Chương 6
Sophie shifted in Maya’s arms.
Ethan looked back.
Her eyes were heavy.
That ended the conversation.
He took her and walked toward the elevator.
Maya followed.
Thomas stayed behind.
The elevator doors closed on Ryan standing alone against the corridor wall.
For three days, Ethan did almost nothing except monitor Sophie’s breathing.
He slept on the floor beside her bed the first night.
Maya found him there at two in the morning with his phone flashlight angled toward Sophie’s chest.
“She’s breathing,” Maya whispered.
“I know.”
“You’ve checked six times.”
“I know.”
She sat on the carpet beside him.
Neither touched the other.
Their house felt unfamiliar with them moving around it separately.
Ethan had once loved its small annoyances.
The upstairs bathroom door never stayed open unless you wedged it with a shoe.
The refrigerator made a low knocking sound every few hours.
There was a narrow crack in the kitchen tile that Ethan had promised to fix for two years.
After the wedding, every harmless defect seemed offensively normal.
Sophie slept.
Maya whispered, “The doctor said we should watch her. He didn’t say we had to count every breath.”
“I’m not counting.”
“You were counting.”
“I got to thirty-seven.”
Maya looked at him.
He looked back.
She almost smiled.
Then neither of them did.
The next morning, Sophie asked for pancakes.
Ethan made them.
The first one burned.
The second folded when he tried to flip it.
The third came out roughly shaped like Wisconsin.
Sophie stared at it.
“What is that?”
“A pancake.”
“It looks sick.”
“It has character.”
Maya laughed from the kitchen doorway.
Ethan turned.
Her laugh disappeared.
He hated that.
Sophie poured too much syrup over Wisconsin.
“Can I stay home tomorrow too?”
“You’re staying home all week,” Maya said.
Sophie frowned.
“But I have art.”
“We’ll get you art supplies.”
“Ms. Lerner has the good markers.”
Ethan sat across from her.
“We could buy good markers.”
“You always buy the wrong ones.”
He looked offended.
“I buy excellent markers.”
“You bought permanent ones.”
“That was one time.”
“You wrote my name in my raincoat with them.”
“Which is why nobody will steal your raincoat.”
Sophie nodded reluctantly.
“Okay.”
It was the most normal conversation they had managed since the fountain.
Ethan held onto it.
Then Sophie said, “Is Uncle Ryan still getting married?”
Maya stopped pouring coffee.
Ethan looked at her.
She looked at him.
“No,” Ethan said.
Sophie considered this.
“Because of me?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
He leaned forward.
“Absolutely not because of you.”
“But I said the thing.”
“What thing?”
“About disappearing.”
“You told the truth.”
Sophie pushed a piece of pancake through syrup.
“Mom said truth can hurt people.”
Maya closed her eyes.
Ethan rubbed his mouth.
“She said that?”
“Last year when I told Grandma her chicken was dry.”
Maya made a strangled noise that might have been laughter.
Ethan looked down at the table.
Even Sophie smiled.
Then Ethan said, “There’s a difference between being mean and saying something important that happened.”
“Was Grandma’s chicken important?”
“No.”
“It was really dry.”
“I remember.”
Maya sat beside Sophie.
“Sophie, what happened at the wedding was not your fault. None of it.”
Sophie nodded.
Children sometimes accepted important statements with terrifying ease.
Then remembered them later in a different shape.
“Is Uncle Ryan my real dad?”
Ethan stopped breathing.
Maya’s hand tightened around her coffee mug.
Sophie looked between them.
“That lady at the hospital called you Dad.”
“Yes.”
“And Uncle Ryan said I’m your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“But you told people he had to say who I really am.”
Ethan looked at Maya.
This conversation could not be postponed simply because both adults wanted another week, another year, another lifetime.
He pulled his chair closer.
“Ryan is your biological father.”
Sophie frowned.
“What’s biological?”
“The person whose body helped make you.”
She thought.
“Like DNA?”
Ethan stared.
Maya said, “They did DNA in science club.”
“Right.”
Sophie looked at Ethan.
“So he gave me DNA.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re my dad.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Ethan blinked.
“That’s it?”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophie cut another pancake.
“Can I have milk?”
Maya stood so quickly she bumped the table.
“I’ll get it.”
She turned toward the refrigerator.
Ethan saw her wipe her cheek.
Sophie saw too.
“Mom?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.”
“I’m having a weird morning.”
Sophie nodded, apparently satisfied.
Ethan thought about the thousands of hours adults spent building catastrophes inside their heads that children sometimes walked through without noticing the architecture.
It did not mean Sophie would never struggle with the truth.
It meant she was hungry now.
He got her milk.
By noon, the video had leaked.
Not Leah’s full recording.
Someone else’s.
A nineteen-second clip started with Ethan climbing out of the fountain and ended after Sophie said Ryan had told someone to make them disappear.
The person who posted it had captioned it with a question about what happened at the Cole-Whitmore wedding.
Within hours, local gossip accounts picked it up.
By evening, a national entertainment site had embedded the clip because Claire’s father owned a hotel group and Ryan worked for the family investment company.
Ethan learned this from a text sent by a coworker.
He did not open the link.
His boss called twenty minutes later.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
Ethan sat alone in his truck in the driveway. He had gone outside because Sophie was watching a movie and he did not want her hearing any adult conversation that contained her name.
His boss, Neil, had hired him nine years earlier and expressed concern through insults.
“You coming in Monday?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then don’t.”
“I have the Franklin review.”
“Franklin will survive without your charming personality.”
“I can work from home.”
“You can ignore work for three days without civilization ending.”
Ethan rubbed his eyes.
“Thanks.”
“Also, someone called reception asking whether we had a statement.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Some website.”
May you like
“Jesus.”
“I told them our statement was that bridges continue to require engineering.”
