Chương 7
Daniel looked down at her.
“No.”
“You don’t have to answer that automatically.”
“I’m not.”
“I hate breastfeeding.”
“Then stop.”
Emily looked up.
“I’m supposed to give him at least—”
“No.”
She blinked.
Daniel bounced Noah gently.
“You are not required to hate your life for a feeding method.”
Emily wiped her face.
“You sound like a pamphlet.”
“I’m in a meeting. My brain is in corporate mode.”
That made her laugh.
Later, after Noah finally slept, Emily stood alone at the kitchen sink washing pump parts.
She thought about Margaret.
Not the confrontation.
A smaller memory.
Three months earlier, Margaret had been helping arrange tiny clothes after the baby shower. She had picked up a blue sleeper and said, “Daniel had one exactly like this.”
Emily had smiled.
Margaret had gone quiet.
At the time, Emily assumed she was emotional about becoming a grandmother.
Now Emily wondered what she had been remembering.
That was the ugly thing about new information.
It reached backward and contaminated innocent memories.
On Tuesday morning, the laboratory portal updated.
Daniel did not open the result immediately.
He stood at the kitchen counter with his phone in front of him.
Emily was making coffee.
William was on speaker.
“You want me to open mine?” William asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you open yours first, I’ll know from your voice.”
William was silent.
Daniel looked at Emily.
“This is stupid.”
“No,” she said.
“I’m thirty-three years old.”
“That appears to be confirmed.”
He gave her a look.
William laughed weakly through the phone.
Daniel put his thumb on the screen.
Then stopped.
“Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“If this says you’re not—”
William interrupted.
“Don’t.”
Daniel swallowed.
William continued.
“Don’t make me prove something before we read a piece of paper. Whatever it says, you’re my son. We can deal with everything else after.”
Daniel’s eyes filled.
He looked furious about it.
Emily pretended to be very interested in the coffee maker.
Daniel opened the result.
He read.
His face did not move.
Emily set the mug down.
William said, “Danny?”
Daniel inhaled slowly.
“It says probability of paternity zero.”
Nobody spoke.
The refrigerator clicked off.
Somewhere upstairs, Noah began to fuss through the monitor.
William said, “Okay.”
One word.
That was all.
Daniel covered his mouth with his hand.
Emily came around the counter.
He did not look at her.
William said again, “Okay.”
Then the call disconnected.
Daniel immediately called back.
William did not answer.
“Call him again,” Emily said.
“I am.”
No answer.
Daniel grabbed his keys.
Emily did not tell him not to drive this time.
“I’m coming.”
He looked at Noah’s monitor.
“You can’t.”
“I can put him in the car seat.”
“No. He needs to sleep.”
“So do you.”
Daniel looked at her.
Emily saw the old instinct in him.
Handle it alone.
Protect everyone else from the mess.
She had seen it when his company nearly laid people off, when William had surgery on his shoulder, when Margaret had called Emily crying after an argument and Daniel had somehow ended up apologizing to both women.
Emily picked up the diaper bag.
“We’re coming.”
“Em.”
“This affects my family too.”
He started to argue.
Then he stopped.
“All right.”
They found William sitting in his truck in the parking lot of a hardware store eleven minutes from his house.
He had not been shopping.
He said he had driven there because he did not want to go home.
Daniel parked beside him.
William got out.
For a moment, father and son stood between two vehicles under a washed-out Tuesday sky.
Emily stayed in the passenger seat with Noah.
She watched Daniel approach.
William looked at him.
Then they hugged.
It was not a dramatic embrace.
William slapped Daniel once on the back and then seemed unable to let go.
Emily looked away.
She gave them privacy inside a parking lot with forty surveillance cameras and a man loading mulch three spaces over.
Noah slept.
Eventually Daniel and William got into William’s truck.
They talked for almost an hour.
Emily fed Noah in the car.
A woman walking past smiled sympathetically at her and said, “Been there.”
Emily nearly laughed.
She wondered which part the stranger thought she meant.
When Daniel returned, his eyes were red.
“He’s leaving her.”
Emily shifted Noah onto her shoulder.
“Today?”
“He packed a bag.”
“Where is he going?”
“Hotel for now.”
She nodded.
Daniel stared through the windshield.
“He asked me not to hate her.”
Emily looked at him.
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m working on hating her efficiently.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“He laughed.”
Daniel rubbed his palms together.
“Then he cried.”
Emily placed one hand over his.
They drove home without talking much.
That evening, Margaret called.
Daniel answered.
Emily was sitting beside him.
Margaret spoke so loudly through the phone that Emily could hear every word.
“Your father has lost his mind.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Mom.”
“He left the house with two shirts and his blood-pressure medication like I threw him out.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I tried.”
“Did you tell him who my biological father is?”
Silence.
Daniel waited.
Margaret said, “I don’t know.”
“Who are the possibilities?”
“Daniel.”
“Names.”
Margaret’s breathing changed.
“I will not discuss this while Emily is sitting there.”
Emily looked at Daniel.
He said, “How do you know she’s sitting here?”
Another silence.
Margaret recovered quickly.
“You tell her everything.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t used to.”
Daniel looked at Emily.
There was something almost absurdly ordinary about the accusation.
As though the problem in the Carter family was excessive marital communication.
Daniel said, “Names.”
Margaret lowered her voice.
“Stephen Mercer.”
“And?”
“There is no and.”
“You said you weren’t certain.”
“Because William and I were still married.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“We were married and together.”
Daniel stared at the floor.
“So either Dad or Stephen.”
“Yes.”
“The test eliminated Dad.”
Margaret did not answer.
Daniel said, “Is Stephen my father?”
May you like
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he?”
