Chương 4
Instead she felt tired.
Then another thought came.
“Did you open it before the ceremony?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew.”
“Yes.”
Rachel looked toward the ceiling, toward the room where Ethan was sleeping.
“You knew before your mother told our son he wasn’t yours.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
“You stood next to her during the family pictures.”
“Yes.”
“You let her hold his shoulder.”
“I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“That’s not what you mean.”
“No.”
Daniel waited.
Rachel hated that he could wait longer than almost anybody.
Finally she said, “Why didn’t you confront her when you opened it?”
“Because it was Claire’s wedding day.”
Rachel stared at him.
“That’s almost noble enough to annoy me.”
“It wasn’t noble.”
“What was it?”
He rubbed his thumb over the edge of his watch.
“I was scared.”
That stopped her.
Daniel rarely used the word.
Rachel sat back.
“Of what?”
“My mother.”
She nearly smiled.
He did not.
Daniel looked toward the dark window over the sink.
“I’ve spent years telling myself she was difficult but not cruel. Controlling but not dishonest. Judgmental but still…” He stopped. “My mother.”
Rachel said nothing.
“I kept thinking there had to be another explanation for the receipt. Maybe the test was completed but the sample was unusable. Maybe there was a clerical result that wasn’t conclusive. Maybe the file number belonged to something else.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No.”
“What did it say?”
Daniel pushed the papers closer.
Rachel finally picked them up.
The language was dry.
Names.
Dates.
Identification numbers.
Chain-of-custody entries.
A conclusion confirming Daniel’s biological paternity.
Attached behind it were administrative records. Margaret’s signature appeared twice. Once beside the original payment authorization.
Again beside a request made two days later directing the laboratory to hold the client copy for personal collection by the administrative contact.
Margaret had collected it the next morning.
Rachel read the date three times.
She remembered that morning.
Ethan had been eleven weeks old.
She and Daniel had barely been speaking without turning every sentence into an accusation.
The test had been Margaret’s idea.
At least, that was how Rachel remembered it.
Daniel had said he did not need one.
Rachel, exhausted and furious at the implication hanging over every family dinner, had said she did.
Not for Daniel.
For Margaret.
She wanted a piece of paper that would make the woman stop looking at Ethan as though he were evidence in a trial.
Daniel had been traveling for work when the results were due. Margaret had offered to handle the administrative details because she knew the attorney who referred them to the lab.
Rachel had let her.
Three days later Margaret called.
The samples had supposedly been mishandled.
There was no usable result.
Rachel had told Daniel she would never put Ethan through another collection.
Daniel said he did not care.
The subject closed.
Or so Rachel had believed.
Her fingers tightened on the report.
“I remember the day.”
Daniel nodded.
“She called me.”
“She called me first.”
Rachel looked at him.
“What did she tell you?”
“That the lab had contacted Rachel and you refused to repeat the test.”
Rachel stared at him.
“She told me you said there would be no second test because if you needed one, you didn’t trust me.”
Daniel looked down.
For several seconds neither spoke.
There it was.
Not one lie.
Two.
Designed to meet in the middle.
Rachel whispered, “We fought about that.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. We fought for weeks.”
“I remember.”
“You barely stayed at the apartment.”
“You told me to leave twice.”
“You packed a bag.”
“You threw the bag down the stairs.”
Rachel looked at him.
Despite herself, she said, “It was a small bag.”
Daniel’s mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
The absurdity lasted less than a second.
Then Rachel looked at the report again.
“She did that.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel laid the pages down.
“I do.”
Daniel waited.
“She wanted me gone.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It was for her.”
“She knew Ethan was mine.”
“And that ruined her favorite argument.”
Daniel looked at the signature.
Rachel continued.
“If she admitted this result existed, she had to admit she had been wrong about me. She had to admit she had spent months telling you I trapped you with somebody else’s child.”
Daniel’s eyes closed briefly.
“She never said it that directly to me.”
Rachel laughed.
“Of course she didn’t.”
“I’m not defending her.”
“You are a little.”
“No.”
“You are trying to measure exactly how bad she was so you can stop before the answer gets somewhere you don’t want to go.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not.”
Rachel stood.
“I’m too tired to be fair.”
She gathered the papers.
Daniel reached for them.
She held them away.
“I’m reading these.”
“They’re not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I.”
She carried the folder upstairs.
At four in the morning, Rachel woke and found Daniel gone from bed.
She discovered him sitting on the hallway floor outside Ethan’s room.
He had his back against the wall and his knees raised.
Rachel leaned against the door frame.
“How long have you been sitting there?”
Daniel looked up.
“I don’t know.”
“Is he awake?”
“No.”
“Then why are you guarding him?”
“I’m not.”
Rachel waited.
Daniel rubbed his face.
“Maybe I am.”
She sat beside him.
The carpet scratched the back of her legs.
For a while they listened to the low whir of Ethan’s night-light fan.
Daniel said, “When I was nine, my mother stopped speaking to my father for almost a month.”
Rachel turned.
“He still lived in the house. They ate at the same table. She would ask me to tell him things while he was sitting four feet away.”
Rachel had heard pieces of this before.
Not that detail.
“Why?”
“He had an affair.”
Rachel said nothing.
“I didn’t know that then. I thought he had forgotten an anniversary.”
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“What happened?”
“He stayed. She stayed. They never really forgave each other.”
