Chapter 6 - The Photograph
Ethan stared at the photograph until the screen dimmed.
I couldn’t look at my father.
“Tell me that’s not what it looks like,” I said.
Dad rubbed both hands over his face. “Claire and I were friends.”
“Friends?” Ethan snapped. “She’s pregnant in that picture.”
“She wasn’t pregnant by me.”
Richard laughed. “Convenient.”
Dad turned on him. “You know exactly who the father was.”
Richard’s expression flickered.
Eleanor saw it too.
“Say it,” she ordered.
Dad took a breath. “Thomas Bell.”
Silence.
Claire and Thomas had been secretly together for almost two years. Richard hated it. Not because Thomas was dangerous or cruel, but because he was poor, local, and impossible to control.
“When Claire got pregnant,” Dad said, “she planned to leave. Thomas was going to meet her in Boston. I drove her to a motel the night before because she thought Richard was following her.”
I asked, “Did he?”
Dad looked at Richard.
“Yes.”
Ethan stepped closer to his father. “What did you do?”
Richard said nothing.
Dad continued. “Thomas died three days later.”
“And Claire?”
“She disappeared before sunrise.”
“Why did you leave town?”
“Because Richard told the sheriff I killed Thomas and threatened to have me arrested for Claire too. I was twenty-two. I had no money. No lawyer. Claire had made me promise to take something to her aunt in Vermont if anything happened.”
“What?”
Dad’s voice became almost inaudible.
“A baby.”
Everything inside me went still.
Eleanor sat down on an old wine crate.
Ethan whispered, “Claire had the baby?”
Dad nodded.
“A girl.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time.
May you like
Then he said the last thing I expected.
“You already know her.”
