Chương 7
“You were afraid, so you created a fake divorce?” Claire asked.
“I said I don’t know where that document came from.”
“And the ring?”
He breathed out.
“I was going to replace it during the ceremony.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It was in the safe. I put it on because I didn’t want to lose it.”
“You told Natalie it belonged to your father.”
“I didn’t say that exactly.”
Claire almost admired the instinct. Even cornered, he searched for the narrowest grammatical opening.
Lily began to fuss.
“I have to go.”
“Wait. Let me see her.”
“No.”
“Just a video call.”
“No.”
“Why are you punishing me through my child?”
The phrase struck so hard that Claire forgot to breathe.
When she answered, her voice was quiet.
“You have never held her.”
“I tried to respect what you wanted.”
“You did not come.”
“You told me not to.”
“I told you not to come after you asked me to delay the induction because you had Natalie’s tasting appointment.”
“That is not fair.”
“It is exactly what happened.”
Lily’s fussing sharpened into a cry.
Claire ended the call.
She lifted the baby, checked her diaper, and walked the length of the living room. Her anger moved too quickly through her body; Lily seemed to feel it and cried harder.
“I’m sorry,” Claire whispered. “I’m sorry. None of this is yours.”
She sat in the rocking chair and held Lily against her bare chest beneath the cardigan. Gradually the crying softened.
Claire did not.
She cried without sound, tears slipping down her face while she kept her breathing even for the baby. She cried because Evan had accused her of using Lily, because she had once loved him, because some part of him seemed to believe his own version, and because she could not find a clean place inside herself from which to make decisions.
The paternity test took place the following week at a clinic near the courthouse.
Evan arrived with his attorney, a polished man named Gregory Bell who wore a navy suit and spoke to Claire as if each sentence were being dictated to a court reporter.
Evan wore no wedding ring.
A pale band remained around his finger.
He stopped when he saw Lily.
Claire had expected him to perform concern for the room. Instead he went still.
The technician explained the cheek swab procedure. Claire listened, though Simone had already described it. Evan did not seem to hear anything until the technician asked him to sit.
After his sample was taken, Claire lifted Lily from the car seat.
“She’s so small,” Evan said.
Claire did not answer.
The technician swabbed the inside of Lily’s cheek. The baby protested with one offended cry and then sneezed.
Evan smiled.
It was involuntary. Claire knew because the expression vanished as soon as he noticed her watching.
“Can I touch her hand?” he asked.
Gregory shifted slightly.
Simone remained silent.
Claire looked at Evan’s face. There were shadows beneath his eyes. He had shaved, but a small cut marked his jaw.
“No,” she said.
His mouth tightened.
Claire hated herself a little.
She also did not change the answer.
Outside the clinic, Simone waited until Evan and Gregory had entered the elevator.
“You are allowed to say no,” she said.
“He will tell a judge I refused.”
“He may.”
“Should I have let him?”
“I am not your conscience.”
“That is inconvenient.”
“I charge too much to pretend otherwise.”
The result arrived six days later.
Probability of paternity exceeded 99.9 percent.
Evan did not contest it.
His attorney filed a request for temporary parenting time the next morning.
Claire read the petition at two fifteen in the morning while Lily nursed. Evan described himself as an “eager father wrongfully excluded during pregnancy and birth.” He stated that he had “maintained respectful distance in response to the mother’s repeated demands” and learned of Lily’s delivery only shortly before the wedding.
Claire’s hands became so cold she nearly dropped the phone.
She opened their message history and searched the date Lily was born.
Her first message at 5:42 a.m.: They’re starting the medication. If you’re coming, come now.
His reply at 8:11: I can’t do this today.
Her message at 8:13: She is being born today whether you can do it or not.
At 4:36 p.m., after twenty hours of labor: Lily was born. 6 lbs 3 oz. She is healthy.
His reply came the following afternoon.
I’m glad you’re both okay. Please communicate through counsel from now on.
Claire forwarded the thread to Simone.
Then she opened the voice memo she had never sent Natalie.
Her own exhausted voice filled the dark room.
“You don’t get to call this respect. You don’t get to leave and then tell people I asked for the silence. I asked you to stop lying. I asked you to choose something and stand in it.”
Lily released her and made a small complaining sound.
Claire stopped the recording.
In the morning, Mara called.
Claire almost ignored it.
She answered because Mara had called four times in six minutes.
“I need to talk to you,” Mara said.
“You can talk.”
“Not on the phone.”
“Why?”
A long exhale came through the speaker. “Because I don’t trust my brother.”
They met at a laundromat halfway between Claire’s apartment and Mara’s house. Mara chose it because, as she said, no one in their family voluntarily entered a laundromat and therefore no one would see them.
Machines turned behind glass doors. A television mounted near the ceiling showed a cooking program with subtitles. An elderly man folded white towels with extraordinary precision.
Mara wore jeans and an old university sweatshirt. Without wedding makeup, she looked more like the twenty-six-year-old who had once slept on Claire’s couch after a breakup and less like a member of the Hale family delegation.
May you like
She sat on a plastic chair beside a broken change machine.
“I didn’t know he told Natalie about a protective order,” she said.
