Chương 8
Ryan: Not if they stay quiet for one day.
Vanessa: You can’t control Ethan.
Ryan: I can control the room.
Ethan read that sentence twice.
I can control the room.
He could hear his father in it.
Not the words.
The assumption.
Claire locked the tablet.
“I gave copies to the police this morning.”
Maya looked up.
“Why?”
Claire stared at her.
“Because he lied to me. Because Vanessa put your child in a fountain. Because those are not things I need to balance against whether my family looks ridiculous in the press.”
Maya’s eyes filled.
Claire looked away.
“Also because I’m angry.”
“That’s allowed,” Maya said.
“I’m not doing this because I’m noble.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
Claire laughed once.
It surprised all three of them.
Then she covered her eyes with one hand.
“I bought four hundred custom napkins with our initials on them.”
Maya blinked.
“What?”
“That’s what I’m furious about today.”
Ethan leaned against the counter.
Claire shook her head.
“I understand there are bigger things. My cancelled marriage. Your daughter. Criminal investigations. Human betrayal. But apparently my brain has decided the napkins are where we’re putting the rage.”
Maya started laughing.
She tried to stop.
Claire laughed too.
Then both women were crying.
Ethan quietly left the room.
Upstairs, Sophie was showing his mother how to draw a horse.
The horse looked like a dog with long legs.
Ethan stood in the doorway.
His mother, Diane, looked up.
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
She nodded.
She did not ask for details.
That was unusual.
Diane Cole believed questions were a love language.
Sophie held up the drawing.
“Grandma made the head too big.”
“It’s perspective,” Diane said.
“It’s bad.”
Diane looked at Ethan.
“She has become cruel since the fountain.”
Sophie giggled.
Ethan sat on the floor beside them.
For ten minutes, he drew horses.
His were worse.
Two days later, Ryan called him.
Ethan almost ignored it.
Then he answered.
“What?”
Ryan was quiet.
“I need to see you.”
“No.”
“Dad won’t talk to me.”
“That sounds like a problem you can enjoy privately.”
“Mom won’t either.”
“She’s busy drawing livestock.”
“Ethan.”
He heard exhaustion in Ryan’s voice.
It would have moved him once.
Now it only made him tired.
“What do you want?”
“To explain.”
“You’ve explained. You panicked.”
“There’s more.”
“There is always more with you.”
“I didn’t know Vanessa was going to touch them.”
“I believe you.”
Ryan went silent.
That surprised him.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“I thought—”
“You wanted your problem removed. You hired a person who owed you money, helped her lie about Maya, brought her to your wedding to control Maya, and told her you didn’t care how she got them out. I believe you didn’t picture Sophie underwater. Congratulations.”
Ryan breathed into the phone.
“I deserve that.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t agree with me so I have to become reasonable.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you.”
“You manipulate people when you order coffee.”
A pause.
Then, unexpectedly, Ryan said, “That’s fair.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
There he was.
His brother.
Not the groom.
Not the liar.
The boy who had once hidden in Ethan’s room after failing geometry because he was more afraid of disappointing Thomas than of the grade itself.
Ethan hated that the boy still existed inside the man.
It would have been easier otherwise.
Ryan said, “I’m going to cooperate.”
“With what?”
“Everything.”
“Good.”
“My attorney thinks I shouldn’t admit intent beyond what the recordings prove.”
“That sounds like your attorney doing his job.”
“I’m telling them anyway.”
Ethan leaned against the garage wall.
“Why are you calling me?”
Ryan hesitated.
“I want to see Sophie.”
“No.”
“Not now.”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“That’s not my decision.”
Ryan inhaled sharply.
Ethan continued.
“It’s not Maya’s alone either. And it sure as hell isn’t yours. Sophie gets a say when she’s old enough to understand what she’s saying.”
“I’m her father.”
“No.”
Ryan went quiet.
Ethan’s voice stayed level.
“You’re her biological father. Maybe someday you become something else. You don’t get the rest of the title because a lab found your DNA.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I never thought about her?”
“I don’t know.”
“I did.”
“Then you should probably ask yourself why thinking was enough for you.”
Ryan said nothing.
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck.
“Anything else?”
“Did you know Dad offered Maya money?”
Ethan stopped.
“What?”
Ryan’s voice changed.
“I thought you knew.”
“No.”
“When Sophie was a baby.”
Ethan’s body went rigid.
“You told Dad?”
“No.”
“Then how did he know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ryan.”
“I swear.”
Ethan almost hung up.
Then Ryan said, “Ask him about the trust.”
“What trust?”
“The one for Sophie.”
The line went silent.
Ryan was still there.
Ethan could hear him breathing.
“Ethan?”
He ended the call.
Thomas arrived that evening before Ethan invited him.
Ethan opened the door and said, “Trust?”
Thomas’s face answered before his mouth did.
Ethan stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
“You knew.”
Thomas looked toward the driveway.
“How much?”
“For years.”
“How many?”
Thomas did not answer.
“Six?”
“Nearly.”
Ethan laughed.
His father flinched.
“You knew before the first Christmas.”
“Yes.”
“You watched me open a present that said ‘Dad’ on it.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I was protecting you.”
Ethan looked at him.
Thomas had used those three words so many times across their lives that Ethan had stopped hearing the violence inside them.
Protecting you.
Protecting the family.
Protecting the company.
Protection, in Thomas Cole’s hands, often meant deciding what someone else was allowed to know.
“How did you find out?”
Thomas sighed.
“Ryan called me after the test.”
Ethan almost admired the symmetry.
Ryan had always found someone else to carry the unbearable part.
“What did he say?”
“That there had been a mistake.”
“A mistake.”
“He was twenty-nine and terrified.”
“So was Maya.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
May you like
Thomas looked at him.
“I thought you would leave her.”
