I search her face, looking for some clue of where she is going and why she told me this last annoying news flash.

“She didn’t tell you?” she asks.

“No, Linda didn’t tell me,” I say, my jaw tightening.

“It was hard getting her to stop,” Chrissie says, dropping her gaze and shaking her head. “I had to tell her my life was already planned out.”

That comment in the context of Chrissie is laughable—Chrissie has never spent a moment of her life with a plan—but I don’t let myself laugh.

“I’m surprised she bought that,” I say.

Chrissie’s gaze lifts to mine, pinning me. “My life is planned out, Alan.”

My body goes cold. Did I wait too long to try to fix things with her? Has she already moved on? Is there already someone else?

I can’t be your friend. And I won’t be your lover.

Oh fuck.

“What are you trying to tell me, Chrissie?”

“I guess that I’m OK.”

No help there. I’m tense again and my mood has plummeted.

“Why don’t we go out? Go somewhere?”

She shakes her head.

“Why not?” I ask.

“I can’t,” she says.

Can’t? Strange choice of words since the kids aren’t here. I let out a ragged breath. For a long time she does nothing but silently dab at crumbs on her counter with her index finger.

Finally, she looks up, her face serious and anxious. “Did that night we shared have anything to do with your divorce?”

Oh God, not this. I don’t want to talk about Shyla, but I can tell by how Chrissie asks that she’s read the papers and is feeling badly, wondering what part she played in my divorce and Shyla’s recent drama.

I can’t avoid this damn discussion.

I fix my gaze on hers, direct and unblinking. “No. It had nothing to do with my divorce. Absolutely nothing.”

Her brow crinkles as if uncertain how she should take that. “Did you tell Shyla about us?”

I exhale slowly. “No. It was pointless by then.”

“Does she know?”

Why is she pressing me on this?

“Probably,” I say, frustrated. “I didn’t tell her, but I am reasonably confident she knows.”

For some reason, that kicks up Chrissie’s distress. She doesn’t look at me, but I can tell she’s deeply troubled and struggling with something.

“I’ve been absolutely miserable this past year, Chrissie.”

She doesn’t lift her face. “I’ve spent most of it being angry with you, Alan.”

“I’m sure you have. I didn’t want that. I’m sorry.”

Her chin lifts. “You’re always sorry. But that won’t change anything. Not a thing. And this time we can’t keep doing the same old thing.”

I study her again, the quick shifts of her mood.

She pushes away from the counter. “I’ll be right back, Alan. Don’t leave,” is all she says before she hurries out of the kitchen.

It has been so long, a year since we’ve been together. While I didn’t expected our first meeting to be comfortable, I never expected it to be this. Something about what transpired, the way she left the room, fills me with a sense of warning. This conversation is far from over, and in fact, it doesn’t even feel like it’s begun.

I step out onto the patio and smoke a cigarette. I stomp it out and look inside the house. The kitchen is still empty. I light another. I wait and watch for her to return.

Twenty minutes pass. Where is she? I go into the kitchen and pour myself another drink.

I peek into hallway. There’s a light from a room near the back of the house. I make my way to the doorway and my gaze locks on Chrissie in a rocker. Her head is leaning back, her eyes are closed, one thin strap of her shirt is pushed down on her shoulder, and there is a baby at her breast.

Oh fuck, the baby is Chrissie’s.

She was pregnant when Jesse died.

I search for something cautious to say.

“Your kids seem to have grown in number without me knowing it, Chrissie.”

Her eyes fly open. “Four months I’ve lived in LA. It hasn’t even hit ink. Not once. The cone of silence hasn’t failed me.”

I sit on the bed, facing her. “Cone of silence?”

She makes a slight smile. “There are times I forget you hate American TV. I used to watch a TV show when I was young. They had this plastic bubble that would drop down from the ceiling to keep their conversations private. They called it the cone of silence. Stupid, huh? American humor in its most trite life form.”

It is a broken, rambling explanation, and more of one than I want. “You always did have terrible taste in cinema and TV.”

She makes a face at me for that. Her gaze shifts from me to her daughter. “You didn’t know about the baby, did you, Alan?”

My eyes widen. “No. By the surprised look on your face I take it everyone knows but me. Jesse did teach you how to deal with the press. How did you manage to have a baby and not have it hit print? I just met Khloe in the kitchen today. Grace didn’t tell me that she was yours.”

“Khloe was born in August in Santa Barbara,” she explains quietly. “As for the everyone knowing part, the list of people I trust is pretty short. It’s limited to Jack, Brian, the Harrises, Rene, the Rowans, my lawyers, and now you.”

“It’s a blow to my ego to fall below your lawyers on the list of people you trust.”

I say that lightly, but I am hurt.

Her eyes cloud over. “If you hadn’t spent a year out of contact you might have ranked above the lawyers. But I don’t think so, Alan. The lawyers were necessary in this.”

Her comment carries bite, even though I can see she didn’t intend it to.

“They’ve made even having a baby a legal complication these days, Chrissie? If involving the lawyers is necessity I can’t imagine why you all do it.”

“You probably can’t imagine why we do it, lawyers or not. The world hasn’t become such a litigious place, Alan. Of my five children, this one is the only one requiring legal counsel at birth.”

Now I feel like an asshole because I’m uncertain if Jesse being dead at the time of his daughter’s birth held some sort of complication and I just made a fucking joke about it.

“You’ve had a hell of a year, Chrissie. I never intended to add to the hell. I love you. I thought by staying away I was giving you what you wanted. I reached for the phone a thousand times. I stopped myself. I wasn’t sure where things had been left between us. I assumed you’d call when you were ready. But I got tired of waiting, so here I am.”

The expression that surfaces on her face takes me by surprise. It’s an odd reaction. It looks almost as though she is bracing herself for something.

“I’d like to clarify where you left things between us.” She stops rocking and lifts her chin, her eyes boring into me. “Khloe is your daughter, Alan.”

For a millisecond the world still feels normal. Then the massive amounts of alcohol and nicotine in my blood shoot through me like an adrenal rush. And then I know, I feel it in my body, that she just hit me yet again with something life-altering and unexpected.

She searches my face. “Don’t you have anything to say? You had better say something soon so that I know you’re still breathing and can stop worrying that I may need to call 911.”

I hold her gaze, fighting to keep mine stripped of reaction. The way she waits reminds me of how unpleasant it can be with Chrissie in the serious moments of life. How grossly unpleasant. How she only seems to exacerbate the disorder between my mind, heart and body, and how I paradoxically solidify her.

The way she stares also brings to mind all the times she’s walked out on me, how they had been like this, decisions forced on me by her, swiftly and unexpectedly. Changes I hadn’t wanted.

Her in control.

Me in disarray.

Always her in control and me in disarray.

So she wants a response? Goddamn her if she thinks I’m going playact with her through this. The only emotion forming inside me is anger. “Fuck you, Chrissie.”