Chương 5
“It’s about us.”
Claire glanced between them. “He should hear what I have to ask.”
Kesha did not like Claire making that decision, but she also did not like the habit she had developed of discussing the children’s history in rooms just beyond their hearing. Secrets had begun this entire mess.
“All right,” she said. “Everyone stays. Anyone can leave.”
Claire sat at the end of the table. She folded her hands, saw the ring, and separated them.
“Marcus told me you were pregnant when you separated,” she said.
Kesha waited.
“He said you had undergone another fertility procedure without telling him. He said you claimed the embryos were his but refused independent testing. He said you lost the pregnancy and later tried to use it to get money from his family.”
Ethan’s face tightened.
Kesha kept her voice level. “Every part of that is false except that I was pregnant when he left.”
Claire nodded once, as though confirming something to herself.
“Did he know there were four?”
“Yes.”
“Before he left?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He was at the ultrasound.”
Claire looked at the children. “He said there was one embryo.”
“There were two embryos transferred. One divided. The other divided in a way the doctors did not expect. Four fetal heartbeats appeared at the follow-up scan.”
Noah frowned. “Which one were we?”
“We don’t know.”
“I bet Ethan was the unexpected one.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the loudest.”
“That’s not science.”
Claire shut her eyes briefly.
“Sorry,” Noah said.
“No.” Claire opened them. “Don’t be.”
She turned to Kesha. “Do you have records?”
“Yes.”
“Would you show me?”
“No.”
Claire’s cheeks colored.
“I understand why you asked,” Kesha said. “But you are not an investigator, and my children’s medical records are not proof for every person Marcus deceived.”
“I almost married him.”
“I know.”
“He proposed in front of everyone.”
“I know.”
“I need to understand whether the man I loved abandoned four children.”
Kesha looked at the ring.
“You understand that already.”
Claire touched the diamond with her thumb. “I need to understand what he knew.”
“That is a different question.”
“Yes.”
The children had become very quiet.
Kesha stood and poured coffee she did not want. Her hands needed a task.
“He knew I was pregnant with four babies,” she said. “He knew the pregnancy was dangerous. He knew the embryos had been created during our marriage at a clinic we chose together. He left after a doctor explained the risks and after I refused to reduce the pregnancy from four fetuses to two.”
Claire inhaled.
Kesha set the coffee down without drinking.
“I am not saying reduction would have been wrong. I am saying it was my body and a medical decision I had to make. Marcus had a right to be terrified. He had a right to disagree. He did not have a right to empty our accounts, move out, and tell his lawyer I had committed reproductive fraud.”
“He emptied the accounts?” Claire asked.
“The joint checking account. He left enough to avoid making the action look dramatic.”
“How much?”
“Eleven thousand dollars.”
Claire stared.
“It mattered then,” Kesha said. “It does not matter now.”
“Money always matters when someone uses it to make you afraid.”
Kesha studied her.
Claire gave a faint shrug. “My father does that.”
There was no self-pity in the sentence. Only recognition.
Sophia pushed her plate away. “Did Dad want us to die?”
The room changed.
Kesha knelt beside her chair.
“No. He was afraid I might die. He was afraid some of you might be sick. He wanted the doctors to lower the risk.”
“He wanted fewer babies.”
“He wanted a procedure that might have meant fewer babies were born.”
“Which ones?”
“No one could have known.”
Sophia’s eyes moved toward her siblings.
Claire began twisting the engagement ring.
Kesha touched Sophia’s hand. “That decision was not about wanting one of you and not another. It happened before we knew anything about who you would become.”
“But he left because you kept all of us.”
“He left because he could not control what happened next.”
Ethan slid down from his chair. “I’m done.”
He went to the bedroom and shut the door.
Olivia followed him without asking.
Noah remained at the table beside Sophia. He looked at Claire.
“Are you still marrying him?”
Claire glanced at the ring again.
“I don’t know.”
“That seems like an easy question.”
“It did yesterday.”
Kesha almost corrected him, then stopped. It was not his job to make Claire comfortable.
Claire rose.
“I should go.”
“You have not asked the question you came to ask,” Kesha said.
Claire’s hand tightened around the back of the chair.
“Did he ever contact them?”
“No.”
“Did you stop him?”
“No.”
“Did you ask for child support?”
“I started the process when they were infants. His lawyers challenged paternity and requested access to the fertility records, my psychiatric history, and every relationship I had before and after the marriage. One attorney told mine they would make the case public if I continued.”
Claire looked sick.
“I was twenty-five,” Kesha said. “I had four premature babies, a company with three employees, and medical debt that arrived in envelopes thick enough to hold a door open. I withdrew the petition.”
“Your company—”
“Did not become valuable until years later.”
“Why didn’t you file again?”
Kesha folded her arms.
There it was. The question she asked herself whenever school forms left a blank for father, whenever one of the children resembled Marcus in a new and inconvenient way.
“At first, I was surviving,” she said. “Later, I was angry. Then I convinced myself that protecting their peace mattered more than forcing him into their lives.”
“Was that true?”
“Sometimes.”
“And the other times?”
“It was easier for me.”
Noah looked down.
Kesha felt the cost of honesty move across the table.
May you like
Claire removed the engagement ring.
The pale line around her finger had barely formed. She placed the ring in her coat pocket rather than on the table.
