Chương 7
“But he does.”
“Yes.”
“Then I was mistaken.”
“That isn’t enough.”
Her head turned sharply.
“What more would you like?”
“I want you to understand that if the result had gone the other way, he would still be my son.”
Helen’s mouth tightened.
“You cannot know how you would have felt.”
“I know what I decided before he was born.”
“You were young.”
“I was twenty-nine.”
“You were in love.”
“Yes.”
She said it as if love were evidence of impaired judgment.
Daniel picked up his keys from the arm of the chair.
“You don’t get to see him right now.”
Helen’s eyes widened.
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am.”
“You are keeping my grandson from me because your wife hit me.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because yesterday he learned that his grandmother has spent years treating him like a pending lab result.”
“That is grotesquely unfair.”
“Maybe.”
She stepped toward him.
“Daniel.”
He stopped.
Her voice softened.
It had worked on him his entire life.
“I lost your father. I have you and Melissa and the children. You know what family means to me.”
Daniel looked at the photograph on the fireplace.
“I think I do.”
“That boy calls me Grandma.”
“Yes.”
“You would take that away?”
“No.”
Daniel looked directly at her.
“You did.”
For the first time, Helen’s face changed without immediately arranging itself into indignation.
Daniel saw fear.
It lasted only a moment.
Then she said, “Rachel is enjoying this.”
He opened the front door.
“No, Mom. She really isn’t.”
That evening, Rachel asked the question Daniel had expected.
“What exactly did she say to you before you ordered the test?”
They were folding laundry on the bed.
Daniel held one of his own T-shirts.
He folded it once, unfolded it, and tried again.
“Why do you think she said something?”
Rachel stopped matching pillowcases.
“Because you came home looking guilty in a very specific way.”
“I always look guilty around laundry.”
“Daniel.”
He sat on the edge of the mattress.
Rachel waited.
“She said Ethan had Luke’s chin.”
Rachel did not move.
“How did she know what Luke looked like?”
Daniel looked up.
“What?”
“How did your mother know what Luke looked like?”
He stared at her.
Rachel’s face had gone pale.
“She knew his name.”
“I never showed her a picture.”
“Maybe she looked him up.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel put the pillowcase down.
“I never told her his last name.”
Daniel felt something cold move through his stomach.
“You told me.”
“Yes.”
“I might have said it.”
“To your mother?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Think.”
He tried.
The years around Ethan’s birth existed in fragments: Rachel crying in the bathroom because she could not keep food down; his mother refusing to attend one prenatal appointment after Rachel invited her; Frank assembling a crib backward; Daniel sitting alone in his car outside the hospital the night Ethan was born because he had been too happy and too frightened to go home.
“I don’t know.”
Rachel reached for her phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking.”
“For what?”
She did not answer.
Daniel watched her search.
“Rachel.”
She turned the screen.
It showed an old social media profile.
Luke Mercer stood in a photograph with his wife and two children. His hairline had receded. He was holding a fishing rod.
Daniel looked at his chin.
Then he looked away.
Rachel said, “She had to search him.”
“Maybe.”
“How?”
“Maybe Melissa knew.”
“Melissa didn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Melissa didn’t even know there was someone else until after Ethan was born.”
Daniel stood.
“You think my mother investigated your ex?”
“I think I want to know.”
“Why?”
“Because she used his face to get inside your head.”
Daniel’s shoulders tightened.
“I’m responsible for what I did.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You’re looking for a way to make the test more her fault.”
“No. I’m looking for the beginning.”
“The beginning was us breaking up.”
Rachel stared at him.
“That was our beginning. Not hers.”
Daniel threw the folded shirt onto the bed.
“You want to do this now?”
“I want to understand what happened.”
“I already told you.”
“No. You told me what you did. I’m asking how she got the information she used.”
He looked toward the hallway.
Ethan was in his room building something loudly.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“I might have told her.”
Rachel watched him.
He hated the silence.
Then a memory surfaced.
Not because he searched for it, but because his phone buzzed on the nightstand.
The sound took him backward seven years to the vibration of a different phone against a diner table.
His mother sitting across from him.
A laminated menu between them.
Rachel had been five months pregnant.
Daniel had shown Helen a photograph.
Not of Luke.
Of Rachel and Luke.
He had found it buried in an old public album online.
He had shown his mother because he had already been afraid.
“Oh,” Daniel said.
Rachel’s face changed.
“What?”
He sat down.
“I showed her.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“You what?”
“I found a picture.”
“When?”
“Before Ethan was born.”
“You told me your mother didn’t know who Luke was.”
“I forgot.”
Rachel laughed once.
“You forgot.”
“It was seven years ago.”
“You showed her a photograph of the man I slept with during our breakup.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is a lie.”
Daniel stood again.
“I was terrified, okay?”
Ethan dropped something in his room.
Both adults froze.
Nothing followed.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“I was scared every day. I’d look at your stomach and think, I love this baby, and then I’d think, what if I can’t do it? What if he looks exactly like this guy? What if everyone knows and nobody says anything? It was ugly. I didn’t tell you because you were already carrying all of it.”
Rachel stared at him.
“So you told your mother.”
“One time.”
“You gave her the knife.”
May you like
His face hardened.
“I was looking for my mother.”
