to be "processing", trying to absorb what she had been told; that her mother had been lying and that Rob would've wanted to be a part of her life if he could. He watched the young girl as she sat there in silence and he noticed that look she had on her face, where she was trying to think of what exactly to say to all of that. Needless to say, if the test results turned out to confirm him being Kelsey's father, Rob could definitively say that she inherited that quality from him rather than her mother.
"If..." He stopped himself as she looked over at him. "Kelsey, I know I wasn't there for the past twenty years but if it's okay with you, I'd like to be a part of your life now." Kelsey simply nodded before a a woman clad in scrubs came out to the waiting room.
"Falco?"
"That's us, after you." The estranged duo made their way down the hall, ready for the simple test that would give an answer to a not so simple problem.
***
Now Rob had forty eight hours and counting to mull over the possibility that he had a daughter. Another daughter. A daughter that he had no idea existed until the day before when she had shown up on his door step. Kelsey was dropped off at her apartment and Sol went off to work after asking him if he was okay. Rob nodded and said he had some business to attend to. By business, that meant trying to get in contact with father, a task he had yet to complete since last night when he had first phoned his father after the hint that his parents had a hand in hiding the pregnancy and subsequent child over two decades ago. Upon arriving home, Rob locked himself in his study with his phone in hand. He dialed his father's number at the Suffolk County Supreme Court House.
"You've reached the office of the Honorable Robert L. Falco, this is Gretchen speaking, how may I help you?"
"Hi Gretchen, could you please tell me if Judge Falco is in right now?"
"Who is this and what is this in regards to?"
Rob groaned, "This is Judge Falco's son, Robert, and this is in regards to a family emergency. It's extremely urgent, thank you."
"One moment please," Gretchen chirped and Rob knew he was on hold as the soft music played in his ear. He rolled his eyes instinctively. There was something particularly grating about having to go through a secretary to speak to his father, then to be put on hold by said secretary as his father took his sweet time to answer the phone. He knew that his father was a busy man but Rob had spent all of last night trying to reach the court house, his childhood home, or the cellphone of either his parents to get in contact with them and was met with voicemail after voicemail. Surely enough, Rob left a voicemail on each being discreet but saying this was an emergency in regards to a "Kelsey and Kassidy Wright" because Rob really didn't want his parents to think catastrophic happened.
But maybe that would've been helpful in getting them to answer the goddamn phone for once in their lives.
Fifteen minutes, a male voice finally answered on the other end. "Office of Judge Robert Falco, this is Judge Robert Falco speaking, how may I help you?"
The way that his father so effortlessly answered the phone perplexed Rob and he seethed a little. "Hello, dad, this is Rob. I've been trying to get in contact with you for more than twelve hours." His voice raised with each word, getting more hostile by the minute. He heard his father tell Gretchen to hold all other calls. Well at least Rob took precedence at the moment.
"Hello, son. I got your messages. I've been trying to figure out how to give you the answers that you need."
"Yeah, dad, could you please explain to me why a twenty year old girl shows up on my door step last night and why her mother says that she couldn't tell me because she wouldn't get any more money from you? Because I'm really puzzled right now."
He heard a sigh on the other end, like Rob was so privileged to get a direct answer that he deserved. "Because your sister brought home one of your pregnant girlfriends and asked us to help out. I fixed the situation, everyone went home happy, Kelsey was provided for. What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is that I have a daughter and no one bothered to tell me for twenty years," Rob seethed on. Then his mind went back to one detail. Katherine. "Dad, what do you mean about Katherine brought her home? Katherine knew?"
"Christ, Rob, we're not the Palins. We couldn't have spun you getting some white trash dipshit knocked up and made it sympathetic. I would've been laughed out of the court room." His father composed himself. "Your sister who was apparently also friends with this Kassidy Wright brought Kassidy into our house because her getting pregnant was apparently our problem. I fixed it for you, Rob. You were on a good path, a great path. I wasn't going to let some mistake you made ruin your future. You were at Princeton, you were top of your class. You weren't meant to provide for this girl nor her child."
"Katherine knew, you knew, mom knew. Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"You know now. The child was provided for financially. You should be thanking me, Rob. I made your mistake go away. I did the best thing I could for you."
Rob let out a sardonic laugh. "Yes, dad. Thank you so much for lying to me. I'm so glad you think of a girl who is technically your granddaughter as a mistake that you had to cover up with money. A girl that grew up thinking her dad wanted nothing to do with her."
Before his father could say anything else, Rob hung up unceremoniously and placed the phone on the desk. He slumped over with his head in his hands, wanting to scream but he was too tired, too numb to open his mouth and say a word. He thought of every time in between leaving for Princeton and the current day where he had seen his parents or his sister and no one had thought to mention that hey, maybe it would be ideal to mention that he had another child. That they had looked at him with smiles on their faces and he wondered how long it took for their guilt to fade away, to be put on the backburner and dealt with later.
Monday had been a sucker punch to the stomach. Today was a knife jammed in his back as his own sister twisted the blade. He could understand his parents covering it up for image reasons but Katherine? What did she have to gain from it all? He picked up his phone again and dialed his sister's number. When her voicemail clicked on, he couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes yet again.
"Katherine, we need to talk. Particularly about Kassidy Wright and my daughter and the fact that you knew about this for the past twenty years and somehow forgot to tell me?" He pressed one for more options, sent it as an "urgent" voicemail, and ran his hands over his face.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
The prescription for Rob's current situation had been to go to court in the morning and then work at home in the afternoons, as prescribed by Soledad. He was suddenly resenting going into family law with the cases in front of him ranging from emancipation to divorce to custody battles when he had a child out there that was possibly his. Except that Kelsey wasn't technically a child but a twenty year old young woman, one who had thought that her biological father had wanted nothing to do with her. The thought tugged at Rob's heart, both breaking his heart and enraging him. He tossed a case file aside. He was into business day number one of waiting for the paternity test results to confirm something he knew in his heart to be true: Kelsey was his daughter. She and Hayden had the same bone structure while she and Rebecca had the same love of music; things he had learned during stilted conversations with the girl.
Then again, her mother lied to her daughter about Rob's involvement in her life. He had been clueless for twenty one years. Her existence was shrouded in secrecy; propelled by his own flesh and blood to protect their image and apparently his own self interest. It didn't come as a surprise that his parents were so image conscious that they would throw money at a problem to make it go away, even when the problem was a girl carrying their son's child. The surprise, the added twist of the knife, was that his own sister had been complicit in keeping a secret of this magnitude. Rob and Katherine had their differences like any brother and sister pair but he never thought she was capable of a betrayal of this magnitude.
Rob gave up on his workload for the day when the doorbell rang frantically. He peeled his weight off the couch, meandered to the door, and his face turned grim when he saw his own flesh and blood standing on the other side.
"Katherine," Rob greeted her plainly. "If you want to talk to me, I suggest using the family attorney."
"We have to talk," Katherine barked. Katherine had never been one to be ignored and used all one hundred and ten pounds of her to push the door open and push past her brother. She heard her brother sigh and dryly add, "No, Katherine, please, come on. I insist. I'd love to hear how you're going dig yourself out of this hole." Rob looked to Katherine who had made herself at home in a recliner with her arms crossed against her chest. "You're supposed to be in Los Angeles peddling some new drug to a room full of doctors."
"You're supposed to be at work."
Rob snorted, "Oh, yeah? Well, there was a family emergency. I can't really give my all to my clients when I'm too busy harping over the fact that everyone neglected to tell me I had a twenty year old daughter and went to great lengths to hide it."
Katherine turned away with what appeared to be a look of guilt in her eyes. Rob didn't want to hazard a guess whether she was ashamed that she had gotten caught in a two decade old lie or that she truly felt remorse for hiding this from her older brother - a person that she had loved, hated, competed with, and openly resented. "It wasn't my choice."
"Explain yourself, Katherine."
Katherine ran her hands through her hair, her breath shaky and her eyes glued to her feet. Rob knew she was either gathering her courage to tell him what had transpired over twenty years ago or if she was looking for an excuse. Rob was a man who prided himself on his ability to read people but one of the few people in the world he could never get a true read on was his younger sister. "Kassidy came to me that fall and she told me she was pregnant and it was yours. I thought she was going to um, ask me to call you at Princeton. I asked her if she wanted me to but she said no, that she broke up with you after she first found out she was pregnant with Kelsey. I was a kid, Rob, I didn't know what to do. I was freaking out more than Kass was. I mean, my best friend was pregnant and my older brother was the one who got her pregnant. I asked her why she wasn't freaking out and you want to know what she told me?" Katherine scoffed, her eyes peppered with tears. "That everything would be okay because our family had money. I thought that maybe she wanted to get money out of mom and dad to... get it taken care of." Katherine, having been raised in the same Roman Catholic household as Rob had been, couldn't bring herself to say the word 'abortion' as saying the word would burn her tongue.
"Mom and dad didn't pay for an abortion. Mom and dad agreed to pay for her medical bills and support Kassidy and the baby as long as she didn't tell anyone that you were the father. She... She didn't even blink. She signed the papers, knowing she'd have a free meal ticket until Kelsey turned eighteen. I wanted to tell you, I told mom and dad that you had to know, this was your baby! But... they made me sign something too with the family lawyer," Katherine choked out. "It was practically a gag order. If I told you or anyone else, I'd be disinherited." Rob's face was emotionless, Katherine was a wreck. "Rob! I was sixteen! What was I supposed to do?"
"You've been lying to me for twenty one years because you wanted your trust fund and inheritance," Rob scoffed. He had been punched in the gut once again this week. "How could you?"
"You think this has been easy for me, Rob?!" Katherine stood up and all five foot five of her was suddenly in her brother's personal space, spitting and yelling in his face. "Yes, maybe on some level I liked the fact that my stupidly perfect brother finally fucked up but they protected you! You and your stupid future. I would've been disowned and on the streets if I had gotten pregnant."
"It's nice to know that you're making this about you, as you make everything else about yourself."
"No, Rob, listen," Katherine practically screeched. "It has been easier to hate you for twenty years than to feel guilty about this. That's how I've had to survive. That's the only way I could live with myself. Kassidy never talked to me again, mom and dad acted like this was my fault because she was my friend and you just couldn't help yourself from screwing her! God forbid Rob does anything other than shit rainbows and be the perfect fucking son!" Katherine ran her hands over her face, pacing around, as Rob wondered if at some point whether or not steam would come out of her ears. "Then you met Leanne and I wanted so badly to hate her, to scare her away, but... she was nice to me. Genuinely and truly nice to me. She came from a good family, so she wasn't after your money. She loved you. She was my best friend and I wanted to tell the both of you but... I couldn't. I signed that paper. Then Leanne got killed by that neanderthal of a drunk driver and... there was this small part of me that was relieved that I wouldn't have to look at her every time you visited and feel like a horrible person. And then... Sol came around and she just had to get me this stupid fucking bracelet to try to win me over." Katherine tried to rip a charm bracelet adorned with horse shoes and horses off her wrist but gave up. "How was I supposed to know that your kid was going to come looking for you?"
Rob seethed. His fist was clenched at his side. He wouldn't dare raise a hand to his sister or any other woman but maybe, just maybe, slamming his fist into the wall would relieve some of the tension coursing through his body. It didn't make any sense because then he'd have to patch up a wall and make a doctor's visit. It was more trouble than it was worth, much like Katherine herself."You weren't, Katherine, but I expected better from you. I expected my sister wouldn't be able to sit on a secret of such magnitude. But you know what, you're just as much of a heartless bitch as practically everyone we know thinks you are. How can you be surprised that someone like Kassidy only wanted to be your friend because you were rich when that's probably your only redeeming quality?"
It happened so fast. Rob could feel Katherine's hand making a connection with his face, her ring scraping against his skin as his face burned from the impact but he didn't see it. He didn't really react. All he could think was that for a petite one hundred and ten pound woman who did dressage and ballet that she had one hell of an arm and had put all of her weight into that one slap. When he came back to reality, Katherine's eyes were as wide as saucers and filled with tears as her lips were curled in utter contempt.
Rob held his face and stared down his sister with rage in his eyes. "Get out before I call the police and get you arrested for assault. I don't want to see you. I don't want to hear from you. Just get out."
"You're bluffing. You may be mad but you're my brother, you wouldn't have me arrested!"
"And you're my sister, I thought you wouldn't choose your inheritance over me. I guess we both underestimated each other."
"Please, Rob, I need to explain! I need to make this right!" Katherine pleaded hysterically. Her bright blue eyes were filled with tears but he still didn't know if she was ashamed for getting caught in her lie or if she truly felt remorse. At the end of the day, Katherine thought of one person and one person only: herself.
"Get out!" Rob's irritation grew. His sister was acting like a petulant, self righteous little child. He didn't want the drama of getting the police involved but he wanted her out of his sight, as far away as she could get. He grabbed her arm and tried to lead her to the door but he was really no match for a girl who had grown up as the only daughter among three sons. She knew how to be scrappy.
"No, Rob, get off me!" Katherine balled up her fists and pounded her brother in the chest. But Rob was a statue, completely and totally unaffected by her hysterics and babbling."Rob, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't think it would happen like this. We're family, we're not supposed to be like this. This is wrong! Please, please don't make me leave. Let's sit down and talk about this, like adults. Please, Rob." Rob firmly placed a hand on each of her arm to stop her from thrashing about.
"There's nothing you can do. Please, leave."
"Don't do this, don't shut me out. I need to make this right. You're my brother, I love you. I'm sorry. Tell me, tell me how I can fix this. I need... I need to fix this."
"You want to do me a favor? You want to fix this?"
"Isn't that what I've been saying? Goddamn it, Rob," Katherine screeched. She felt to the floor, a child in the middle of a temper tantrum. Rob looked at the puddle of Katherine on the floor and picked her up, steadying her on her feet.
"Get out of my face, get out of my life. I don't want to see you again," Rob hissed. He wasn't a man who succumbed to anger but he couldn't shake the feeling of betrayal, of the knife stuck in his back by his parents, and the twist of the knife by Katherine. He always defended her, always stood up for her, always tried to say something to defend her. Maybe his younger sister was in fact the heartless bitch that he had thought was all an act, all a farce so she wouldn't appear vulnerable. There was nothing inside of her that was good or pure.
"If you were really my sister, you wouldn't have done this to me. You're not my sister. You're nothing. You may as well be dead." Katherine's eyes welled up and Rob's went dark with fury. Her brother was supposed to be forgiving, diplomatic, and righteous. He was supposed to understand that she was a stupid teenager who succumbed to the threats of her parents - mostly their father - in an effort to gain their approval. Instead, it made her a pariah. It made her the villain and that was a part Katherine knew how to play all too well.
The second slap didn't sting as much as the first. There was less concentrated effort to create the maxiumum amount of pain possible. Katherine's hands and body shook too much from the hysterical sobbing to yield her weight and force into that slap, but all she wanted was to physically hurt her brother as much as he had shattered her heart by saying that she may as well have been dead. Rob still held his face as Katherine barked a hysterical "Fuck you" at him and shoved him away from her. It was easier to seethe than to show the utter devastation that she felt, not that Rob noticed either emotion as he tried to retain his balance after the shove.
"Goodbye, Katherine."
Katherine stomped away in a fit of rage. As expected, Katherine slammed the door closed for dramatic emphasis before retiring to her car. Had Rob looked out the window, he would've seen his younger sister in the front of the seat with her head against the wheel of her shiny and expensive rental car, slumped over and crying for a good ten minutes before she composed herself and peeled out of the driveway. Instead Rob had gone to the kitchen, picked out the ice packs he had used to nurse running injuries, then placed the pack against his face. He looked down at his phone and dialed his wife.
"Hey, Soledad," Rob greeted the woman on the other end, trying to muster up some sense of cheer and politeness. "Uh, funny you should ask... We just had a visitor at the house. Katherine." Rob adjusted the ice pack on his face as he listened to his wife ramble on, asking him question after question. "I'll tell you all of the details when you get home but um, it didn't go well. I called her a heartless bitch at one point and I'm icing my face." Around this time, Rob heard Sol say something in Spanish, recognizing the word "puta" but not much else. "I threatened to call the police and charge her with assault if she didn't get out. Needless to say, she left. Uh, I'm fine as can be. My sister smacked me in the face while she was wearing a ring and knew about everything for a good twenty years but couldn't say anything because she signed a gag order stating that if she told anyone, she'd get disinherited. So I'm a little hurt over the fact that my sister chose money over integrity. I thought she was better than that. Look, I'll be fine, I have work I can be doing to get my mind off of everything. I'll see you when you get home. I love you. Bye."
As Rob poured over case files and California state laws for the better part of the next four hours, he didn't know he'd be trading one confrontation with a family member for another. It was a blessing that in the mean while, Rob had enough of other people's family drama to bury himself in to get his mind off of his own. A couple fighting over who had the right to a vacation house in Napa in their divorce was comforting territory. It was simple. It was black and white. It wasn't the ethically gray mess that his own family had thrust him into over two decades ago.
His phone rang. His father's picture showed up on the phone as Rob shook his head. The hits just came on coming. Luckily, this one was all the way in Long Island.
"Rob, you have five seconds to explain to me why this second year associate little twit of yours is threatening to sue me unless I send her eighteen years worth of financials before her little clock runs out."
"Hi to you too, dad. Thanks for asking how I am, by the way. I'm still processing this whole situation where everyone neglected to tell me that I have a twenty year old daughter running around."
"This is no time to be petty and dramatic. Your wife is threatening to sue me," Robert Sr snapped.
The younger Falco groaned, "Well, your daughter told me about the gag order you made her sign after she barged into my home. You're lucky she's not calling you for legal advice after she smacked me in the face because I got her arrested."
"What?"
"You had Katherine sign a gag order so she wouldn't tell anyone that I had a bundle of joy out there in the world. If she broke the rules, she'd be disinherited. So naturally, she screwed over her own brother in favor of money, as is the Falco way. Isn't that right, dad? We just threaten to take money away or give it to someone to make a problem magically disappear."
"Are you really such a sad excuse for a man that you sicced your wife on me?"
Rob scoffed, "Actually, dad, I had no idea that Soledad was suing you. She wants a paper trail to help prove that Kassidy and Kelsey - by the way, that's your granddaughter's name in case you forgot - were both taken care of in case Kassidy comes looking for financial aid of some sort. It's for my own good, dad, and you do things for my own good. Like neglect to tell me about a child so they can believe that I didn't want them so I could go off to college and law school to make the family proud."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Rob..."
"You were a district attorney once, dad. I'm sure you remember that deliberately hiding things from the court isn't a good thing and usually comes back to bite you in the ass if the defense gets a hold of it," Rob explained. "Do me one simple favor and just send Soledad the damn financials. By the way, Grandpa, congratulations. It was a girl." Before his father could protest, Rob hung up on him and slumped back on the couch.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Rob sank back in the driver's seat of his car after a lengthy hearing at court. He let out a tired sigh, knowing that today was the day where he knew definitively whether or not Kelsey was one hundred percent his. He considered the evidence, as any good lawyer would do: the box of secret treasures that told the story of Rob and Kassidy's relationship back in 1993, how Kelsey resembled Hayden, and the lengths that his family had gone to in order to hide all of this from Rob. In the past seventy two hours, Rob had learned that his parents weren't remotely trustworthy but he also knew that unless there was unwavering evidence that Kelsey was his that they would've written Kassidy off when Katherine brought her to them that fateful autumn.
He perused the messages on his phone. There were several voice mails left from Katherine as well as missed calls. Her words were going to fall upon death ears anyway, so he really felt no remorse about deleting the messages where she begged and tearfully pleaded for him to hear her out. No. He couldn't. She had betrayed him for twenty one long years. It became painfully clear why Katherine often acted so hostile towards him and as much as he wished he could sympathize for her, he wouldn't allow himself to. It was easier for Rob to see the world in black and white, in right and wrong, rather than to wade into gray territory. It was easier for Rob to be angry at than to be hurt by his own sister, by his own parents. Rob put the key in the ignition and made his way back to Newport Beach.
Once he reached the parking lot, Rob sat in his car for a few minutes. There was this silly part of him that didn't want confirmation either way, that wanted to say suspended rather than to have the results delivered by a courier. He knew it was childish to want to will these things away but it had been painful to explain everything to his daughters and to his wife. Soledad hadn't faulted him after he insisted until he was blue in the face that he had no knowledge of Kelsey prior to this week. His daughters tried to wrap their minds around the reality that their beloved grandparents and Aunt Katherine had gone behind their dad's back. Hayden had angrily blocked Katherine on her phone from contacting her. "I'm not talking to Aunt Kat anymore, dad. She lied to you. Families don't do that to each other."
Rob's phone rang and he was about to toss it if he saw Katherine's name on the caller ID but instead, it was a family member that he actually found himself wanting to talk to; one that had no hand in this complete disaster.
"Yes, Will?"
"Oh thank Christ, I thought they locked you in the nut house and threw away the key because you went catatonic."
"It's nice to hear from you too, Will," Rob replied in mild amusement to the voice on the other end.
The one thing about Will Falco was that Will always had something to say about anything and everything. Every word in the English language had been uttered by him and he could string them together for any and all situations. Instead, there was silence from his end save for the occasional chewing of Will's lunch and the slurp of a soda can.
"So, uh, Rob... You know that I had no idea about this, right?"
"Yeah, Will, I know."
"Because I wouldn't pull that kind of shit, you know? This is so... fucked up. It's like a soap opera." Will's speech was rapid and it wasn't due to him being so invested in a rant where he couldn't stop talking. Rob could tell that his brother was almost in a panic. "I was what, twelve or thirteen when all of this went down? Rob, come on, I was too busy trying to unscramble the porn on the television---"
"I really didn't need to know that," Rob cringed. "Will. Will. Calm down. I know you're not involved in this."
"Because I'm not shady as fuck like our sister and our parents---"
"No, because you can't keep secrets for the life of you," Rob joked. The two brothers had a laugh after Will told Rob to go fuck himself, that he could keep secrets and Rob countered that since Will had been born, he couldn't keep anything to himself. Will explained that he had gone facebook stalking once he had gotten a name and confirmed what Rob had thought all along, that Kelsey did look like Hayden and a younger version of their mother all wrapped in one. Will told him that everything would work out and Rob was apprehensive but chose to agree with Will because if he argued with him, he wouldn't be off the phone for the next half hour thanks to Will's infamous tangents. They parted ways with Will giving him one last bit of support on the phone.
The comfort of Will's phone call dissipated as Rob met his wife in his office with binders upon binders of overwhelming evidence that his parents had in fact paid Kassidy for the past eighteen years. Evidence. Cold hard evidence. He adjusted his glasses on his face and took one of the binders, looking at check after check with his father's distinct signature on them written out to Kassidy or her mother but was brought back to reality when Soledad started talking college tuition. Rob knew the facts that if this were a child support case that technically he'd be responsible for Kelsey financially until she graduated college. He rubbed his forehead and pushed away the binder.
"That's another issue for another time," Rob replied. "I uh, we could draft up something saying that..." Rob rubbed the back of his neck. "Do you know when Kelsey or the courier is supposed to be here?" He took the lunch that Soledad had ordered and picked at it. His appetite was null and void but he needed to busy himself somehow that didn't involve thumbing through his family's financials. He mentioned to Sol how Will had called him, insisting that he was about as clueless as Rob was and how he offered his support, as well as how Will's facebook stalking had led him to the same conclusion that Rob had: Kelsey looked a lot like Hayden but with a splash of their mother. He picked at potato salad until there was a knock on the door and his assistant was in tow with Kelsey.
"Rob? You said that if a uh, Kelsey Wright came to bring her to your office." Rob ushered Kelsey in before his assistant closed the door and Kelsey hesitantly came in. He pulled a chair out for her and rummaged through the take out bag.
"There's extra in here, if you're hungry. If you don't want an iced tea, there's a soda machine in the lobby," He offered. Kelsey nodded in thanks and peered through the bag, taking a side salad and the iced tea.
The three of them sat in a tense, impatient silence. Rob tried his best to engage Kelsey in small talk that didn't have anything to do with paternity or her mother or anything about the situation at hand. He asked her about college, her hobbies, and tried to get some sense of how she had turned out without his involvement. All things considered, Kelsey hadn't been scarred completely by Kassidy's influence. She asked what deli they had gotten lunch from and told them it was better than one of the delis she lived by in Irvine, wondering if they delivered.
Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door before his assistant looked at all of them. "Um, the courier delivered this for you." Upon hearing those words, the entire mood of the room shifted. Rob instructed for his assistant to hand it over. He stared at the manila envelope for a moment before opening it. The piece of paper had the results there, staring him in the face, and he swallowed the lump in his throat. Rob got caught up in his own little world before he was snapped out of it.
"Well? What does it say," Sol interjected. He looked to a nervous Kelsey.
"The alleged father, Robert L. Falco Jr, cannot be excluded as the biological father of the child, Kelsey N. Wright. Based on the analysis of the DNA loci listed above, the probability of paternity is 99.9999%." He placed the paper on the table. "In plain English, that means I'm your father."
Rob didn't know if he felt relief or absolute terror in that moment.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Other than a case of amnesia, there was only one good way to end this daunting week from hell: court. Rob thrived in the court room. He was the gladiator, his words were his sword, and the court room was his arena. He fought tooth and nail for his client, as any good lawyer would, and he knew how to expose the weakness of the other party with facts and logic rather than cruelty.
In the court room, most importantly, Rob had complete and total control. It was where he felt most at home, where he felt peace and it helped purge him of all of his worries for those few hours he was tied up in court. It had worked for those past three hours. Rob had no thoughts of his duplicitous parents. His backstabbing sister didn't cross his mind nor did the paternity test results that said that without a doubt, Kelsey Wright was his own daughter and it had been the one thing Kassidy hadn't lied about these past twenty years.
Rob felt relief but that would soon disappear into thin air.
He may have emerged from the court room victorious and held onto that feeling once he entered the firm buildings but it was going to come to a screeching halt. He approached his assistant's desk with a skip in his step, ready to ask if she had any messages for him.
"Well, let's see. Mrs. Grant called, she says she's willing to settle with her husband if she gets her kids every other Thanksgiving. A Mr. George Crawford called about having you handle his Prenuptial agreements with his soon to be second wife." The young girl at her desk handed him a few files before he was about to enter his office. "Oh! Mr. Falco! Ummm, I don't know how to tell you this..."
"Tell me what?"
"I'm really confused right now. Um, a woman came by and insisted on seeing you. She said she'd wait for you in your office and I wasn't going to let her because I didn't recognize her at all but um, she said she was your daughter's mother? Kassidy something or other? Kassidy with a K?" Rob's face turned white before he stopped himself from putting his key in the door and turned back to his assistant. "I don't mean to be... blunt, Mr. Falco, but I thought the mother of your daughters was..." Her eyes darted nervously. "Deceased?"
"Just hold my calls, Dana," Rob insisted before unlocking his door.
Legs. It had been the first thing he had noticed about Kassidy Wright over twenty years ago. A nice pair of long legs. The girls at his private school had a habit of pushing the boundaries of the dress code by seeing just how far they could hike up their plaid skirts before getting reprimanded by the nuns. Legs, a plaid skirt, and scuffed tennis shoes. It had been those legs he had noticed during study hall when he had bent down to pick up the fluffy feather pen she had dropped, the pen that she would write with as she passed scandalous notes to him during study hall about him sneaking away after track and field practice with her in the back of the car his father had given him for his sixteenth birthday. This time around, scuffed tennis shoes were replaced by stiletto heels and the plaid skirt by a tight pencil skirt but those legs hadn't changed.
Kassidy. Damn. She wasn't quite Helen of Troy, she didn't start wars but she could still leave so much destruction in her path. To a very sheltered Rob, that had been exciting. She was the perfect way to silently rebel against parents who would've disowned him for dating someone so far out of their income bracket.
Rob rubbed his forehead and before he knew it, his mouth moved without his permission. "Fuck. Me."
Some other things didn't change much in twenty years. The woman before him knew that Rob rarely swore except in fits of anger or surprise. This was probably both for him, given the nature of that phone call that they had on Monday. "Hi, Robert," the blonde woman looked up from the issue of Forbes she had barely been interested. "Now, Robert, don't you think it's in poor taste to talk dirty to me when our daughter is... I don't know, somewhere in this building?" Her lips curled into that damn smirk that she would sport when she knew that she had made him insanely uncomfortable.
"Kassidy, what are you doing here?"
"Well... I thought since the cat was out of the bag, we could talk this out face to face and I could visit my daughter at the same time. I don't even know how she found out who the hell you were and how to find you."
Rob retreated to his desk. He needed to put a physical barrier between them. "You must have kept a box of your old stuff from high school. She brought it to my house. Yearbooks, pictures, notes..."
Kassidy froze and wrinkled her nose in annoyance. "God, Kelsey, you snooping little shit. Ugh!" She flung the magazine that she really hadn't been reading to the side of her. She rubbed her neck. "You do realize that she probably read our little notes, don't you?"
Now it was Rob's turn to revel in Kassidy's misery. "Yeah, you were pretty prolific. Very... imaginative. I guess that's how for so long you were able to lie about how I didn't want to be in her life when in reality, I didn't know she existed. Because you broke up with me instead of telling me."
"What was I supposed to do, huh? Tell you so you could either reject me and your daughter or so your parents could cut you off and we'd be living on the wrong side of town like some white trash teen mommy and daddy? I looked out for myself, I looked out for my daughter. Your parents provided for me and I did what I had to so I could provide for my daughter. I looked out for myself, who else was going to?"
"Our daughter, Kass. You mean our daughter," Rob rolled his eyes. "I would've stepped up and helped you out but you ran away. You lied to her."
"If I told her the truth, the money would dry up. You can thank your parents for that little stipulation of our deal," Kassidy hissed. She rose up from the chair she had been sitting in and wandered around Rob's office in curiosity. She finally landed upon his desk, bending down and picking up a picture. "Aw, Kels always wanted a sister, now she gets two. Good thing I didn't have to give them to her..." Rob snatched the frame out of her grasp. "Easy, grabby hands, I want to see this great life that your parents wanted you to make for yourself and see if it was worth it for you." She picked up another photo and held it out of Rob's grasp. His wedding photo. "Wow, Rob, I'm seeing a pattern here. You've always liked them younger, haven't you?" Rob stood up to grab the frame away from her but Kassidy insisted on playing a childish game of keep away. "Oh come on, for second wife material, she's pretty. You have nothing to be ashamed of. How's she measure up to the first wife? More importantly, how do I measure up to baby mama number two?"
"She died four years ago, Kassidy. Drop it."
He saw her face fill up with shame. "Shit."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
"What do you want, Kass? Money? Are you having trouble making ends meet with her tuition or what? Why are you here?"
The cryptic, mysterious bit had lost its appeal since high school. Leaving Rob guessing annoyed him more than anything these days. Kassidy simply shrugged and leaned on Rob's desk as he tried to get a read on her. Absolutely nothing.
"I'm done being toyed with, Kass. I've had enough of that this week with my own family and the last person I want to toy with me is you," Rob sternly demanded. Unfortunately for Rob, he still got the same reaction from Kassidy as he would have in high school. His anger somehow made him even more alluring to her.
And so, she pouted, just as she did as a teenager when she didn't get her way. "Oh, you're so tragically sexy when you get pissed off." She patted the side of his face before Rob gently took her hand and plucked it off his face. "I see how it is. Your new wife probably isn't too pleased about this whole arrangement, I take it? It kind of throws a wrench in the whole honeymoon phase, doesn't it? How much older is she than Kelsey anyway?"
"That's not relevant. What do you want?"
"Ooh, loaded question. I guess what I want to say is I'm setting up shop here for a little bit. You want to get to know your daughter? Fine. I'm a part of the package too. Take it or leave it. I'll uh, let you know if we need anything, since you're so adamant that you would've supported her had you known about her. Maybe it could have been us living the high life in Laguna Beach together but I can't complain. I've done well enough for myself." She smiled and Rob knew he was making a deal with the devil because Kassidy had that shit eating grin where Rob knew that he was in trouble, that she was going to come in and destroy everything in her path like it was fucking high school all over again.
"You have to go now," Rob went to usher her out of his office. She picked her purse up off the floor and walked in front of him as Rob silently cursed himself because she was still all legs and he really wanted the senior year flashbacks he was getting to stop. He breathed out as he held the door open for her. "I do want to be involved in Kelsey's life but my parents took care of the financial part. I've read the paper work. I'm not a bank, I'm her father. Take it or leave it."
Kassidy huffed and crossed her arms against her chest, "Fine."
"And I'll get this all in writing and documented. All you have to do is sign."
"You fucking Falcos and your damn legal paper work," She muttered through gritted teeth. She sashayed away from him. "We'll be seeing each other." As she walked away, Rob would've guessed God had quite the sense of humor as fate would have it, the mother of his first child and the current wife were about to run into one another, two storm fronts about to collide into one another.
"Oh, Rob! She's even cuter in person." Rob cringed but couldn't tear himself away from the car crash in front of him. Kassidy within ten feet of Soledad. Kassidy near Soledad. Kassidy talking to Soledad. He watched the blonde turn to the brunette. "Let me tell you, you really lucked out with that guy over there in more ways than one, if you know what I'm saying." And she was loud enough for everyone in a twenty feet radius to hear her flapping her gums. Just when he thought it was safe when Kassidy had headed towards the exit, she opened her mouth. Again.
"Rob, where the hell is our damn kid?!" Kassidy groaned and stomped her feet. "KELSEY NOELLE, get your skinny ass out here right this second."
What a week.
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