Chương 2
She nodded too fast.
Behind him, Victoria put both champagne glasses on a side table.
Rachel crossed the room.
“Sophie.”
Sophie backed into Nathan’s chair.
Rachel stopped.
Nathan had known Rachel since they were eleven years old.
There were faces a person learned so completely that age did not replace the earlier versions. Nathan could still see the girl with braces who had kicked him in the shin during seventh-grade soccer. The teenager who had cried in his car after her parents separated. The twenty-six-year-old woman standing barefoot in his old Denver apartment one July morning, asking him to forget the previous night.
Now she looked older than forty.
“Nathan,” Rachel said.
He stood.
“Not here.”
She nodded.
Victoria remained several feet away.
Nathan gave her phone back.
She did not reach for it.
He held it out until she finally took it.
“Study,” he said.
Victoria looked at Sophie.
Rachel moved between them.
“No.”
It was quiet, but the word carried.
Nathan’s father cleared his throat.
“Nate—”
“Dad, please.”
Richard stopped.
Nathan turned toward his mother.
“Can you stay with Sophie?”
Sophie caught his sleeve.
“No.”
Nathan looked down.
“I want to hear.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“Soph.”
“You said you were going to tell him.”
“I know.”
“You said after Christmas.”
Rachel flinched.
Nathan looked at her.
Christmas had been two months ago.
Sophie continued, very softly.
“Then you said after his birthday. Then you said after the trip.”
No one in the room needed an explanation of which trip.
Aspen.
The engagement weekend.
Rachel bent toward her daughter.
“I was trying to figure out how to do it right.”
“You kept saying later.”
Nathan saw the way Sophie’s hands curled into the sleeves of her cardigan.
Something in him went from stunned to angry, but the anger did not know where to land.
Rachel.
Victoria.
Himself.
A dead man.
Seven lost years.
He forced his hands open.
“Sophie, we’ll talk about it. I promise. But I need to talk to your mom first.”
Her eyes lifted.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“At Mom?”
Nathan hesitated.
Rachel watched him.
He could have lied.
Instead he said, “I’m upset. That’s different.”
“Are you mad at Victoria?”
This time his hesitation lasted longer.
“Yes.”
Victoria looked away.
Sophie nodded as if honesty had cost her something too.
Nathan’s mother came over and held out her hand.
“Would you help me with something in the kitchen?”
Sophie did not move.
“What?”
“I accidentally promised your grandfather I knew how to make hot chocolate the way you like it.”
Richard frowned.
“I didn’t ask for hot chocolate.”
Nathan’s mother did not look at him.
“See? He’s already making the situation worse.”
Under almost any other circumstances, Sophie might have smiled.
She did not.
But she took Eleanor Brooks’s hand.
Nathan watched them cross the room.
Every guest pretended not to stare.
Nathan hated them for pretending.
He hated himself more for giving them something to pretend about.
Rachel went first into the study.
Victoria followed.
Nathan entered last and shut the door.
The study was small by lodge standards, which meant it was still larger than Nathan’s first apartment. Bookshelves covered two walls. A lamp stood beside a leather chair. Snow brushed the windows with a faint dry hiss.
Rachel remained standing.
Victoria sat down, then apparently changed her mind and stood again.
Nathan leaned both hands on the desk.
No one spoke.
He could hear the dinner room beyond the door, muted voices rearranging themselves around disaster.
Finally Nathan looked at Rachel.
“Is Sophie my daughter?”
Rachel rubbed her hands together.
“I don’t have a legal paternity test.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
“Is she?”
Rachel looked at him.
“I think so.”
Nathan stared at her.
Victoria closed her eyes.
Nathan laughed once.
There was nothing amused in it.
“You think so.”
“The genealogy test matched your dad at the grandparent level.”
“I saw that.”
“I tested twice.”
“With what?”
“Sophie’s saliva.”
“And Dad’s DNA is already in the database.”
“Yes.”
Richard had bought everyone genealogy kits one Christmas six years earlier, back when he had briefly become obsessed with proving the Brooks family had Scottish ancestry.
Nathan had teased him for three months when the results came back mostly English and German.
Nathan’s own kit was still unopened in a kitchen drawer somewhere.
He remembered that now.
An ordinary white cardboard box.
A thing he had moved from one apartment to another without opening.
Rachel continued.
“The company estimates relationships. It isn’t a legal paternity test. I know that. But there aren’t many ways Richard can be her grandfather.”
Nathan’s voice stayed quiet.
“Dad has one son.”
Rachel nodded.
The room seemed to contract.
Nathan looked at the floor.
Seven.
Sophie was seven.
He counted backward without wanting to.
Rachel saw him doing it.
“Yes,” she said.
He raised his eyes.
“You told me Mark was her father.”
Rachel pressed her lips together.
“I believed Mark was probably her father.”
“Probably.”
“We were getting back together.”
Nathan pushed away from the desk.
“That isn’t biology.”
“No.”
“You told me there was no question.”
“I lied.”
There it was.
Not explained.
Not softened.
Nathan walked to the window.
Snow pressed against the dark.
He could see his own reflection: charcoal suit, loosened expression, a man dressed for a celebration that no longer existed.
Eight years earlier, Rachel and Mark Miller had separated for nearly four months.
Nathan remembered most of it.
He remembered Rachel complaining that Mark left wet towels on the bathroom floor.
He remembered Mark calling Nathan at midnight asking whether Rachel was dating anyone.
He remembered telling Mark it was none of his business.
He remembered the August night when Rachel came to Nathan’s apartment after drinking two margaritas with coworkers.
They had not planned anything.
May you like
That had been part of the problem.
She had sat on the kitchen counter while he made eggs at one in the morning. They argued about whether she should go back to Mark. She accused Nathan of always pretending not to care about anything.
