Chương 8
“One man.”
“You barely knew him.”
“We dated for six months.”
“You let him stay overnight while Lily was there.”
Claire went quiet.
For the first time, Daniel seemed to think he had regained some ground.
He looked at me.
“This is what I mean.”
I stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“She makes bad decisions.”
“So you hired someone to photograph her home.”
“I hired someone to document behavior relevant to custody.”
“Using my money.”
“Our money.”
My father took one step forward.
I held out my hand.
“Dad.”
He stopped.
I looked at Claire.
“Did you know about the investigator before the filing?”
“No.”
“When did you get served?”
“Yesterday morning.”
That explained the timing.
Her arrival.
The crying.
The panic.
I looked back at Daniel.
“You filed the day before our wedding.”
“It was a deadline.”
“What deadline?”
“My attorney wanted it submitted before the courthouse closed Friday.”
“That is not a deadline.”
He exhaled.
“I wanted it done.”
“Before we were married.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
Claire answered softly.
“So he could amend it Monday.”
Daniel’s head turned sharply.
She looked at me.
“He told his lawyer the marriage would already have happened by then.”
The room went quiet again.
I felt something colder than anger settle into place.
“You planned the filing around the wedding.”
Daniel shook his head.
“No.”
“You planned the apartment around the custody case.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You planned the money.”
“I was trying to protect Lily.”
“You planned when I would find out.”
He looked at me.
“I was trying not to lose you.”
I let that sit between us.
Then I asked the one question that had been forming since Claire first said the word daughter.
“If I had married you today and then told you I wanted nothing to do with this custody fight, what would you have done?”
Daniel stared at me.
No one else moved.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if I said I wasn’t going to move into the apartment, wasn’t going to be presented as part of your stable home, wasn’t going to help raise a child I’d been deliberately kept from knowing, and wasn’t going to let you use my income or my name in court, what would you have done?”
His face changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
I saw calculation again.
“You wouldn’t have said that.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“You love kids.”
Rachel made a disgusted sound.
Daniel ignored her.
“You’ve talked about wanting a family.”
I stared at him.
“So you counted on me adjusting.”
“I counted on you understanding.”
“After I was legally tied to you.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I knew you’d be angry.”
“No.”
My voice came out almost calm.
“You knew I might say no.”
He didn’t answer.
That was the answer.
I looked at Claire.
Then at Susan.
Then at Evelyn.
Finally, I looked at Daniel.
“You didn’t hide Lily because you were ashamed.”
His eyes met mine.
“You hid her because my consent was inconvenient.”
Daniel stared at me as if the sentence had struck somewhere physical.
“No.”
The word came out too quickly.
I waited.
He shook his head again.
“That isn’t what happened.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
“I panicked.”
“For four years?”
He looked away.
“I kept thinking there would be a better time.”
“There was a better time.”
I heard my voice flatten.
“It was the first time you saw me after Claire told you she was pregnant.”
His mouth tightened.
“That was complicated.”
“It was one sentence.”
“Emily.”
“One sentence.”
I stepped closer.
“You could have said, ‘I got someone pregnant.’”
Rachel muttered, “That would’ve covered it.”
Daniel shot her a look.
I kept going.
“Then I could have chosen what to do with my own life.”
“You would have left.”
“Maybe.”
“You would have.”
“That was still my decision.”
He opened his mouth, then stopped.
For once, he seemed to understand there was nowhere useful to put the next lie.
Claire shifted beside Evelyn.
Her face had gone pale again.
I turned toward her.
“When did you find out about me?”
She hesitated.
“Before Lily was born.”
“How long before?”
“A few months.”
Daniel said, “Claire.”
She ignored him.
“He told me he was seeing someone.”
“Seeing someone.”
“That was how he put it.”
I nodded.
“And when did you learn we were serious?”
“Later.”
“How much later?”
Claire rubbed her thumb against the side of her index finger.
“When he stopped answering me at night.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“That isn’t fair.”
She looked at him.
“You want fair now?”
He said nothing.
I studied Claire.
There was anger in her, but not the kind I had expected.
It wasn’t possessive.
It wasn’t romantic.
It looked tired.
“What did he tell you about me?” I asked.
She swallowed.
“At first, almost nothing.”
“And later?”
“That you were kind.”
That hurt in a stupid, sharp way.
I looked at Daniel.
He stared at the carpet.
Claire continued.
“He said you were organized.”
Rachel made a small noise.
I almost laughed again, but nothing came.
“He said you were good with money.”
There it was.
The sentence settled differently from the others.
I looked at Claire.
“Did he say that before or after the custody case started?”
“Before.”
Daniel lifted his head.
“Can we stop treating every normal thing I said about Emily like evidence?”
Claire turned toward him.
“You made normal things into evidence.”
He flinched.
I looked at him.
“What did you tell your lawyer about me?”
“Nothing inappropriate.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I said we were engaged.”
“What else?”
“That we were getting married.”
“What else?”
He hesitated.
I could see him sorting.
Selecting.
Testing each answer before letting it out.
“Daniel.”
“I said you have a stable job.”
My stomach tightened.
“What else?”
“That you’ve owned property.”
Rachel cursed under her breath.
“What else?”
“That you have no criminal record.”
I stared at him.
May you like
“What else?”
He rubbed his forehead.
