Nate saw his opening and without delay he relentlessly pressed through. “Until I went to school, I didn’t know you washed your clothes.” He heard Lily’s swift intake of breath and was heartened by the fact she wasn’t hiding her reactions. He talked over her gasp. “The teachers reported me to Social Services and they came to visit my mother. She put on a show for them and from then on she made me take our clothes to the Laundromat so they wouldn’t come back. Until I moved in with Victor and Laura though, I never knew you were supposed to clean your sheets.”
He felt as her still body grew rock solid in horror.
Then she whispered, her voice shaky, “Your mother made you wash your clothes?”
He kept pressing through, sensing he was gaining an edge, knowing Lily had a kind heart and, after all, she’d wished for him, he took advantage but ignored her question. “I stole food. I had to or I wouldn’t eat. I had milk and cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didn’t know any better,” he told her then smiled, “and lots of candy. Candy was easy to steal, it fit in your pockets.”
Lily did not smile and clearly found nothing Nate was saying amusing. She swallowed, not pushing away, not holding herself from him, he felt her melting into his body but she did not speak. She simply stared at him, her eyes unguarded, lips slightly parted, face soft.
That’s when Nate decided it was time to let her know all of it.
“When I was eleven, I went to work for one of Deirdre’s lovers. She had a lot of them and I learned early, because she didn’t hide it, what having a lover meant in the physical sense.” Nate watched Lily again bite her lip at this news but didn’t hesitate and carried on. “I stole from her lovers too. Sometimes they’d catch me, which wasn’t good, so I learned to avoid them, to be invisible or fast enough to escape them. If I didn’t, they’d beat me. Sometimes, they’d beat Deirdre and I’d try to stop them so they’d turn their attention to me. Deirdre never tried to stop them.”
“Didn’t try to stop –” Lily repeated but Nate talked over her.
“Scott, one of Deirdre’s lovers, put me to work making deliveries and doing pickups. I don’t know what I moved but I didn’t care. He gave me money and we never had any money. In the end Scott went away and I took a job direct with his boss. His boss wasn’t a good man, he was a dangerous man but he paid me more money than I’d ever seen before. I was good at it –”
“Stop,” Lily whispered and her voice and eyes were tortured.
“You have to know,” Nate returned quietly. He hated to see the look in her eyes but he believed with everything he was that he was correct, she had to know.
“I don’t have to know,” she repeated, contradicting his belief, her voice growing stronger.
“I was a criminal,” Nate told her bluntly. “Since I could remember, I stole, I –”
Suddenly and forcefully she pulled free of him but not to escape. She sat up and glared at him.
“You were not a criminal!” she snapped.
Nate followed her up. “I was, Lily. I worked for a gangster. Whatever was in those packages –”
“You were eleven years old, for crying out loud!” she yelled and he knew she was agitated. He knew this because she was being loud even though Laura was in the house and Maxine was also spending the night. She was also shifting in the bed with intent and before she could jump up and start pacing, he captured her in his arm. He pushed her to her back and rolled over her with his body.
Then he went on. He needed to say it all, get it out so she could make her decision.
“It doesn’t change what I did, who I was and that person is the father of your child and tomorrow, if you don’t back out, he’ll be your husband.”
Lily glared at him. “Are you a gangster now?”
Nate shook his head but responded, “Lily, there’s more you need to know.”
“Have you had a birthday party?” she asked, suddenly switching the subject what Nate thought was nonsensically and he stared at her, thrown for a moment, before replying.
“Lily, we’re talking about me being –”
“Have you ever had a birthday party?” she interrupted him, squirming underneath him to get away.
“What does it matter?” he asked, pressing into her to keep her where she was.
“It matters!” she shouted and stopped wriggling in order to scowl at him.
“Why?”
“I…” she snapped, “I don’t know why, it just does. Have you ever had one?”
“I never wanted one,” he replied.
“Well, you’re getting one this year,” she declared on a huff. “I cannot believe you’ve never had a birthday party. What’s your favourite kind of cake?” she fired off her question, eyes narrowed.
“Lily, I need to tell you the rest.”
“Nate, I don’t care about the rest. What kind of cake is your favourite?”
Nate stopped talking and stared at his bride-to-be.
He was telling her things of grave importance, things she needed to know before she legally bound herself to him. He was telling her things he’d never told anyone, not even Laura though he knew that Victor knew and guessed he’d told Laura, it was likely that Victor told Laura everything.
But Nate was telling Lily things he’d hidden from everyone, all his hideous secrets, and Lily was talking about cake.
“I don’t have a favourite cake,” Nate responded.
“Everyone has a favourite cake, Nate,” Lily informed him.
“Cake is cake,” Nate shot back, impatient to get back to the subject.
“Cake is not cake. There’s angel food cake and Victoria sponge. There’s coffee cake. There’s streusel cake. There’s cheesecake. Don’t even get me started on chocolate cake. There has to be hundreds of different kinds of chocolate cake.” She hesitated and Nate, thinking she was finished with her bizarre litany of cakes, opened his mouth to speak but then she went on. “German chocolate, devil’s food, chocolate sheet cake, chocolate mocha cake –”
Finally, he lost his patience and he interrupted her on a quiet explosion, “Lily, for Christ’s sake!”
That was when her hands came up to either side of his face and she stared him in the eyes. He realised she wasn’t looking at him with a wary, guarded expression nor were her shields up. She also wasn’t staring at him horrified and repulsed that he’d slept in dirty sheets, had a mother who was a drunken drug-addict and committed crimes before he was in his teens.