Chương 6
He had laughed.
I had not thought about her in years.
“Why would Rebecca care whether you saw a prenatal notice?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is a terrible answer.”
“I’m aware.”
A pipe clicked somewhere in the wall.
The house settled around me.
“Where is she now?”
“She left Sterling Biotech three years ago.”
“For what?”
“She runs operations for a private investment group.”
“Whose?”
“Chloe.”
I heard the hesitation.
That frightened me more than the name.
“Whose?”
“My mother’s.”
I pushed away from the wall.
“Harrison.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I know exactly how that sounds.”
“It sounds like your mother employed the woman who helped suppress notice that I was pregnant.”
“We don’t know that Rebecca knew what the notice contained.”
“You just read an email saying prenatal notice.”
“I know.”
“And you still found room for doubt.”
“I found room for evidence.”
The old anger rose fast enough to make my face hot.
“That is rich.”
“I deserve that.”
The answer stopped me.
Harrison had never accepted a blow cleanly.
He usually redirected it, examined it, found the technical weakness.
“I’m not asking you to trust my interpretation,” he said.
“I’m asking you to see the records yourself.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“And you are not contacting Rebecca tonight.”
Silence.
“Harrison.”
“I already did.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course you did.”
“I called once.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t answer.”
“And your mother?”
“I have not called her.”
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“That sentence has never comforted me.”
He made a sound that might have been a humorless laugh.
“I’ll send you the emails.”
“No.”
He paused.
“No?”
“Do not forward anything to me until my attorney knows where you got it.”
“They’re my company records.”
“That does not mean you can distribute privileged correspondence because you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
I almost laughed.
“You called me four hours after discovering you have three sons.”
His voice went quiet.
“I don’t know what I am.”
For the first time that night, I believed him completely.
I looked down the hallway.
“Go to sleep.”
“I won’t.”
“Then stare at the ceiling responsibly.”
“Chloe.”
“What?”
“I am sorry.”
The words came too early.
Too clean.
They irritated me.
“For which part?”
He had no answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try tomorrow.”
I ended the call.
For several seconds I stood with the phone in my hand.
Then Noah’s bedroom door opened.
He appeared in pajama pants and one sock.
“How much did you hear?” I asked.
“Not everything.”
“That is not a number.”
“Some.”
He leaned against the doorframe.
“Who is Rebecca?”
I rubbed my temple.
“An adult problem.”
“That means something bad.”
“It means something boring and complicated.”
“You were yelling.”
“I was not yelling.”
“You do the quiet yelling.”
I stared at him.
He shrugged.
“It’s worse.”
He was right.
“Back to bed.”
“Was Dad lying?”
The word still scraped against something inside me.
“I don’t know.”
“Did someone hide us from him?”
“I don’t know that either.”
He looked disappointed.
Children believed adults should have answers proportional to their age.
At seven, uncertainty felt like negligence.
“If he didn’t know because somebody lied,” Noah said, “then you can’t be mad at him for not knowing.”
“That part would be true.”
“But you can be mad about the other stuff.”
“Yes.”
He thought about it.
“So you can be mad and not mad.”
“Unfortunately, that is most of adulthood.”
He nodded as if filing the information for later use.
Then he looked toward his brothers’ rooms.
“Are you going to tell Eli and Miles?”
“Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because one of you awake at ten forty is already too many.”
He looked at the clock on the wall.
“It’s ten thirty-seven.”
“Go.”
He went.
I stayed awake until almost two.
Not because Harrison kept calling.
He did not.
That surprised me.
At midnight I opened the old divorce folder on my laptop for the first time in more than a year.
The files had names created by attorneys and paralegals who believed emotion could be contained in neutral abbreviations.
Petitioner Correspondence.
Discovery Index.
Medical Notice.
Proposed Interim Terms.
I clicked through documents I had once known by page number.
Five years ago, every line had felt radioactive.
Now some of them looked almost ordinary.
One did not.
The response to my second prenatal notice had come from Harrison’s outside counsel.
Our client disputes both the relevance and authenticity of the representations made by Ms. Mercer regarding pregnancy and reserves all rights pending verified medical documentation.
I read the surname again.
Ms. Mercer.
Not Ms. Bennett, which had been my name after I stopped using Sterling.
Mercer.
Adrian Mercer’s last name.
At the time I had assumed it was a sloppy clerical error born from the affair accusation.
Now it looked different.
I opened the metadata.
The original document had been created by an associate named Daniel Cross.
Daniel had later signed two other filings.
I searched my email archive.
His name appeared seventeen times.
Most were routine.
Then I found one message from my attorney dated five years earlier.
Cross is not usually on domestic matters.
He appears to be coordinating with Sterling corporate counsel, which is unusual but not necessarily improper given the IP allegations.
I sat very still.
The divorce had never been just a divorce.
Harrison had believed I was stealing company research for a lover.
His corporate attorneys had entered the fight because he thought the marriage and the intellectual property dispute were connected.
If someone wanted prenatal information buried, corporate channels provided cover.
At 2:07 a.m., I sent one email to my attorney, Elaine Porter.
Call me at seven.
Do not contact Harrison yet.
Then I shut the laptop.
At 6:42, Miles climbed into my bed and placed one freezing foot against my leg.
I woke with a curse.
He giggled.
“You said a bad word.”
May you like
“You assaulted me with an ice foot.”
“It’s not ice.”
