Mommy by Mistake by Rowan Coleman Page A

truth like any normal person would. And if they did that they might not be so keen on being friends with her. On top of that, to be honest, she liked her fictional husband.
    “Gary,” she said, plucking the first available man’s name out of the air. She might as well call him Gary because in her head he literally was Gary, or at least her version of him—the world’s first dependable and dull fantasy man ever created in the mind of a woman. “He’s a lovely dad, when he’s here and even when he’s not. I speak to him every night. He tells Freddie a story over the phone.”
    As the others “ahhhd,” Natalie wondered at the lie that had come so easily. She was always one for exaggerating, spinning a good yarn, adding just a little bit of gloss to reality here and there to improve the punch line of an anecdote, but she’d never told an actual, big, massive, get-found-out-and-you’re-in-for-it lie before. Unless you counted not telling Jack Newhouse he was Freddie’s father, which wasn’t really a lie but more of an omission.
    “He feels bad that he has to work away,” she went on, as if someone else had taken control of her tongue. “But when he’s completed this contract he’s coming back for good. We can’t wait, can we, Freddie?” Freddie, who was fast asleep after the excitement of Baby Music, remained oblivious to his mom’s deception and potential insanity.
    “He missed the birth, didn’t he?” Jess remarked sympathetically.
    “Oh no, he was there for the birth,” Natalie said, privately outraged at and full of admiration for herself simultaneously.
    “Really?” Jess said. “Only I didn’t see you with anyone except that blond woman when we were in.”
    “Yes, he arrived in the middle of the night I was in labor,” Natalie assured her. “He cut the cord. We had a few precious hours before he had to go again.”
    “Doesn’t he get paternity leave?” Jess asked as they reached the café at last.
    “Not on a short-term contract.” Natalie winged it. “Scandalous, isn’t it? Now, who’s for carrot cake?”
    She breathed a silent sigh of relief as she finally directed the conversation away from herself and on to cake. It was dangerous that she enjoyed talking about fantasy Gary so much, because apart from anything else, the more she told her friends about him the harder it would be to have to tell them one day that he didn’t exist. She’d end up having to invent a mistress that he had abandoned her for, or some kind of tragic engineering accident that left her a fairly young and fairly beautiful widow…Natalie stopped in her tracks and told herself to get a grip on reality. For a second she imagined how things might have been in a parallel life. She pictured Jack Newhouse holding her hand as she pushed and swore and screamed, and almost laughed out loud at the ridiculous image that was no more real than her fake husband. It was even more implausible, a realization that gave her a pang of sadness.
    Natalie knew it was stupid to miss a man she had never really known and would never know. Except that wasn’t quite true. When she looked at Freddie and caught glimpses of his father in his features, she felt as if she knew Jack more now that he was outof her life than the few intense hours he had been in it. She missed not only him—as absurd as that was—but also the idea of having someone to share the joy of her son. She mourned the absence of the other half that had co-created Freddie.
    “Gary sounds lovely,” Meg said with a wistful air as she studied the menu.
    “Oh he is,” Natalie agreed, snapping out of her reverie and nodding vigorously.
    “We’re lucky, aren’t we?” Jess seemed to need additional confirmation. “To have found three wonderful men. Really good men are in short supply, you know.”
    “That’s true,” Meg and Natalie said together with heartfelt emphasis, but for entirely different reasons.

Seven
    W hen Natalie got back to the house, Gary Fisher