Chương 5
“What?”
“Her name was Nora.”
He turned.
“I am aware.”
“Then use it.”
Richard’s nostrils flared.
Claire had seen him angry before.
At waiters.
Contractors.
Once at Ethan for arriving nine minutes late to dinner.
Never frightened.
Now, beneath the irritation, she saw it.
Richard looked at Margaret.
“You have worked with my family for thirty-four years.”
“Yes.”
“Think carefully about what you’re implying.”
Margaret’s eyes filled.
“I have.”
Claire stood.
“What did you tell Ethan?”
Richard faced her.
“That Nora had chosen not to pursue the matter.”
“Did you tell him she had a baby?”
“She was not certain it was his.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Richard said nothing.
Claire thought of Ethan in the bridal room.
My father told me Nora didn’t want contact.
He had said it almost gratefully.
As if blame could be inherited.
“What did you tell him?” Claire asked again.
Richard rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“I told him there was no reason to disrupt his future over a claim that had never been established.”
“You knew she offered a paternity test.”
“I knew she wanted access.”
“To her child’s father?”
“To this family.”
Claire laughed once.
Richard’s expression sharpened.
“What is funny?”
“You really think there’s a difference.”
He lowered his voice.
“Claire, you are emotional. Understandably. But you need to consider what happens next. That child’s grandmother arrived at a high-profile wedding with documents and a camera-ready accusation.”
“She didn’t bring Mia into the church.”
Richard paused.
Claire had learned that from Elena before leaving. Elena had been stopped at the outer vestibule by an usher while trying to explain why they were there. Mia, frightened that the ceremony would begin, had slipped through a side door used by the florist.
Richard did not know that.
He had already created a conspiracy because it fit better.
“The video is everywhere,” he said. “People will speculate. We can contain some of that if we act quickly.”
Claire stared at him.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The meeting.”
“Claire—”
“You think this is a meeting.”
“It is a problem requiring decisions.”
“A little girl walked into a church carrying a photograph of her dead mother and the man who might be her father, and your first instinct is communications strategy.”
“My first instinct is to protect my son.”
“From what?”
Richard finally raised his voice.
“From having his life destroyed by a mistake he made at twenty-two!”
Margaret flinched.
Claire did not.
“A mistake?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t.”
Richard looked away first.
Claire left.
Ethan was waiting near the elevators.
He had changed out of his tuxedo.
Someone had found him jeans and a pale blue shirt that did not fit across his shoulders.
He looked younger.
Not young.
Just less protected.
“Did you know your father got the letter?”
“No.”
“Margaret says he did.”
Ethan glanced toward the conference room.
Claire watched recognition land.
Not surprise at Richard’s capacity for it.
Recognition.
“Claire.”
“Did some part of you suspect?”
He rubbed both hands down his face.
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t good enough anymore.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His hands dropped.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me why you never checked.”
“I tried calling Nora.”
“How many times?”
He stared at her.
Claire waited.
“Twice.”
“When?”
“After my father said she wanted no contact.”
“Two calls.”
“She had changed her number.”
“So you stopped?”
“I was twenty-three, Claire.”
“You keep saying your age like it was a diagnosis.”
“I was scared.”
That stopped her.
Not because it excused him.
Because it was the first answer that sounded true.
He leaned against the wall.
“I was terrified. I had this job I hated. My father was telling me Nora had been seeing somebody else. Nora wouldn’t talk to me. I told myself the kid probably wasn’t mine.”
“You told yourself.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
His face tightened.
“For years.”
The elevator arrived.
Neither stepped inside.
The doors closed again.
Claire said, “When we started dating?”
He looked at her.
“I had convinced myself it was over.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I thought about it.”
“How often?”
He laughed without humor.
“You want a number?”
“No. I want to know which version of you I was going to marry.”
He looked exhausted.
“So do I.”
She hated that answer because it sounded like the man she loved.
Claire pressed the elevator button again.
“Get the paternity test.”
“I will.”
“Don’t make that child prove anything else to you.”
The doors opened.
She stepped inside.
Ethan stopped them with his hand.
“Are we done?”
Claire looked at him.
“For tonight?”
“No.”
She could have lied.
Instead she looked at the silver doors between them.
“I don’t know.”
He released his hand.
The doors closed.
For the next four days, Claire learned how slowly time moved when everyone wanted an answer that could not responsibly arrive yet.
Elena agreed to a legally documented paternity test only after speaking with a family-law attorney.
Ethan agreed immediately.
Mia did not.
According to Elena, she asked why adults needed to rub sticks inside people’s mouths when there was already a photograph.
Elena explained that photographs proved people had once stood near each other.
They did not prove fathers.
Mia apparently considered this insulting to photographs but submitted to the cheek swab anyway.
Claire did not attend.
She went home to the townhouse she and Ethan had bought six months earlier and discovered that almost everything inside had been chosen by both of them.
The gray couch.
The kitchen stools.
The stupid lamp Ethan claimed looked Scandinavian and Claire claimed looked unfinished.
His running shoes remained beside the garage door.
A mug he had used Friday morning sat in the dishwasher.
She opened a drawer and found twenty-seven takeout menus despite the fact that they ordered everything online.
For nearly an hour she cleaned the refrigerator.
May you like
Not because it needed cleaning.
Because yogurt had expiration dates, and expiration dates were comprehensible.
