Chapter 5 - What Paula Said
Paula got there at eight thirty with a duffel bag on her shoulder and a look on her face that said she had already decided somebody was going to answer for this. She's four years older than me. She raised two boys mostly by herself after her divorce, and she has a way of walking into a room that makes it feel both smaller and safer at the same time.
She hugged me carefully around the IV line, stood over the bassinet for a long quiet moment, and then pulled the chair close.
"Start at the beginning," she said. "Tell me all of it."
I did. She didn't interrupt once. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and listened to the whole thing — the birthmark, Adam's face at the window, the phone call in the hallway, Ryan's visits in the spring, the timing, what Adam said before he walked out.
When I finished, she was quiet for a second.
"Where's Adam now?"
"I don't know. Waiting room, probably."
"And Ryan?"
"He wants to come here. I said no."
She nodded slowly. "Good." She looked at the baby. "Have you slept at all?"
"No."
"Okay." She stood, poured me a cup of water from the pitcher, and put it in my hand. "Drink. Then I'm going to tell you what I think, and you tell me if I've got it wrong."
I drank. She sat back down.
"Ryan is panicking. That's why he called Adam last night. Not because he suddenly grew a conscience — because he saw a way this could all come out, and he wanted to get out in front of it. He wanted to be the one holding the pen when the story got written."
"You don't know that."
"I know Ryan." She said it flat. She and Ryan had never once gotten along in eleven years. I'd always chalked it up to two strong personalities. Now I wasn't so sure. "He has spent his entire life doing whatever's easiest for Ryan. Apparently that includes this."
"We don't even know what 'this' is yet."
"No. We don't. And that is exactly my point." She leaned in. "You don't know. Which means you don't owe anybody a reaction, a conversation, or a decision today. Not Adam. Not Ryan. Not their mother. Nobody." She put her hand on my arm. "What you need is a paternity test. Quietly, through your own doctor, as fast as you can get it. Until that result is in your hand, nothing anybody says to you means a thing."
"Adam says he doesn't believe it."
"I heard him." Her voice went careful. "What do you believe?"
I looked at my daughter. She'd opened her eyes — dark, swimming, blinking slow at the ceiling light.
"I believe she's mine," I said. "That much I know for a fact."
"Yes," Paula said. "She is one hundred percent yours. That part was never in question." She reached over and squeezed my hand. "The rest, we find out. Quietly. Carefully. On your clock. Not theirs."
A knock at the door. We both looked up.
Adam stood in the doorway. He clearly hadn't slept either. His eyes went to Paula, then to me.
"Can I come in?"
I looked at my sister. She gave me the smallest nod. Your call.
"Yes," I said. "But Ryan doesn't come here. Not today."
"Agreed." He came in and stood at the foot of the bed. He looked at the baby for a moment, his face doing something very careful and very controlled. "I called my mother."
Paula's chin came up.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because she knows things about our family that I don't. About the birthmark — who carried it, who didn't." He paused. "She says it only passes down a direct paternal line. Father to child. Not through an uncle. Not through a cousin."
The sentence landed in the room like something dropped off a roof.
"She said that?"
"She was very clear. She said her own doctor told her years back — it's a specific genetic marker, and it only travels father to child." He looked at me straight on. "Which means if Lily has it, it came from me. Or from someone in my father's direct line."
Paula said, quietly, "Ryan is in that line."
"Yes," Adam said. "He is."
Nobody spoke.
Then Adam said, "I want a test. I'm asking for one. Not because I'm accusing you of anything — I need you to hear that. But I have to know, and I think you have to know, and the only way we get through whatever this is, is if we stop guessing."
I looked at him for a long moment. "I decided that an hour ago."
He nodded once. "Okay."
"And Adam." I held his eyes. "When Ryan calls you again — and he will — you tell him nothing. Not what we're doing. Not what your mother said. Not one word of what I've said in this room. Nothing."
Something shifted in his face. "You think he'll try to get in the way."
"I think Paula's right," I said. "I think he already is."
Adam's phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the screen. His face went blank. He turned it around so I could see.
May you like
A text from Ryan:
*I need you to hear my side before she does something we can't take back. Please, Adam. Don't let her do the test.*
