“Because this is humiliating enough without turning it into a circus.
Clara wanted her spectacle.
She got it.”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“I wanted you to stop accusing me of cheating on your son.”
“And the report proves that,” she said quickly.
“So congratulations.
Take your baby and go home.”
David stared at her.
“You’re trying to end this conversation after I just found out you aren’t my biological mother?”
“The test is wrong.”
“Then we’ll repeat it.”
Her face changed again.
It was tiny, just a flicker around her eyes, but David saw it.
So did Margaret.
Susan leaned forward.
“Eleanor, what aren’t you telling us?”
Eleanor grabbed the report from the table.
David caught the edge before she could fold it.
“Don’t.”
His voice was quiet, and somehow that made it heavier.
She let go.
For several seconds the only sound was Chloe making sleepy little noises against my shoulder.
Then Margaret said something I did not understand at first.
“Does this have anything to do with Rebecca?”
Eleanor went completely still.
David looked at his aunt.
“Who’s Rebecca?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Susan whispered, “Oh, God.”
I felt David’s hand find mine beneath the table.
Margaret looked at Eleanor as though asking permission to speak.
Eleanor gave none.
So Margaret spoke anyway.
Rebecca had been Eleanor’s younger sister.
I had heard the name once before, years earlier, buried in a conversation about family photographs.
David had been told Rebecca died young, before he was old enough to remember her.
Nobody had ever explained more than that.
Margaret’s voice trembled.
“Rebecca had a baby.”
David stared at her.
“What?”
“She was twenty-two.
She wasn’t married.
She was frightened, and the father disappeared before the baby was born.”
Eleanor turned toward her sister.
“Stop.”
Margaret did not.
“Rebecca had a boy.”
David’s face drained of color.
I tightened my fingers around his.
“When?” he asked.
Margaret looked at him.
“Thirty-three years ago.”
David was thirty-three.
The room seemed to contract around us.
