Chương 8
“Why?”
“Because the alternative was telling you that your entire childhood story might be false six weeks before our wedding.”
“That would have been inconvenient.”
“Yes.”
She had expected him to deny it.
He did not.
“I wanted the wedding.”
“So did I.”
“I thought I was protecting you from chaos.”
“You were protecting the schedule.”
“I was protecting us.”
“By deciding what I was allowed to know.”
Damien rubbed both hands over his face.
“Apparently.”
Elena looked at him.
For nine years she had loved his certainty.
Now she saw the cost of it.
“When did you decide he was dead?”
“I didn’t.”
“You said ‘Dead men don’t get invited.’”
“I was angry.”
“That isn’t an explanation.”
Damien hesitated.
“My father told me Thomas had used another identity after prison and that the real Thomas Vale had died.”
Elena stared.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It did yesterday.”
“No. It was useful yesterday.”
Damien looked at her.
The accusation hurt him because it was close enough to true.
Elena opened the toolbox.
She gave him the court papers first.
Then the letters.
She watched him read.
He lingered over the terrible dog.
“Is that supposed to be a dog?”
“Yes.”
“It’s awful.”
“That has been established.”
For one second they were themselves.
Then Damien reached the envelope bearing Victor’s old firm stamp.
His face changed.
“What?”
Elena asked.
He turned it over.
“My father’s assistant used this stamp.”
“So?”
“Family correspondence sent to the firm after Claire died would have gone through his office.”
Elena sat.
“Could they legally intercept Thomas’s letters?”
“Some, maybe, if the contact order required communication through counsel.”
“And return them?”
“If counsel represented your guardian.”
“With messages saying I didn’t want contact?”
Damien’s mouth tightened.
“That would depend on who authorized it.”
“Can we find out?”
“Yes.”
The word came too quickly.
Elena looked at him.
“Don’t fix this for me.”
He stopped.
She had never seen him so uncertain.
“I don’t know how to be in this conversation.”
“Try not knowing.”
A humorless breath left him.
“That sounds terrible.”
“It is.”
They spent the afternoon making calls.
Not because Thomas had brought a perfect file.
He had not.
The old case was a mess of missing records, retired attorneys, closed offices, and documents that had been scanned badly enough to make signatures look underwater.
Elena called Melissa again.
Melissa refused to speak at first.
Then Elena told her about the letters.
Melissa went quiet.
“I never wrote those return messages.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I was twenty-eight. Claire had just died. I had a five-year-old who wasn’t mine suddenly sleeping in my room because she screamed if I closed the door. Victor handled the legal things.”
“You let him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t handle them.”
There it was again.
Not conspiracy.
Weakness.
Ordinary, devastating weakness.
“Did Mom ever say she was afraid of Dad?”
Melissa exhaled slowly.
“They fought.”
“About what?”
“Money. His gambling. Her going back to work.”
“Did she want to leave him?”
“Once.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Melissa.”
“A week. Maybe two.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because she didn’t leave.”
“Was he violent?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did Victor know she considered leaving?”
“Yes.”
Elena looked at Damien.
He had gone pale.
After the call, he said, “My father took a real thing and made it larger.”
“Yes.”
“I believed him.”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry.”
Elena rubbed her forehead.
“I don’t know what to do with that yet.”
Damien nodded.
“I know.”
She gave him a tired look.
He almost smiled.
“Sorry.”
By evening, Damien had found the name of the paralegal who had worked for Victor during the custody proceedings.
Her name was Joanne Meyers.
She lived in Arizona.
She was seventy-two.
She refused to talk to them.
“I signed confidentiality agreements,” she said.
“The firm dissolved twenty years ago,” Damien told her.
“My memory didn’t.”
Elena liked her immediately.
Three days passed.
The wedding story moved online, peaked, then began to disappear beneath newer scandals. Cross Meridian’s stock did not collapse. The hotel did not sue anyone. No mysterious reporter solved Elena’s childhood.
Real life proved less efficient.
Elena went back to work.
She ran a small charitable foundation funding pediatric bereavement programs, which suddenly felt like a cosmic joke.
At a staff meeting, no one mentioned the wedding until her operations director quietly pushed a chocolate bar across the table.
“You look homicidal.”
Elena stared at her.
“That’s not in the employee handbook.”
“It should be.”
Elena ate half the chocolate.
For forty minutes they discussed grant renewals.
It was almost a relief.
Outside the conference room, her phone remained full of messages from friends asking if she was okay.
She answered three.
Not the ones asking whether Thomas was really her father.
She had not done a DNA test.
That surprised Damien.
“Why not?”
“Because if he isn’t, we have one problem.”
“And if he is?”
“We have all the others.”
Thomas had not contacted her.
Not once.
On the fourth day she called him.
“What are you doing?”
“Working.”
There was machinery behind him.
“You went back to work?”
“People keep ordering cabinets.”
She leaned against her office window.
“I want the DNA test.”
“All right.”
“There’s a lab in Manhattan.”
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow.”
“I can get off at two.”
“You don’t have to tell me your schedule.”
“Sorry.”
She smiled faintly.
“What are you building?”
“Kitchen doors.”
“Are they good?”
“No. Customer picked maple and wants it painted gray.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything.”
For five minutes he explained wood grain.
It was the most normal conversation she had ever had with her father.
That terrified her more than the wedding.
The DNA result arrived three days later.
Probability of paternity: greater than 99.99 percent.
Elena read it alone.
May you like
Then she sat at her kitchen counter and watched a pigeon walk along the neighboring roof.
It stopped twice to peck at nothing.
