Chương 4
“I was trying to understand what Frank believed.”
“Frank is dead.”
The words struck harder than Claire intended.
Evelyn recoiled.
Claire regretted them instantly and was too angry to take them back.
Daniel stepped between them.
“That’s enough.”
Claire looked at him.
“Is it?”
He lowered his voice.
“Yes.”
Something about his tone, the familiar husbandly authority of it, made her want to slap him.
Instead she picked up her purse.
“Get Mara.”
Daniel did not move.
“Claire, please.”
“We’re going home.”
“We need to talk.”
“You had three weeks.”
“I was going to tell you tonight.”
She looked at his overnight bag.
“You weren’t in Baltimore.”
“No.”
“Were you ever in Baltimore?”
He shook his head.
The answer hurt in a completely different place.
“Where were you?”
“At the lake house.”
Denise muttered something under her breath.
Claire turned.
“What?”
Denise’s mouth tightened.
“I told him lying about the conference was stupid.”
“Thank you, Denise.”
“I’m not defending him.”
“That must be exhausting for you.”
Daniel picked up his bag.
“I went there because Dad kept records.”
“What records?”
“Everything.”
That was true.
Frank Mercer had kept appliance warranties from 1989 and receipts for shoes he no longer owned.
“He had a filing cabinet in the basement,” Daniel said.
“I thought maybe the result was there.”
“And was it?”
“No.”
“So you lied to me for a weekend to search your dead father’s filing cabinet for proof that your daughter isn’t yours.”
Daniel went pale.
“That is not what I was trying to prove.”
“What were you trying to prove?”
“That he was wrong.”
Claire stopped.
The anger did not disappear, but it shifted enough to let something else through.
Daniel looked suddenly exhausted.
There was gray in his beard she had not noticed that morning.
“I wanted to find the report,” he said.
“I wanted to walk in here with it and show Mom that Dad got obsessed with some date on a calendar and built a whole theory around nothing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because if he was wrong, you never had to know.”
“And if he wasn’t?”
Daniel’s eyes moved to hers.
He had no answer.
From the kitchen came the crash of something metal hitting tile.
Everyone jumped.
Peter called, “Nobody panic.”
Mara called immediately after him, “It wasn’t me.”
Claire shut her eyes.
Under any other circumstances, she would have laughed.
She put both hands against the edge of the dining table and looked at the wood between them.
“Who else knows?”
Daniel glanced around.
“Us.”
Claire counted faces.
“Who is us?”
“Mom, Denise, me.”
“Peter?”
Denise shook her head.
“I told him this afternoon because he knew something was wrong.”
Claire looked toward the fireplace.
At the cousins.
At the relatives pretending not to listen.
“And everybody standing ten feet away?”
Aunt Carol suddenly became fascinated by the rose garland.
Lucas stared at his shoes.
Evelyn whispered, “They only knew we wanted one photograph of blood relatives.”
Claire looked at her.
There it was.
Not genetics.
Not uncertainty.
Not grief.
Blood.
“You told them Mara wasn’t a blood relative.”
“I said there were questions.”
“You don’t have a result.”
“No.”
“You don’t have proof.”
“No.”
“You have an invoice and four lines written by a grieving, suspicious old man.”
Evelyn’s expression changed.
“Do not talk about Frank that way.”
Claire stared at her.
“Your husband secretly took genetic material from my child.”
Evelyn’s mouth opened.
“That is what happened, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know how he got it.”
“He didn’t ask me.”
“He may have had a reason.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Claire stepped back from the table.
“A reason.”
Evelyn looked ashamed almost before the words finished leaving her mouth.
Claire nodded once.
“Okay.”
Daniel reached for her.
She moved away.
“Don’t.”
“Claire.”
“Get Mara.”
He stood there.
“Now.”
This time he went.
Denise followed him into the kitchen, leaving Claire and Evelyn facing each other across the table.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Evelyn began refolding Frank’s note along the old crease.
Her fingers could not make the corners meet.
“I loved that little girl from the second Daniel put her in my arms,” she said.
Claire looked toward the kitchen doorway.
“Then you should have acted like it.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was she.”
Evelyn stopped folding.
Claire took the note from her and flattened it on the table.
“Whatever Frank believed, whatever Daniel finds, whatever a test says, you made a six-year-old stand in a room full of people and wonder whether she belonged.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled.
Claire did not rescue her from it.
Daniel returned with Mara’s shoes in one hand and the bakery box in the other.
Mara was carrying three blue birthday candles.
“I found these.”
Claire crouched and helped her into her shoes.
“You can leave them here, sweetheart.”
“But Grandma needs seventy.”
Peter appeared behind her.
“We have seventy.”
Mara considered this.
“Exactly?”
“Seventy-two, actually.”
“Why?”
“Your aunt buys candles like civilization is ending.”
Denise, behind him, said, “They were on sale.”
Mara handed the three candles to Peter.
Then she looked at Evelyn.
“Are you mad at me?”
Evelyn’s face crumpled.
“No, honey.”
“Then why did you take me out?”
Nobody answered quickly enough.
Claire stood and took Mara’s hand.
Evelyn moved forward.
“Because Grandma made a terrible mistake.”
Mara studied her.
“Can you put me back?”
Evelyn looked at the altered Christmas photograph.
Her lips parted, but Claire was already leading Mara toward the door.
Daniel followed them onto the porch.
“Claire.”
She kept walking.
“Claire, wait.”
At the car, she turned.
Daniel stopped several feet away.
Mara climbed into the back seat and began fastening herself into her booster.
Claire held the driver’s door open.
“You’re not coming home tonight.”
Daniel stared at her.
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“The lake house seems available.”
“That’s not fair.”
Claire almost answered.
Then she saw Mara watching them through the open car door.
May you like
She lowered her voice.
“Neither was Baltimore.”
