Page 146 of Run
“Ari doesn’t drink, and I don’t drink much these days, either.”
“Oh, right.” She takes the other glass and shoots that as well before pushing both to the side and resting her forearms back on the sticky bar top. “Bonnie Wilcox is Ari’s biological mother.”
I stare at her, and she side-eyes me. “What—how long? What the hell, Lena?”
“Shhhh, keep your voice down, please.” She has the decency to look embarrassed.
“You’ve known all along who her mother is?” She nods. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I push away from the bar and pace backward a few steps before coming back. “You knew how hung up she was on finding her mother. You knew!”
“Exactly.” I sink back down onto the stool as I stare at her. “It’s complicated,” she says.
“I’m pretty smart. I can follow.”
She breathes in and out through her nose.
“George and I dated for years before we got married. We met in college and had a lot of good times. We continued dating long after, and when he proposed, I knew he was only doing it because he felt he needed to make a move one way or the other. He loved me. I never doubted that. But it wasn’t that all-consuming, I’ll-die-without-you kind of love you read about. But we got married, and we were happy, for a while …”
Lena gets Joe’s attention and points to the tap, and he begins filling a glass.
“But then he started to get distant. It took a while for me to figure it out, but eventually I noticed that he was, well, happy. And I knew he was happy because of someone else. I deduced that it had to either be someone at work, or at the nonprofit where he volunteered to help with people with disabilities. The latter more likely, because everyone there was just sogood, you know? Fundraising and volunteering and all that.”
Joe places Lena’s beer down in front of her and she immediately picks it up and takes a sip.
“Anyway, that gets even more complicated, but the end result is he got this other woman, Bonnie, pregnant. He was honest with me when it happened. He and I hadn’t really talked about having kids, even though we were married. We were avoiding it, probably because we both knew our relationship was a dead end. But when he told me, I could tell he was torn apart because he betrayed me, but he was also so fucking happy. I could see it. And that just gutted me. So, there he was, tied to someone else forever. Someone he obviously loved.”
I nod as I look down at my hands clasped on the bar top.
“And then I did something I’m not proud of. Something really selfish.” She looks me in the eye. “I told him that he and I needed to raise the baby. I told him I would go to the courts and tell them Bonnie wasn’t fit to be a mother, and I’d blackmail him and get him into trouble—”
“Blackmail? How?”
“—and that I would make sure the baby went into foster care if he and I didn’t raise her. Because that was the only way I could keep George. And I must have been convincing enough because he went along with it, and we got custody of Arlene.”
Lena gulps half her beer. “But he hated me every day after she was born. I could see it in every look he gave me and hear it in every word he muttered. And I hated Arlene for being the thing that drove a wedge between me and him, even though I knew deep down it wasn’t her.”
I blow out a breath. “That’s so fucked up.”
“I know,” she concedes. “And then George died, and I was stuck with this baby. Axel came into the picture, and he was willing to help take care of both of us. Well,take care ofis a bit generous, but he tolerated us both.”
She pushes her half-empty glass to the side and we are both silent for a few minutes.
“So, the house?” I ask. “How did you pay it off?”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “You did your research, huh?” I shrug. “Surprisingly, I have made good money waiting tables,” she says coyly. “Axel couldn’t pay his mortgage, and I wanted leverage, so I told him I’d buy it from him. He loved the idea.”
“Why did you want Bonnie’s mother notified if anything happened to you?” I ask, trying to get to the point.
She swivels to face me. “Because I didn’t want Axel to inherit the house. And when Arlene was a kid, it made sense to notify her grandmother, who could figure out that the house should go to Arlene, since she was my next of kin—sort of.”
“Why Ari’s grandmother? Why not her mother?” I ask.
She smiles. “You’ll see.” I tilt my head in question. “I assume you want to go meet her.”
“Do you have a contact number?”
She shakes her head. “No. But I have their last known address. Where Bonnie lived with her mother. I have no idea if they’re still there, but I also have no reason to believe they would have moved.”
I scoff and lean back on my stool. “All this time you knew. And with all the shit she’s been through, you never offered up this information to Ari?”
