“Damn this thing!” Maxine was intent on fixing the dishwasher. She had called the repair shop but they couldn’t send anyone out until the next day and the girls were coming over with their friend for dinner.
She was so focused that she didn’t hear her husband come in until he yelled her name.
“I don’t understand, Maxine. Tell me again why we are paying for Jacob Gibson to go to Bay Prep?” Robert asked. Jay had been repeatedly thanking him all day at the Cafe and he wasn’t sure why until he got home to ask his wife what was going on.
Maxine took a deep breath and started in the middle, “Because it’s the right thing to do. We can’t pay for Lydia’s education if we don’t pay for Jacob’s too.”
“What?” Robert’s confusion only deepened. “Pay for Lydia too? These aren’t my kids…”
“No, they aren’t hon,” Maxine remained patient. “Lydia is the daughter Elizabeth Mendenhall had to give up for adoption.”
“She is?” Robert was incredulous, he knew that Lydia was adopted but he hadn’t realized that little, deer-like Elizabeth had ever been pregnant.
Maxine sighed a little louder this time, “What kind of detective are you? Didn’t you notice that the Gibson’s adopted a daughter immediately after Elizabeth “went away”,” Maxine did the bunny ears as she said went away, which seemed to clue Robert in.
“oh, OH! “Went away”,” Robert did the bunny ears, but was still confused, “Shouldn’t the Mendenhalls be paying for all of this then?”
“They should, yes but it’s complicated over there so I decided to do what I could. Robert. Look, hon, I can’t change what has happened, but I can change what will happen,” Maxine said the last with a surprising tenderness. She looked as if she were about to say more, but the doorbell interrupted her.
Veronica introduced her mother and father to Monica, then went in search of something to eat.
“How do you do, Mr. Bettencourt?” Monica asked, hoping to put Robert at ease. He looked so terribly uncomfortable and kind of far away. “Mr. Bettencourt?” she prompted again, “you ok?”
Maxine swatted her husband’s shoulder which seemed to snap him out of his stupor.
“I’m so sorry, but you look exactly like…Oh! you know who you look like? You look like this girl I dated in high school. Felicity Something…Felicity…damn, Maxi, what was her name? She moved away right after graduation, remember?” Robert was back to his normal, jovial self.
Maleena, however, was not feeling very jovial. She needed to talk to her parents about life after college. Now that her mother had encouraged her relationship with Jodie, she realized that there would be problems ahead, like where they were going to live for one. But her parents were busy fawning over Monica.
“Her name was Drysdale, Felicity Drysdale. And yes, I remember her, she was my best friend” Maxine answered, slowly a light began to dawn on her.
“That’s it!” Robert was still staring at Monica, “You really do look like her. It’s uncanny.”
“Felicity Drysdale is my mother,” Monica said with surprise, “You knew my mom in high school?”
The light suddenly blinded Maxine and she could see a realization creeping up on Monica too, “Robert, why don’t you go get dinner ready. I’m sure the girls are starving. Maleena, help your father.”
“Monica, did your mother go to Heights High?” Maxine asked cautiously, already knowing the answer was Yes. “and what about your father?”
“He left when I was little, I didn’t know him,” Monica answered with complete honesty. “Mom raised me by herself.”
“I see,” Maxine drawled, “Did your mother ever tell you about your father? Anything about him?”
“No, not much. Just that he was to young and immature to have a kid,” Monica was becoming upset by the direction of the conversation. “I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you asking me all of this?”
“Monica,” Maxine took a deep breath and plunged in against her better judgment, “Your mother and I were best friends in high school, but senior year your mother got pregnant and moved away from Rigel Heights. She didn’t really want to talk to any of us, least of all Robert, and we assumed she had made it in another city and wanted to forget the Heights. Robert and I got married and eventually moved here.”
“So…”
“So, Robert is your father,” Maxine turned Monica’s world upside down with four little words.
A guttural sob wrenched free from Monica’s throat and Maxine instantly realized what she had done, “Oh, my god, Monica! I’m so sorry, it just all came out. Don’t be angry at Robert, he never even knew Felicity was pregnant. She only told me because I guessed it.” Maxine reached out to hug Monica, but the girl pushed her away.
Over Monica’s shoulder, Maxine saw her two daughters standing there and wondered how much they had overheard. Veronica’s confused look told Maxine that she still had plenty of time to explain the situation to her own daughters in a more appropriate manner.
Veronica’s confusion only deepened when Monica fled from the house.
Maxine and Robert were having a late night snack. Veronica and Maleena had left an hour ago knowing the whole story. It had taken Maxine a few go ’rounds to get it all out and make the girls realize just what had happened but it wasn’t the girls who were so confused, it was Robert.
“How did you know?” he wondered again.
“She looked exactly like Felicity at graduation, you said so yourself and then she said her mother’s name was Felicity Drysdale…how many Felicity Drysdales do you think there are in the world?” Maxine had moved beyond the point of how did you know and was already wondering what to do next, but she backed up and explained it to her husband once again.
“Felicity never told you that she was pregnant, I knew but didn’t think it was my place to say anything but that’s why I kept pushing you away when we first started dating. I thought Felicity might move home and you would go back to her when you found out about the baby, but when she didn’t show up after a year and her mother told me that she had gotten a good job in the city, I figured she wasn’t coming home. We got engaged and well, here we are,” Maxine explained.
“Oh, OH! What should I do?” Robert looked for advice.
“That’s what I am trying to figure out, dear. Her life would have been completely different if she had grown up with our girls,” Maxine’s musing were cut short by the doorbell, “You get it, it might be Monica. I’m going up to bed.”
It wasn’t Monica, it was Catherine Mendenhall. As if the Bettencourts weren’t going through enough right now.
“Sh, sh…again, but slower this time,” Robert was being overwhelmed by chattering females tonight who insisted on starting stories in the middle.
“You are a detective, right?” Catherine’s question was loaded with sarcasm but she calmed herself, right now she needed Robert Bettencourt.
“Well, wasn’t that the strangest thing,” Robert said after climbing into bed with his wife. “Catherine Mendenhall just hired me to spy on her husband. Seems he served her with divorce papers demanding she give up everything, the house, the kids, everything, in exchange for a paltry alimony.”
“Divorce? While she’s in rehab? What a pig!” Maxine had never liked Francis, but this was despicable. “What does she want to hire you for?”
“To catch him cheating. She thinks he’s having an affair with his secretary, she gave me the girl’s address in Rigel Heights. Anyway, if she can prove adultery, she thinks the judge will rule in her favor.”
“He might,” Maxine said slowly and wondered how a judge would feel about a mother who would force her daughter to give up a baby for adoption, which brought her back to the problem at hand, “You know Robert, we have to do something to give Monica her fair share, to make her feel like part of the family, at least to get her to know you…” she turned to her husband, but he was already snoring softly.
Robert left to pick up Jay Gibson for work at the Cafe early the next morning. The address Catherine had given him was right across the street from the Gibson’s house so Robert had the forethought to bring his camera just in case.
‘Sometimes he is a good detective,’ Maxine thought as she settled into her lotus position. Meditation always helped her think more clearly and right now she need to think.
——-
Note: Monica as Robert’s daughter was planned on the first day of college when the girls were eating at the diner and all the talk of daddys with money left Monica feeling uncomfortable. Monica mentioned then that her father had left when she was an infant. Veronica also foreshadowed what was to come when she said that she and Monica would be like sisters if they both dated frat brothers. I’m just thrilled that I made it through college without Veronica messing up this storyline 
