Chương 4
I don’t know if that came from you.
I need you to know I tried.
I’m having a boy.
I’m not contacting you again.
Mara
Ethan read the letter twice.
Then a third time.
His mother stood near the refrigerator.
“You told her I’d contest paternity.”
Lorraine’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“You told her I was seeing someone.”
“You were.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca.”
Ethan stared at her.
“I went on two dates with Rebecca.”
“I knew you were trying to move forward.”
“So you upgraded two bad dinners into a relationship.”
“I wanted Mara to stop calling.”
“Why?”
Lorraine’s voice rose.
“Because you were a mess.”
“Stop saying that like it gave you legal custody of my life.”
“You were drinking every night.”
“I was grieving.”
“You crashed your car.”
“I hit a mailbox.”
“At two in the morning.”
“I was sober.”
“You were not.”
Ethan stopped.
That was true.
He had forgotten the argument after the mailbox because the years had sanded the sharp edges off it. His father had been dead two months. Ethan had driven after three bourbons, misjudged a turn, destroyed someone’s mailbox, and paid for it privately because the homeowner had been kind enough not to call the police.
Lorraine had taken his keys for a week.
“You stopped showing up to work,” she said. “You weren’t eating. You told me you didn’t care if the business failed. One night you said you didn’t care whether you woke up.”
Ethan looked down.
“That still wasn’t your decision.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I know.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me later?”
That silenced her.
Ethan waited.
He could feel his anger changing shape.
The first lie might have been panic.
The next eight years were something else.
“Why didn’t you tell me when I got better?”
Lorraine sat down slowly.
“Because by then I had already done it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No. It’s cowardice.”
“Yes.”
The simple agreement hit harder than denial.
Lorraine folded her hands together.
“You got sober. You got the business stabilized. You moved out. You started sleeping. You laughed again. And every month that passed made telling you harder because I wasn’t just telling you about Mara anymore. I was telling you what I had done.”
“So you protected yourself.”
“Yes.”
“And then you went looking for them.”
“Yes.”
“Because you felt guilty.”
“At first.”
“And after that?”
Lorraine looked at him.
“Because I loved him.”
The kitchen went quiet.
Ethan wanted to hate her cleanly.
Instead he saw an old woman in house slippers saying she loved a child she had no right to know and every right, biologically, to love.
It was intolerable.
“You don’t get to make that noble.”
“I’m not.”
“You took his father away from him and then became his grandmother in secret.”
“I know.”
“You let Mara trust you.”
“I know.”
“You let Noah love you.”
Lorraine’s face broke then.
Not dramatically.
Her eyes closed. Her shoulders moved once.
“Yes.”
Ethan picked up the letters.
“I’m taking these.”
“They’re yours.”
“They were always mine.”
He put them inside the folder.
At the door Lorraine called his name.
He stopped but did not turn.
“If she lets you meet him,” Lorraine said, “don’t make the mistake I made.”
Ethan looked back.
“What mistake would that be? There are options.”
She swallowed.
“Don’t decide what’s best for him before you know him.”
Ethan left.
He drove home without music.
His apartment occupied the third floor of a converted warehouse in an old part of the city, a place he had bought six years earlier because the windows were enormous and the ceilings made him feel less trapped.
That afternoon the space felt absurdly large.
He put Noah’s folder on his dining table.
Then he walked around it.
Twice.
He opened the refrigerator, stared inside, shut it.
His phone buzzed with a work message.
He ignored it.
At four twelve he called Mara.
She did not answer.
He did not leave a message.
At four twenty-eight he called again.
Nothing.
At five eleven, a text arrived.
Do not call while Noah is with me.
Ethan typed three different replies.
Deleted all of them.
Finally:
I spoke to my mother.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Mara sent:
I assumed you would.
He wrote:
I found the letters.
This time the three dots stayed longer.
Then:
Good.
Ethan stared at the word.
He called.
She declined immediately.
A moment later:
Not tonight.
He wanted to tell her that eight years had already passed.
He wanted to tell her he had earned the right to one conversation.
Then he read his own thought back to himself and disliked the man who had thought it.
Rights.
He had no idea what his rights were.
More importantly, he had no idea what Noah needed.
He set the phone down.
At seven he made scrambled eggs and burned them because he forgot the pan was hot.
He ate them anyway.
At eight thirty he unfolded Mara’s first letter again.
At nine fifteen he searched her name online.
He stopped after thirty seconds.
His mother had begun this with surveillance disguised as concern. Ethan did not want to continue it.
At ten, he searched one thing instead.
How does voluntary paternity testing work?
He read until the legal language made his head hurt.
At ten forty-three Mara texted.
Tomorrow. 10 a.m. Riverside Park. By the boathouse. Alone.
Ethan replied:
Okay.
Then:
Thank you.
He nearly deleted the second message.
He sent it.
The next morning was cold enough that he regretted wearing only the navy overshirt he had worn to the café.
Mara was already on a bench when he arrived.
No Noah.
No bag.
She held a paper cup between both hands.
Ethan stopped several feet away.
“Can I sit?”
“It’s a public bench.”
“That sounded like a no.”
“It wasn’t.”
May you like
He sat at the opposite end.
For a while they watched two geese bully a man carrying a bag of bread.
