Chapter 2 - My Other Son's Child
I shoved the report back across the table.
“Say his name.”
Chloe didn't move.
“Say it.”
“Evan.”
The chair legs scraped hard against the floor as I stood.
“No.”
“Mrs. Mercer—”
“No.”
I walked to the sink because my hands needed something to hold.
The edge of the counter cut into my palms.
“Evan was engaged when he died.”
“I know.”
“He was planning a wedding.”
“I know.”
“He never said a word about you.”
Chloe wiped beneath one eye.
“We weren't a couple the way you're imagining.”
I turned.
“Then explain the five-year-old child with his DNA.”
She flinched but stayed seated.
“We had known each other since high school. After college, we ran into each other again. He was fighting with Rachel. They had called off the wedding for three weeks, then got back together.”
I remembered those three weeks.
Evan had slept on my couch twice and told me it was “nothing dramatic.”
I had believed him.
Chloe pressed her hands together.
“He and I spent one night together.”
I closed my eyes.
“When did you know?”
“About the pregnancy? Eleven days after the crash.”
My eyes opened.
“You knew while we were burying him?”
“I found out after the funeral.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“My father wanted me to terminate the pregnancy. Rachel called me a liar before I had even taken a second test. I was nineteen kinds of scared, and your family was shattered.”
“You could have come to me.”
“I did.”
The words stopped me.
“What?”
“I came here.”
She pointed toward the front door.
“Three weeks after Evan died. I sat in my car across the street for almost an hour.”
“You never knocked.”
“No.”
“Then you didn't come to me.”
“I know.”
Her face tightened.
“I failed that part.”
I wanted to stay angry.
Anger was easier than the image forming in my head: a frightened young woman sitting outside while I moved through this same house like a ghost.
“What happened after Nora was born?”
“I moved to Ohio with my aunt. I married when Nora was two. He signed her school forms, took her to pediatric visits, did everything a father does until the marriage fell apart.”
“Does Nora know?”
“No.”
“You kept Evan from his own daughter.”
“Evan was dead.”
The sentence came out sharper than anything else she'd said.
Then she covered her mouth.
I stared at her.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
I sat again.
“How did Julian find out?”
“Nora got sick last year.”
Her fingers tightened around the envelope.
“At first it was fatigue. Then swelling. Then bloodwork. By the time they diagnosed her, both kidneys were failing.”
She opened another folder.
“Her doctors wanted a detailed family history. I couldn't give them one on her father's side without admitting the truth.”
“So you called Julian.”
“I searched for you first.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“Why him?”
“Because I found an old article about the construction company where he worked. I sent one email.”
She pulled out a printed page.
The message was only six lines.
I read Julian's reply.
Tell me what she needs.
No accusation.
No question about why Chloe had waited.
Just that.
“What happened next?”
“He met us at a coffee shop.”
A weak smile touched her mouth.
“Nora spilled hot chocolate on his shoes within four minutes.”
I looked toward the refrigerator where Julian's childhood photograph still hung under a magnet.
“He would have laughed.”
“He did.”
Chloe's smile disappeared.
“Then I told him about Evan.”
“How did he react?”
“He walked outside and was gone for twenty minutes. When he came back, he asked what test would prove it.”
The laboratory report in front of me was not a paternity test.
It was an avuncular relationship test.
The probability that Julian was Nora's biological uncle was greater than 99 percent.
I pressed my thumb into the paper.
“So he got tested for the transplant after that.”
“Immediately.”
“He didn't tell me.”
“He wanted to.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
“He was afraid you'd beg him not to do it.”
“I would have.”
“I know.”
“He was my only living child.”
Chloe looked down.
“He said exactly that.”
My breath caught.
“What else did he say about me?”
“That you had already watched one son die in a hospital, and he couldn't make you watch him choose one unless he knew Nora actually had a chance.”
I pushed away from the table.
For a moment, I hated him for understanding me so well.
Then I remembered the last pressure of his thumb against my hand.
The blue envelope.
“What did he find about Evan?” I asked.
Chloe stiffened.
I saw it.
“You know.”
“He started asking me questions after he reviewed Nora's family-history paperwork.”
“What questions?”
“Whether Evan had died immediately after the crash.”
“No. He survived surgery.”
“Whether anyone said he was stable.”
“They did.”
“Whether he was transferred out of intensive care.”
My mouth went dry.
“Yes.”
Chloe pulled a folded page from her coat pocket.
It was a photocopy of a hospital medication record.
Half the lines were blurred.
One code was circled in blue ink.
“What is this?”
“Julian gave it to me two weeks before the transplant.”
“Where did he get it?”
“He requested Evan's records as next of kin with your authorization form.”
“I never signed—”
I stopped.
Months earlier, Julian had asked me to sign a release so he could “clean up some old insurance paperwork.”
I had signed without reading it closely.
Chloe watched the realization hit me.
“He found something in those records,” she said.
I looked at the circled code.
“What?”
“He wouldn't tell me everything.”
“Why?”
“Because he thought my phone might not be private.”
I almost laughed.
Instead, I heard the sound and realized it came out like a cough.
“Private from who?”
“The hospital.”
I stared at her.
Chloe reached for my hand.
I pulled away.
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
Her eyes held mine.
“He said, ‘My brother didn't die from the crash.’”
I stopped breathing.
Chloe's fingers trembled on the table.
May you like
Then she finished.
“He said, ‘Evan died after they told my mother he was stable.’”
