Chương 6
Daniel’s face lost color.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need you to say that every time you learn something.”
“What do you need?”
She looked at him.
The question seemed sincere. It also irritated her because sincerity did not make it her responsibility to instruct him.
“I need you to stop making me manage your reaction.”
He nodded slowly.
“Understood.”
She almost told him that saying understood was another form of management. Instead, she stood.
“Your ten minutes are over.”
The test result arrived four days later.
Probability of paternity: greater than 99.99 percent.
Claire read it in Melissa’s office while Rose slept in a stroller beside the desk. She felt no relief. She had never doubted the result. The document merely transferred truth from her body into a form institutions recognized.
Melissa watched her.
“You’re allowed to have a reaction.”
“I’m having one.”
“You’re staring at a wall.”
“That is sometimes a reaction.”
Melissa turned the report toward herself.
“His attorney has asked to discuss voluntary acknowledgment, support, custody, visitation, and a confidentiality agreement.”
“No confidentiality agreement.”
“I assumed.”
“He doesn’t get to buy silence.”
“They may frame it as privacy for Rose.”
“Then it applies equally, contains no financial penalty tied to speaking about my own life, and does not prevent me from responding if his company leaks something.”
Melissa smiled slightly.
“You have been listening.”
“I have been paying you.”
“That too.”
Claire looked at Rose.
“What does he want?”
“Immediate visitation. Decision-making rights. Access to medical records. His name added to the birth certificate. A formal parenting plan.”
“All at once.”
“He is accustomed to acquiring entire companies in less time.”
“She is not a company.”
“I am aware.”
Claire stood and walked to the window. Melissa’s office overlooked a parking garage and the side of a brick building with three air-conditioning units on the roof. The view comforted her. Nothing about it tried to impress anyone.
“What would a court do?” Claire asked.
“That depends on many factors. He is the biological father. He has had no prior relationship with the child, but we have strong evidence he was prevented from knowing about her. On the other hand, you are the established parent and primary caregiver. Courts focus on the child’s best interests, not punishing either adult.”
“He’ll ask for fifty-fifty.”
“Eventually, perhaps.”
“He travels constantly.”
“That matters.”
“He doesn’t know how to hold her.”
“That can be learned.”
Claire turned.
Melissa did not soften the truth.
“You came to him,” the attorney said. “You wanted him to know. Knowing has consequences.”
“I wanted Rose to have a father. I didn’t say I wanted Daniel to become one overnight.”
“He cannot become one overnight.”
“He thinks contracts make time move faster.”
“Then we teach him otherwise.”
Their first supervised visit took place in Claire’s mother’s living room.
Daniel arrived alone, carrying nothing.
Evelyn opened the door and looked behind him.
“No security?”
“They’re in the car.”
“Send them away.”
“My security director would object.”
“This is my house.”
Daniel took out his phone and made the call.
Claire watched from the living room with Rose in her arms. The house smelled faintly of furniture polish and the chicken soup Evelyn had made that morning, though no one was hungry.
Daniel came in after the SUV drove away.
He had removed his tie. Without the armor of the boardroom, he looked less like the man on magazine covers and more like someone who had slept badly for several weeks.
Evelyn pointed toward a chair.
“You sit there.”
“Mom.”
“What? It has arms.”
Daniel sat.
Claire placed Rose in his arms only after showing him where to support the head and how to position the baby’s body.
His hands were careful to the point of stiffness.
“Relax your shoulders,” Claire said.
“I am relaxed.”
“No, you are not.”
Rose stared up at him.
Daniel stopped breathing.
“Keep breathing,” Claire said.
“I am breathing.”
Evelyn sat on the sofa with her knitting.
“You’re doing a poor impression of it.”
He exhaled.
Rose’s fingers opened against his shirt.
Daniel looked at Claire.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she has fingers.”
Evelyn coughed into her hand to hide a laugh.
For twenty minutes, nothing happened.
It was the most important twenty minutes Daniel had spent with Rose, and there was nothing dramatic in them. She looked at his face. He looked at hers. Once, she turned toward a sound from the kitchen. Once, she spit a small amount of milk onto his shirt.
Daniel stared at the damp spot.
Claire handed him a cloth.
“She does that.”
“How often?”
“Enough.”
He wiped his shirt, then Rose’s mouth.
Too gently.
“You’re not dusting glass,” Claire said.
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Babies are not fragile in the way you think. They are fragile in other ways.”
He looked at her.
She did not explain.
At the end of the visit, Daniel asked when he could come again.
“Next week,” Claire said.
“Next week?”
“Yes.”
“That’s seven days.”
Evelyn’s knitting needles stopped.
Claire kept her voice level.
“She has a routine. I have work. You have no caregiving experience. We start slowly.”
“I can clear my schedule.”
“Clearing a schedule is not the same as being ready.”
His expression tightened.
There he was—the man who expected movement when he applied pressure.
Claire waited.
Daniel glanced down at Rose, then back at her.
“Next week,” he said.
After he left, Evelyn set the knitting aside.
“He wanted to argue.”
“He almost did.”
“He will.”
“I know.”
Evelyn looked toward the window where Daniel’s SUV had returned.
“He looked at her like your father looked at you the first time you came home from the hospital.”
Claire did not answer.
Her father had been dead six years. He had carried each of his children as if entrusted with state secrets, serious and terrified and unwilling to admit either.
May you like
Evelyn picked up the knitting again.
“That does not make Daniel a good man,” she said. “It means he has the equipment to become less bad.”
