Chương 4
Rachel nodded.
Victoria stepped closer.
“What about us?”
Nathan looked at her.
She immediately regretted the question.
He could see it.
But he also understood why she asked.
Human beings were selfish at inconvenient moments.
He had been selfish ten seconds earlier when he claimed a child before any proper test had happened.
He looked at Victoria’s ring.
“I don’t know.”
She closed her hand around it.
“You don’t know if we’re getting married?”
“I don’t know anything.”
The study door opened.
Richard Brooks stood there.
Nobody had invited him.
Nathan stared.
His father looked from him to Rachel.
“What the hell is going on?”
Rachel’s shoulders folded inward.
Nathan closed his eyes.
Of course.
Because nothing difficult remained private once enough family members were placed in one expensive room.
“Dad.”
Richard came inside and shut the door.
“That message had my name in it.”
“You were listening?”
“You were shouting.”
Nathan almost argued, then realized he had no idea whether that was true.
Richard looked at Rachel.
“Is Sophie my granddaughter?”
Rachel whispered, “Possibly.”
Richard sat in the nearest chair.
For once in Nathan’s life, his father had no immediate opinion.
That frightened him more than anger would have.
Richard rubbed his mouth.
“Oh.”
It was exactly the sound Sophie had made.
Nathan leaned against the desk.
Richard looked up.
“Does Eleanor know?”
“No.”
“She heard what you said.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Richard nodded.
He stared at his hands.
“Mark?”
“He knew it was possible,” Rachel said.
Richard closed his eyes briefly.
Nathan had grown up watching his father solve problems with money, phone calls, and authority.
Richard had run a construction company for thirty-two years. He could walk onto a stalled project and find the missing decision within minutes. People waited for him to tell them what happened next.
Now he looked at Nathan.
“What do we do?”
Nathan almost laughed again.
“I have no idea.”
From the dinner room came the small clatter of dishes being cleared.
Somebody had decided the meal was over.
It seemed grotesquely ordinary.
Nathan thought of Sophie drinking hot chocolate with his mother while four adults discussed ownership of the truth about her.
“No more tonight,” he said.
Rachel looked up.
“We need to talk to her.”
“Yes. But not with twenty people waiting outside.”
“I can take her upstairs.”
Nathan nodded.
“I’ll come.”
Rachel hesitated.
Then she said, “Okay.”
Victoria stood near the bookshelf.
Nathan looked at her.
She removed the engagement ring.
He had not asked her to.
She placed it on the desk.
His reaction surprised him.
It hurt.
Not because he wanted to put it back on her finger.
Because three nights earlier, that ring had meant something simple.
Now it sat beside a brass letter opener and a stack of lodge stationery like an object recovered after an accident.
Victoria picked up her phone.
“I’m going to my room.”
Nathan said nothing.
She reached the door, then turned.
“I didn’t know for seven years.”
“I know.”
“I need you to know that.”
“I do.”
“I made one terrible decision.”
Nathan looked at her.
“No. You made the same decision for six weeks.”
Victoria’s face tightened.
Then she left.
Nathan stayed in the study another minute after Rachel and Richard went out.
He could hear the fire.
Snow.
Muted conversation.
He looked at the ring.
Then at his hands.
He did not feel like somebody’s father.
He did not feel like somebody’s fiancé.
He felt like a man who had stood up from dinner and discovered that several facts he had trusted were merely things other people had agreed not to challenge.
When he went upstairs, Sophie was sitting cross-legged on the bed in Rachel’s room, still wearing her pale blue velvet dress.
Her shoes were on the floor.
Her cardigan had been folded badly beside her.
Eleanor sat in a chair by the window.
Rachel stood near the dresser.
Sophie looked at Nathan when he entered.
“Did Victoria leave?”
“She went to her room.”
“Are you still marrying her?”
Rachel said, “Sophie.”
“What?”
Nathan sat on the edge of the other bed.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie picked at the seam of her dress.
“Because of me?”
“No.”
“You were happy before I told you.”
Nathan leaned forward.
“That doesn’t make it your fault.”
“But it happened because I told you.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
Sophie considered that.
Children were often more careful with language than adults expected when the language mattered.
“Mom says the test might be wrong.”
Nathan looked at Rachel.
Rachel nodded once.
“That’s true.”
Sophie looked between them.
“So you might not be my dad.”
“That’s true too.”
“And you might be.”
“Yes.”
She pulled one knee closer to her chest.
“If you are, does that mean Daddy wasn’t?”
The question found every weak place in the room.
Rachel sat down beside her.
“No, honey.”
Sophie looked at Nathan instead.
He had no prepared answer.
Maybe that helped.
He rubbed his palms on his trousers.
“Mark was your dad.”
“But if you’re my real dad—”
“People use that word real when they mean biological.”
Sophie frowned.
Nathan continued.
“Mark was there when you were born. He changed diapers. He taught you to swim.”
“He pushed me in.”
Rachel almost smiled through tears.
“He did not push you in.”
“He did.”
Nathan remembered the story.
Mark had slipped on the pool step while holding Sophie and both of them had fallen into three feet of water.
For years, Sophie had insisted it was attempted murder.
“He bought you that terrible plastic drum set,” Nathan said.
Sophie’s mouth twitched.
“Mom threw it away.”
“I donated it.”
“You threw it away.”
Rachel sighed.
“Fine.”
Nathan looked at Sophie.
“If a test says I’m your biological father, it doesn’t erase him.”
“Would I have two dads?”
Nathan’s throat tightened.
May you like
“You’d have one dad who loved you for as long as he was alive, and maybe one biological father who has a lot to learn.”
Sophie studied him.
