Chapter 54
That afternoon, Coates came into the Admiral's office without knocking and interrupted a meeting he was having with Harm and Bud. He looked up and was about to snap at her for the unorthodox interruption, but then he noticed the look on her face. AJ couldn't really define it. It seemed to be a combination of hurt, confusion, worry, concern, and sadness all at once. She crossed the room until she stood next to him and then quietly said, "Sir, your ex-wife is on the phone, and you really need to take the call," she paused and added firmly, "Alone."
Knowing from the look on her face that this was something serious, AJ dismissed all of them and then took a deep breathe before picking up the phone. It wasn't terribly unusual for Marcella to call him at work and this had to be the fifteenth or twentieth time she had called this week to talk to him. However he had been so busy catching up on the things he needed to since coming back from Iraq, that he had told Jen to say he would call her back. He just hadn't gotten around to it.
When she called it was usually to try and get him involved in the latest argument she'd had with their daughter, Francesca. No matter how many times he'd told her that he wouldn't do that, she persisted. He had thought this last attempt to contact him was just more of the same. She was being insistent this time though. There had been at least as many messages that she had called while he was gone than there had been calls this week of his return. He had wisely never given her his home or cell phone numbers. Marcella never left the reason for her calls, only that she must hear from him as quickly as possible.
This time though she must have said something more to Coates for her to have interrupted a meeting like that and to insist that he take the call…alone at that. All those thoughts flashed through his mind in the time it took to pick up the receiver and bring it to his ear.
Speaking Italian, he said, "Marcella, I really don't have time to get involved in your latest battle with Francesca."
"Si, Alberto! You are right you never have the time!" his ex-wife's nearly hysterical voice came across the line. "You won't ever have to take the time again though! All you have to do is to come and claim your son!" she shouted.
"Marcella, unless Francesca has had a sex change, we have a daughter not a son," he sighed. Maybe she had really lost it this time, he had never heard her this hysterical before.
"That is what I have been trying to tell you for WEEKS Alberto! Our daughter is DEAD! She died giving birth!"
AJ felt the receiver slip from his lifeless hand. His daughter, his beloved Francesca, was dead? How could that have happened? So soon after they had come to know each other again. Wait a minute! Had Marcella said she died giving birth? He hadn't even known she was expecting!
Grabbing for the phone again he lifted it to his ear to hear that Marcella was still screaming at him. "Marcella!" his shout got her attention for just a moment at any rate and she was quiet long enough for him to ask, "I was out of the country and just returned, please explain what's happened?!"
"Francesca got herself in the family way and since she would never tell anyone who the father of the child was, she was going to raise him alone. But when she knew at the last that she was going to die, she said that she wanted you to have her child and not me! So she listed you as the father! Since you have a different last name than her, the doctors didn't question it! So you have a two week old son here that you need to come and claim, or they will turn him over to the court!"
To Be Continued….
