“I tried to tell you.”
Emma’s words barely rose above the crackle of the fireplace.
Daniel Price stepped toward her before I could answer.
“That is enough for tonight.”
Emma looked at him, then at the folder beneath his arm.
“No,” she said.
“It isn’t.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
For the first time since I entered the brownstone, he looked less like an attorney managing a crisis and more like a man losing control of one.
Emma shifted Noah against her shoulder.
The baby made a small, restless sound and pressed his face into the hollow beneath her neck.
I wanted to reach for him.
I also knew I had no right to demand that she place a sixteen-day-old child into the arms of a man who had arrived uninvited and furious.
So I stayed beside the table.
“Tell me how you tried,” I said.
Emma swallowed.
“I found out six weeks after the divorce was filed.
I took three tests because I thought the first two had to be wrong.”
Her gaze dropped to Noah’s blanket.
“I called you from Daniel’s office.
He said it would be safer than calling from my phone because everything between us was already going through attorneys.”
“My number never changed.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you call it?”
“I did.”
Daniel interrupted.
“The call was not answered.”
Emma turned toward him.
“You told me his office returned it.”
Daniel’s expression remained composed, but one hand closed around the folder until his knuckles whitened.
“They did.”
“No one returned any call,” I said.
Emma studied me with the wary concentration of someone searching for the smallest sign of deception.
Daniel spoke gently to her.
“Remember what happened after we disclosed the pregnancy.
Remember the response.”
Emma’s face changed.
Fear moved through it before anger covered it.
She looked back at me.
“Daniel received a letter from your office two days later.
It said the pregnancy changed nothing.
It said that if I publicly claimed the baby was yours, you would deny paternity, seek full custody after the birth, and use my anxiety treatment against me.”
I stared at her.
“I never wrote that.”
“You signed it.”
“I never saw it.”
Daniel released a quiet breath that sounded almost amused.
“Convenient.”
I turned to him.
“You are standing in a room with a newborn child and two people whose marriage ended because of documents you controlled.
Be very careful with your next word.”
His eyes hardened.
“That tone is precisely why Emma needed protection.”
The accusation struck because it contained enough truth to hurt.
I had been impatient during the divorce.
Cold.
