Chương 6
“That could have been theoretical.”
“Nathan.”
“Fine.”
They stood there another moment.
Inside, someone dropped a spoon.
Rachel said, “Victoria was afraid you would think I was trying to break you up.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Repeatedly.”
Nathan looked toward the upper windows.
One curtain moved.
Victoria’s room.
“What exactly did she say?”
Rachel hesitated.
“That matters.”
“I know.”
“She said I had waited seven years, so waiting six more weeks wouldn’t change anything.”
Nathan’s face hardened.
“She said you deserved one uncomplicated thing.”
He looked at Rachel.
“She said that?”
“Yes.”
“And you agreed.”
Rachel’s mouth tightened.
“For about fifteen minutes.”
Nathan turned toward the road.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“So you agreed longer than fifteen minutes.”
Rachel accepted that without defending herself.
Later that morning, Nathan found Victoria in the lodge library.
She wore jeans and a cream sweater instead of the emerald dress.
Her engagement ring was gone.
She was sitting near the window with coffee she had apparently forgotten to drink.
Nathan stayed by the door.
Victoria looked up.
“I was going to leave.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The road was closed for an hour.”
He nodded.
Snow.
Ordinary logistical reality had kept them in the same building.
Victoria looked toward the chair across from her.
Nathan sat.
Neither spoke for a while.
A lodge employee came in, adjusted two logs in the small library fireplace, apologized for interrupting, and left.
Victoria watched the fire.
“I keep trying to find a version of the explanation that doesn’t make me sound terrible.”
Nathan said nothing.
“There isn’t one.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“That doesn’t mean I wanted to hurt you.”
“People say that after deciding the hurt they caused was acceptable.”
Victoria flinched.
Nathan hated the precision of his own sentence.
It sounded rehearsed even though it was not.
He leaned back.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“That sounded like something from a divorce lawyer’s Instagram.”
Victoria laughed unexpectedly.
It escaped her before she could stop it.
Then she covered her face.
Nathan laughed too.
For three seconds, they were themselves.
That was worse.
Victoria lowered her hands.
“I love you.”
Nathan looked at the carpet.
“I know.”
“I was afraid if Rachel told you, you would cancel the proposal.”
“I might have.”
“I know.”
“And you decided I shouldn’t be able to.”
“Yes.”
Nathan looked up.
Victoria’s eyes were red.
“That is the part I can’t get past.”
“I know.”
“You weren’t protecting Sophie.”
“I thought I was partly protecting her.”
“From what?”
“From being dropped into the middle of whatever happened between you and Rachel.”
“That was already happening. She just didn’t know it.”
Victoria swallowed.
“I was protecting myself too.”
“Mostly.”
“Yes.”
Nathan respected the answer more than he wanted to.
Victoria looked at her hands.
“My parents’ marriage ended because my father had another daughter.”
Nathan knew this story.
Her half sister in Seattle.
The affair that lasted four years.
Her mother finding hotel receipts.
Victoria refusing to speak to her father for almost a decade.
“That isn’t this,” Nathan said.
“I know.”
“Rachel and I slept together once while she was separated.”
“I know.”
“Mark knew.”
“I know.”
“No one was running a second family.”
“I know that now.”
Nathan looked at her.
“You knew it then.”
Victoria shook her head.
“No. I knew the facts. That’s different from knowing what my fear was doing with them.”
Nathan sat quietly.
That was the sort of sentence Victoria was good at.
Usually he loved that about her.
She could find the shape of something difficult.
Today it made him suspicious.
“Did you ever intend to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After we got home.”
Nathan’s expression must have changed.
Victoria looked away.
“I know.”
“After I proposed.”
“Yes.”
“After we celebrated.”
“Yes.”
“After both families flew here.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted the engagement to become harder to undo.”
Victoria’s silence answered.
Nathan stood.
She stood too.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at her.
“I believe you.”
Her face softened with hope.
He stopped it.
“That doesn’t fix it.”
The hope disappeared.
Nathan left the library.
The drive back to Denver took nearly five hours because of snow.
Sophie sat in the back seat with Rachel and watched an animated movie with headphones.
Nathan drove.
His father had offered to take everyone in the SUV with the snow tires.
Nathan said no.
He needed something to do with his hands.
For long stretches, nobody spoke.
Near Idaho Springs, Sophie took off her headphones.
“Can we get fries?”
Rachel looked at the road.
“We have snacks.”
“I don’t want almonds.”
“You said you liked almonds.”
“Yesterday.”
Nathan smiled without meaning to.
They stopped at a fast-food restaurant attached to a gas station.
Sophie ate fries dipped in a vanilla milkshake.
Rachel found this disgusting.
Nathan tried one.
“It’s good.”
Rachel stared at him.
“You have both lost credibility.”
For ten minutes, nobody mentioned DNA.
Nathan watched Sophie arrange her fries from longest to shortest.
He wondered whether she had always done that.
He wondered how many ordinary facts about her he did not know.
Then he became angry at himself.
He had known Sophie for seven years.
He knew she hated bananas if they had brown spots.
He knew she slept with one foot outside the blanket.
He knew she became silent instead of loud when embarrassed.
He knew she could recite every dog breed in a book she had received for Christmas.
Biology had not created knowledge retroactively.
He had been paying attention before.
That mattered.
It just did not mean what it had meant yesterday.
The paternity clinic was in a medical office building in south Denver.
The waiting room had gray carpet and a television playing a home renovation show without sound.
Nothing about it matched the size of what Nathan felt.
A receptionist asked for IDs.
Rachel signed consent forms for Sophie.
Nathan signed his.
May you like
A technician explained chain of custody, cheek swabs, verification, turnaround time.
Sophie sat in a chair swinging her feet.
