"Could you put out the cigarette? It's not good for Layna."
"My bad."
He stubbed it out at the nearest trash can, a posh functional art doubling as a flowerpot base. Impressive building, it was.
The spacious three-room apartment they entered had a strange atmosphere in it. Not exactly sterile, yet it was not quite lived in in a way.
There were posters lining the living room wall. A row of children's doodles, each equally exuberant. A calendar marked with different book titles (perhaps it was her reading list?) and lengthy scrawling to-dos. As the centerpiece of the room was a large window overseeing the workspace, covered by a thick black drapery looking like a funeral. Kayla had called this place home. He had never been here before. Back when they had still been an item, Kayla had been living in a cheap rented space downtown.
He could immediately tell which piece of furniture was bought for Kayla or Layna. Splashes of color came at odds here and there, a rainbow shelf standing side to side with a gunmetal filing cabinet. Books filled each nook and cranny; stacking atop one another on the kitchen counter, splayed across the tiny guest table. Kayla had always been a reader, with a particular penchant to the dead wood variety, and he had a good guess that Layna was becoming one too. Family records made the bulk at the top shelf. He touched the spines marked 'Sunshine and Roses' and found photographs of Layna with a lot of people he recognized in them, many of them mutual friends he shared with Kayla from the club back at college. Was he that out of touch with his old gang? But no. He felt a sting within his chest as he realized even Paul, James, and Abby...they were all in this as well and they hadn't told him a single thing all these years even though he saw them regularly. The betrayal stung even harder as it became clear that the three, along with Kayla's besties Kenny, Lydie, and Edward, made up for the core family of Layna's as was evident from the number of photographs featuring them far outweighing ones with the others. Some of the photographs even looked familiar. There was one he had caught James gushing about on his phone when he had gone down the water cooler one day last spring. James had insisted it was his niece. Paging through notes detailing Layna's development, two things were clear for him: one, his daughter was well adored by his friends; and two, everyone but him had been present for Layna and Kayla for the last three years.
His daughter. It was still such a foreign concept.
It took a dedication to keep the secret for so long, especially with the number of shared acquaintances they had. Although in hindsight a lot of things now made sense, like how Paul always seeming like he had something to tell him, or Paul bothering him about Kayla every few months... Heck, it was amazing the secret could last this long, in any rate. Maybe he'd reached that tipping point. Maybe if the fateful encounter hadn't happened one of these days, he'd have found himself hauled after office hours by Abby demanding to talk to him about something or with Paul randomly dropping the bomb in the middle of Super Smash Bros.
"Don't hate them. Paul in particular really wanted to tell you."
It was uncanny that after all this time she still retained the ability to kinda sorta guess where his mind was going. Mostly. They had started arguing a lot once he had thought she'd had lost the knack.
"But they didn't."
"I made them promise to keep silent. If anything, I wasn't planning on having such a large group. At first, I only told Kenny and Lydie since they were in the best place to help me. Then it kind of snowballed from there."
"I meet James and Paul at least once every other week. Abby and I talk whenever she comes to fetch James."
"Yeah. It's a wonder this worked out so well, huh."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Then what? Trap you with the child card? You were eager to restart your life, making it clear that you didn't want me there anymore. I disappointed you and you didn't have the time and patience to deal with my depression. If I had told you about Layna, it wouldn't have changed any of your opinions about me. I didn't want you to stay out of pity."
"I could've helped."
"I had enough help. And the last thing I wanted was to ruin your life by forcing you into a marriage you didn't want."
"But..."
"No need to worry. Layna had a village going for her. Four uncles, two aunts, all head over heels. She's spoiled rotten. I keep telling Abby and James to stop buying her gifts."
There was still a lot he wanted to talk about, but then Kayla threw all of her focus and concentration onto the mountain of paperwork on her desk, occasionally furrowing deeply at her laptop. Be it out of actual business or an attempt to avoid him, he decided he could wait until she was finished. Everything was too much for him too. He went to Layna's room to keep her company, and the girl happily introduced him to a merry band of stuffed animals.
"Are you Mama's friend?"
"I am."
"Then you can be my friend. Say hello, Foxie."
He scooted closer to shake hands with Mr. Foxie. Kayla certainly didn't let her daughter's room suffer the same drabness as the rest of the house; contrary to the hospital white of the living room, the walls were painted in pastel here, adorned with cheerful-looking artwork seemingly out of picture books.
"You like the pictures? Uncle Edward drew them for me. He is Mama's friend too."
"How about you? Do you have a lot of friends?"
Layna pulled her fox into a hug. "I do, at school. But here it's only me and Mama."
Kayla seemed to be working from home, all right. Probably somewhere in publishing, if she kept at what she had been doing during college. But why should Layna be there alone in midday? There must be a daycare around the block. Surely she wasn't trying to be a shut-in? Layna would need kids at her age around her.
"Are you lonely?"
"Mama's scary sometimes, but I like her. Mama's friends come at weekends. They play with me."
He looked into a pair of innocent eyes who never knew of a different world and wondered why the children would always be the victims. Nursery rhymes were playing in the background, Layna humming along. It was a glimpse to the everyday life of a daughter he never knew he had--without him. Layna guided him to play an endless stream of games, apparently insistent on erasing the frown in his face. The little girl got her maternal instinct kicking in more naturally than his supposed paternal instinct. But he had no reason to object, and the day felt like one grand sequence of playing house.
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