Face Your Fears

Chapter 16

 Hadley appeared suddenly in the doorway to my office, almost making me fall out of my seat in shock. You'd think I would've heard her coming into the apartment, but hey - when a photographer is editing, they're editing.

"Jesus," I exclaimed. "Hadley, what're you - ?" 

"So, imagine my surprise," Hadley began, crossing her arms, leaning up against the doorjamb. "Getting a call from my mother in the middle of my lunch." 

Shit.

I knew where this was going.

I'd been counting on the fact that since contact between Hadley and her parents was so minimal her mother might not even confront her about my unexpected visit. Apparently, my luck had run out in more ways that one.

"Really?" I said, trying to sound casual. "What did she want to talk about?"

"Oh, nothing much," Hadley answered, waiving an airy hand. "She just told me that you showed up out-of-the-blue at her office last week, told her I was pregnant and then ranted about how fucked up she and my dad are."

Well, Michaela really hadn't left out any details, had she?

A part of me wanted to deny doing anything of the sort, but there was no point. 

"Oh, well, I wouldn't call it ranting," I said, rising to my feet. "I just made an offhand comment. The whole thing lasted, maybe, two minutes."

Hadley stared at me with a blank expression for a moment and then threw her hands up in the air and gave an exasperated groan.

"Goddamn it, Archer, what the hell were you thinking! Showing up at my mother's work and shouting off things like that? You do realize you could have jeopardized her job, right?"

I shrugged. It's not like that was my problem. "It felt like something I needed to do."

I was a little surprised at myself for being so calm about this, when normally I would've been just as fired up about it as Hadley was right now. 

"Oh, really?" Hadley said, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead. "It felt like something you needed to do? Why?"

 "Why?" I repeated. "Well, let me think about that for a moment. Your parents are ridiculous, Hadley, and you know that just as well as I do. Or have you already forgotten about how they used to leave you alone for weeks at a time and pay you off to keep you happy?" 

 Hadley recoiled as if I'd just slapped her, but then just as quickly the angered expression was back. 

"And? So what? That was seven years ago. I haven't lived in my parents' house for years. If you haven't noticed, I'm an adult. I put my relationship with my parents behind me a long time ago." 

I immediately found that very hard to believe. How could anybody just let something drop and forget it when it impacted their life so profoundly? Hadley hadn't even known what it was like to have a family until her junior year, when we'd started spending time together, and by then she had been almost seventeen.

I wouldn't have let anybody off who treated their child the way Kenneth and Michaela treated Hadley.

But then I had to remind myself that Hadley was a God awful liar. She was alright when I first met her, but after we'd been dating for a few months, she started bursting into giggles immediately after she told a fib, and she still did that. If she said she'd put her parents' treatment of her behind her, then she probably really had.

That just went to prove how different Hadley and I really were. And by some stroke of fate we'd ended up together? 

"What on Earth made you decide to snap at my mother like that?" Hadley asked, grabbing my arm. "Because I honestly want to know what's going on."