Chapter 8
Kelsey turned her phone facedown before Cormac could read the screen.
He had already noticed. “Is it about us?”
“No,” she said too quickly.
I pulled out the chair beside him, then stopped before sitting. “Would you like me here?”
Cormac studied my face. At last, he nodded.
I sat.
The boys had been quiet since we came home. Their cartoons played unwatched, and the four battered duffel bags still stood by the front door, as if even a night in my penthouse hadn’t convinced them it was safe to unpack.
“I need to ask you and your mom something,” I said. “And you can say no.”
Kelsey’s eyes stayed on me, guarded but attentive.
“I’d like to take a DNA test. Not because you have to prove anything to me. I want to know the truth, and I don’t want any of you to feel like you’re being tested to see whether you deserve to be here.”
Connor tilted his head. “What happens if the test says you’re not our dad?”
“I’ll still be the person who met you today,” I said. “And I’ll still care what happens to you.”
“Would you take us away from Mom?” Callan asked.
“No.”
“Would you make us call you Dad?” Cillian’s voice was small.
“No,” I said. “You get to choose what you call me. You get to choose whether you want to do the test, too. We can stop at any time.”
Kelsey glanced from me to the boys. “You don’t owe him an answer just because he asked.”
Cormac folded his arms. “I want to know.”
Callan nodded, then looked at his brothers to make sure he wasn’t alone. Connor said he wanted to know if I liked grilled cheese. Cillian didn’t speak, but reached for his mother’s hand.
“That’s a fair question,” I said. “I do. With tomato soup.”
“Soup is not a drink,” Connor said, with the confidence of a child correcting a public official.
“Then we already disagree about something important.”
He grinned.
Kelsey let out a breath. “All right. We’ll do the test. But the boys can stop whenever they want, and nobody gets to use the results to decide what they’re allowed to feel.”
“Agreed.”
At the clinic, the boys chose seats in a row, shoulder to shoulder. Kelsey stayed close while the technician explained each swab before touching anyone. When Callan stiffened, she paused until he was ready. The boys watched each other carefully; even Connor, who had joked about the soup, went quiet when it was his turn.
I sat across from them and kept my hands folded in my lap.
When the last sample was sealed, Cormac looked at me. “Now you wait?”
“Now we wait.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Yes.”
“Me too,” he said.
On the drive back, Connor announced that a real grilled cheese needed two kinds of cheese. Callan wanted his cut diagonally. Cillian preferred the crusts left on, which provoked a spirited argument about whether crusts were even part of the sandwich. Cormac listened, then settled the dispute by saying he’d eat whatever was left.
I learned that Callan hated sudden loud noises, Connor told jokes when he didn’t know what to say, and Cillian watched people before he decided whether to trust them. Cormac kept checking that his brothers had what they needed. I wanted to memorize every detail and knew I couldn’t. Six years had happened without me. No afternoon could give them back.
While the boys ate, Genevieve sat at the kitchen counter with her laptop open. Her face had gone still in the way it did when she found something she wished weren’t there.
“I found a second archive,” she said. “A duplicate billing record kept by Ashford counsel. It wasn’t in the estate drawers.”
She turned the screen toward me. One line item was dated during the months Kelsey and I had been separated: Replacement and forwarding of outgoing messages—Lane/Farrington matter. Below it was Grant Mercer’s firm, and the amount Eleanor had paid.
“He billed her for changing the messages?” I asked.
“Replacing the outgoing messages,” Genevieve said. “That’s the phrase on the invoice.”
Kelsey came to stand beside me. She didn’t touch the laptop.
For a few seconds, the room held only the boys’ voices from the living room and the low hum of the refrigerator.
“So he didn’t just send a letter,” she said. “He made sure we couldn’t reach each other.”
Genevieve closed the laptop halfway. “That’s what the record says.”
Kelsey’s jaw tightened. “And she paid him.”
The sentence had no question in it.
The test results came the next morning. I was at the kitchen island when the lab’s message arrived, and for a moment I couldn’t open it. Kelsey stood across from me, one hand braced on the counter. Genevieve waited by the window, giving us the space to decide who would read first.
“Do you want to?” Kelsey asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then let me.”
She took the phone. Her eyes moved across the screen once, then again.
“Ethan.”
She handed it to me.
The result was plain. The probability of paternity was greater than 99.99 percent.
I read it twice, though the words didn’t change.
A laugh rose out of me, broken in the middle. Then my eyes burned. I pressed the heel of my hand against them, ashamed of how much I wanted to cross the space between us and unable to pretend that wanting made it mine to take.
Four boys sat in the living room, arguing over a game. My sons.
Joy arrived bright and sudden. Grief came with it, heavy enough to bend my head. Every birthday I hadn’t seen. Every scraped knee. Every time they’d asked where their father was, if they’d asked at all.
Kelsey’s voice softened, but her expression didn’t. “Biology can answer one question. It can’t restore six lost years.”
“I know.”
“And the test doesn’t make you entitled to them.”
“I know that, too.”
I set the phone down between us. “I want the chance to earn their trust. Whatever that looks like to you.”
She watched me for a long moment, as if measuring whether the words came with a hidden price.
Then her phone rang.
Eleanor’s name appeared on the screen.
Kelsey went still. Genevieve closed her laptop. From the living room, Connor called to ask whether anyone had seen the missing game piece.
I answered.
“Mother.”
“I heard about your little test.”
My stomach tightened. “How?”
“Don’t insult me by pretending you can move through this city without my knowing.” Her voice was cool, almost amused. “You have the result?”
I looked at the message still open on the counter.
“What do you want?”
“The guests are waiting at the estate. If you don’t come back, I’ll tell them myself. I’ll show them what you’ve done and let them decide what kind of family you’ve brought into this.”
Kelsey’s hand closed around the edge of the counter.
May you like
Eleanor lowered her voice.
“Come home, Ethan—or I reveal the test to everyone.”
