Chương 6
“Fine,” she said.
Helen answered her door wearing beige slacks and a white cardigan, as though Daniel had arrived for coffee after church.
The red mark was gone from her cheek.
She did not invite him in.
“You came alone.”
“Yes.”
“Where is my grandson?”
Daniel almost laughed at the word.
“With a friend.”
Helen’s lips pressed together.
“So now I’m permitted to call him that?”
Daniel looked past her into the house where he had grown up.
A framed photograph of Frank sat on the hallway table.
Daniel had spent half his childhood watching his father stand in that same hall with his car keys in his hand while Helen followed him from room to room finishing arguments he had already abandoned.
“Can I come in?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to assault me too?”
Daniel looked at her.
Helen held his gaze for three seconds.
Then she stepped aside.
He entered.
There was a small dish of wrapped peppermints on the hall table. Frank had hated those peppermints. Helen still bought them.
In the living room, she sat at one end of the sofa.
Daniel chose the chair opposite.
“You embarrassed me yesterday,” she said.
Daniel looked at her.
“That’s where you want to start?”
“You announced extremely private information in front of everyone.”
“So did you.”
“I stated what I had every reason to believe.”
“You told my six-year-old son he wasn’t family.”
“I said family should be served first.”
“That means the same thing.”
“He was grabbing.”
“He asked for corn.”
“Rachel has taught him to expect immediate gratification.”
Daniel stared at her.
There were moments with Helen when conversation felt like walking onto ice and hearing a crack beneath one foot.
The mistake was believing the next step would find stronger ground.
“Why did you believe Ethan wasn’t mine?”
Helen’s face changed.
“You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
She looked toward the window.
“You and Rachel were separated.”
“For six weeks.”
“She slept with someone else.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“Then she came back.”
“We got back together.”
“She announced she was pregnant.”
“She told me privately.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I know how you tell it.”
Helen crossed one leg over the other.
“You were devastated.”
“I was scared.”
“You were twenty-four pounds lighter by the time you married her.”
“That was eight months later, and I was training for a half marathon.”
“You hated running.”
“I still hate running.”
“Exactly.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“Mom.”
“I watched you destroy yourself trying to be noble.”
“You watched me make a choice you didn’t like.”
“I watched my son accept another man’s child.”
“No. You decided that’s what happened.”
“Because it was the obvious explanation.”
“And when I told you I didn’t care?”
“You cared.”
Daniel leaned back.
This was the part he hated.
She was not entirely wrong.
At twenty-nine, sitting in a rented apartment with Rachel’s positive pregnancy test on the kitchen counter between them, Daniel had cared so much he had vomited after she left.
Rachel had told him everything.
That mattered.
He had told himself it mattered enough.
For three years after Ethan was born, it had.
Then his mother had called one night after Thanksgiving and said, almost casually, “He has Luke Mercer’s chin.”
Daniel had hung up.
Two weeks later, he had ordered the test.
He had never told Rachel that specific sentence.
He was suddenly certain she would ask.
Helen watched him.
“You see?”
“I see that you knew exactly where to push.”
“I was worried about you.”
“No. You needed to be right.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it?”
Helen stood.
“I will not sit in my own home and be spoken to this way.”
Daniel remained seated.
“You can stand.”
She stared at him.
Frank would have left by now.
The thought arrived so clearly that Daniel almost heard his father sigh.
He stayed.
“Did you ever say those things around Ethan?”
“No.”
“Melissa says you called him the question mark.”
Helen’s face shifted.
“Melissa has always been dramatic.”
“Did you?”
“It was a joke.”
“To whom?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
“To whom was it funny?”
Helen walked to the fireplace and adjusted a photograph that did not need adjusting.
“You children have decided I’m some sort of monster because Rachel cannot control herself.”
Daniel watched her fingers straighten the frame.
“You held food above his head.”
“He was reaching.”
“You told him family first.”
“I was frustrated.”
“Why?”
Helen turned.
“Because every single gathering revolves around keeping Rachel satisfied. Her food allergies, Ethan’s schedule, whether we say something she has decided is inappropriate—”
“Rachel doesn’t have food allergies.”
“She went gluten-free for three months.”
“In 2019.”
“That is not the point.”
Daniel almost smiled.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was so perfectly his mother that some exhausted part of him recognized home.
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is that this family changed when she came into it.”
“Yes.”
Helen blinked.
Daniel continued.
“That happens when people marry.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I think I finally do.”
She folded her arms.
“She made you keep the test from me.”
“Yes.”
“That should tell you something.”
“It does.”
“What?”
“That I hurt my wife badly enough that she needed a boundary.”
Helen stared.
Daniel leaned forward.
“I did that test without telling her.”
Helen’s face showed surprise.
“You never told me that.”
“You were never supposed to know there was a test.”
“But why would she object if she had nothing to hide?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
There it was.
He opened them.
“She objected because I swabbed our three-year-old son’s cheek while she was buying groceries.”
Helen said nothing.
“I object now too.”
“You had a right to know.”
“Maybe. I didn’t have a right to do it that way.”
“You were his father.”
“I was his father before the result.”
Helen looked away.
May you like
Daniel stood.
“I didn’t come here to persuade you Ethan shares my DNA.”
