Chương 2
Not our daughter.
Lily stopped drinking.
Nathan closed his eyes briefly.
“Lil, I'm sorry.”
She nodded but didn't look convinced.
Claire crouched beside her again.
“Sweetheart, Maria has that little room where you colored last year, remember? With the art books?”
Lily looked at Maria.
Maria's face softened.
“I still have the giant colored pencils.”
“They're not giant,” Lily said.
“They're unnecessarily large.”
That earned the faintest smile.
Nathan almost laughed.
The absurdity of it hurt.
Claire touched Lily's knee.
“Would you go with Maria for five minutes?”
Lily looked at Nathan this time.
He wanted to say no.
Then he imagined whatever sentence Claire was preparing to speak landing inside a six-year-old forever.
“Five minutes,” he said.
Maria opened the door.
Lily slid from the chair, then turned back.
“My necklace.”
Nathan looked at the locket in his hand.
“Can I borrow it?”
“You won't lose it?”
“No.”
“You lose your keys.”
Claire made a small sound that might have become laughter on another night.
Nathan looked at Lily.
“That's fair. I promise.”
She considered him solemnly.
“Okay.”
Maria took her hand.
At the door, Nathan spoke.
“Maria.”
She turned.
“You and I are talking after.”
Maria nodded.
“I know.”
The door closed.
Nathan waited until Lily's footsteps disappeared.
Then he placed the locket on the desk between himself and Claire.
“Who?”
Claire remained standing.
“His name was Daniel.”
Was.
Nathan caught it immediately.
“Was?”
“He died.”
“When?”
Claire looked down.
“The night Lily was born.”
Nathan said nothing.
The museum office suddenly seemed very quiet.
“Daniel what?”
“Daniel Mercer.”
Nathan searched the name in his memory.
Nothing.
“Who was he?”
Claire sat opposite him.
Her champagne gown gathered around her knees. She pressed both palms against them.
“My brother.”
Nathan stared at her.
He almost laughed, because the answer was so far from the one he had prepared himself to hear that his mind rejected it.
“You don't have a brother.”
“I did.”
“I've known you for twelve years.”
“I know.”
“You told me you were an only child.”
“I know.”
“Your parents told me you were an only child.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
Claire looked toward the closed door.
Nathan lowered his voice.
“You let me believe you had no siblings for twelve years.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She did not answer.
Nathan picked up the locket again.
“If this is your brother, why were you kissing him?”
“Because he was dying.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
“It was goodbye.”
Nathan looked again.
Now the photograph changed.
Not literally.
But the hand on Claire's face no longer looked intimate. It looked like someone holding on.
Her fingers twisted in his shirt looked less like desire than panic.
Nathan put the locket down.
“Why was he at the hospital?”
Claire's eyes filled, but she blinked and kept the tears where they were.
“He brought me there.”
“Why?”
“I was in labor.”
“I brought you there.”
“No.”
Nathan stared at her.
“I met you there.”
He remembered the night too clearly.
A delayed flight from Chicago. Forty-seven unanswered calls. His taxi crawling through traffic while Claire's contractions accelerated.
He had arrived at Mount Sinai at 9:18 p.m.
Lily had been born at 10:06.
Claire had always said her neighbor had driven her.
Nathan leaned forward.
“You told me Susan drove you.”
“She didn't.”
“Daniel did.”
“Yes.”
“Where were your parents?”
“In Connecticut.”
“And why did your supposedly nonexistent brother bring you to the hospital?”
Claire looked toward the locket.
“Because he'd been staying with me.”
Nathan waited.
There was something about the shape of her silence that frightened him more than the photograph had.
“What aren't you saying?”
Claire rubbed her hands together.
“Daniel wasn't my biological brother.”
Nathan leaned back.
There were answers that simplified things.
This one multiplied them.
“What does that mean?”
“My parents took him in when he was eleven. His mother died. His father was... not somebody who could raise him. My father knew the family.”
“You grew up together.”
“Yes.”
“So he was your brother.”
“To me, yes.”
“But not legally?”
“No.”
“Why hide him?”
Claire's gaze moved to the rain on the window.
“Because my father paid him to disappear.”
Nathan did laugh then.
Once.
Without humor.
“Of course he did.”
“Nathan—”
“No, that's perfect. Your father finally makes sense in this story.”
Robert Vale had been dead for four years, but Nathan had never needed resurrection to dislike him.
Robert had built a private-equity fortune and treated human affection as a market inefficiency. He had approved of Nathan because Nathan came from enough money not to need his.
Nathan stood.
“Why did your father want Daniel gone?”
Claire looked at him.
“Because of Lily.”
There it was.
Nathan's body understood before his mind did.
His fingers went cold.
He looked at the door through which his daughter had disappeared.
“No.”
Claire stood too.
“Nathan.”
“No.”
“Please listen.”
He pointed at the door.
“Is Lily mine?”
Claire did not answer quickly enough.
Nathan turned away.
The office had no space to walk, so he made it three steps before reaching a bookshelf. He put both hands on it.
Behind him, Claire said, “Yes.”
He turned.
“Biologically?”
Her face crumpled for half a second before she controlled it.
“No.”
Nathan felt the floor tilt.
Not metaphorically.
His balance actually shifted, and he reached for the shelf.
Claire moved toward him.
“Don't.”
She stopped.
He breathed through his nose.
Once.
Twice.
“Daniel?”
“No.”
Nathan looked at her.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Claire closed her eyes.
“Nathan, there are things about that night you don't know.”
“I have gathered that.”
“Daniel came back because I called him.”
“Who is Lily's father?”
“I need to explain what happened.”
“Who is her father?”
Claire's voice became smaller.
“I don't know.”
Nathan stared at her.
For the first time that night, anger failed him.
He simply did not understand the sentence.
“What?”
“I don't know.”
“How can you not know?”
Claire sat again.
May you like
Her hands shook now.
“Because I wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant.”
