Chương 10
“Sweetheart, go find your uncle.”
“He’s my dad.”
The words made Ethan grip the phone harder.
Vanessa reached around Sophie toward Maya.
Maya pulled back.
Sophie slapped Vanessa’s wrist.
Vanessa shoved.
Not a huge motion.
Not a cinematic one.
An irritated adult pushing away an inconvenient child.
That was what made it unbearable.
Sophie’s heel caught the fountain edge.
Her arms went out.
Maya grabbed her.
Both disappeared into the water.
Leah screamed.
The phone shook.
Then Ryan’s voice came from somewhere outside the frame.
“What the hell did you do?”
Vanessa answered.
“You told me to get them out.”
The recording ended when Leah ran toward the fountain.
Ethan deleted the copy from his phone afterward.
Police had it.
The attorney had it.
He did not need to carry it in his pocket.
Sophie started seeing a child therapist.
At the first appointment, Ethan and Maya sat in the waiting room beside an aquarium containing three bored-looking fish.
Maya watched them.
“One is bullying the other one.”
Ethan glanced over.
“They’re fish.”
“The orange one is a jerk.”
“You’ve been here four minutes.”
“I know what I saw.”
Ethan went back to filling out paperwork.
After a while Maya said, “I’m sorry.”
“For accusing a fish?”
“For everything.”
He kept writing.
“I know.”
She looked at him.
He stopped.
“Sorry.”
“No, you deserved that.”
“I’ve heard the phrase so much lately I think it’s becoming a reflex.”
“Maybe we should charge people.”
“Five dollars every time someone says ‘I know.’”
“We could pay for therapy.”
He looked at her.
She smiled.
He did too.
It lasted three seconds.
It mattered.
Sophie emerged forty minutes later holding a plastic dinosaur.
“His name is Gerald.”
The therapist stood behind her.
“Gerald will be coming home.”
Ethan nodded solemnly.
“Of course he will.”
In the car, Sophie asked whether Gerald could sleep in her room.
Maya said yes.
Ethan said dinosaurs were nocturnal and dangerous.
Sophie told him he was annoying.
For the first time in weeks, Ethan felt almost happy.
The feeling was followed immediately by guilt.
He let both exist.
Ryan resigned from the family company before its board could decide whether to remove him.
Thomas did not ask him to reconsider.
Claire moved out of the condominium she and Ryan had bought together.
The wedding gifts were returned.
The napkins, according to Claire, were donated to a theater program that planned to use them as props.
“Good,” Maya told her on the phone. “Let imaginary people have the marriage.”
Claire laughed.
She and Maya had developed a strange, cautious friendship neither would have chosen.
They did not talk every day.
Sometimes a week passed.
Then Claire would send a message asking how Sophie was.
Maya once sent a photograph of Gerald the dinosaur wearing a napkin as a cape.
Claire replied that he looked more trustworthy than Ryan.
Ethan did not object.
Three months after the wedding, Ryan asked through attorneys for a formal process to establish biological paternity.
Maya read the letter at the kitchen table.
Ethan stood behind her.
“What do you want?” he asked.
She laughed bitterly.
“I want six years ago.”
“Not available.”
“I noticed.”
She pushed the letter away.
“I don’t want him taking her.”
“He’s not asking to take her.”
“Not yet.”
“We should talk to our lawyer.”
“We have a lawyer now. That’s depressing.”
“We also have good markers.”
She looked at him.
“That doesn’t help.”
“I know.”
She pointed at him.
“Five dollars.”
He almost laughed.
Their attorney, Rachel Kim, did not promise easy answers.
She explained that biology mattered, legal parentage mattered, Ethan’s existing status mattered, Ryan’s past conduct mattered, and Sophie’s interests mattered most.
She also warned them not to build their lives around dramatic assumptions.
“Courts are not punishment machines,” she said. “And family cases are not good places to process betrayal.”
Ethan disliked her immediately.
Then hired her.
Ryan’s request forced a conversation Ethan had avoided.
Was he afraid Ryan would become Sophie’s father?
Not replace him.
Become another father.
The distinction hurt.
At therapy, Ethan admitted he wanted Ryan gone.
The therapist asked, “Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
Ethan stared at him.
The therapist waited.
Ethan laughed despite himself.
“I want the last six years to remain true.”
“They are.”
“No.”
“You raised her?”
“Yes.”
“You loved her?”
“Yes.”
“She knows you as her father?”
“Yes.”
“Then which part became false?”
Ethan looked at the floor.
“The part where I thought biology agreed with me.”
The therapist nodded.
“That part changed.”
Ethan rubbed his hands together.
“I hate that he gets to want her now.”
“That sounds honest.”
“He ignored her for six years.”
“Yes.”
“And now because his life blew up, he discovers paternal feelings?”
“Possibly.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to defend him?”
“No.”
Ethan looked up.
The therapist leaned back.
“I am going to ask whether Sophie’s future should be determined entirely by what makes you feel least threatened.”
Ethan hated him again.
That was useful too.
Ryan wrote Sophie a letter.
He sent it through attorneys.
Ethan did not open it.
Maya did.
Then they gave it to Sophie’s therapist before deciding whether she should see it.
The letter did not ask Sophie to forgive him.
It did not call himself Dad.
It said:
My name is Ryan. You know me as Uncle Ryan. I made choices before you were born and after you were born that were unfair to you and to your parents. I was scared of what the truth would change, and I made protecting myself more important than being honest.
You do not owe me anything.
May you like
I remember you asking me at Christmas two years ago why I always took the corner piece of lasagna. You said the corner was obviously the worst piece because it was too crunchy. I told you the crunchy part was the best part. You looked at me like I was stupid.
I think about that now because I want you to know I did notice you. That does not make what I did better.
