Chapter 6 - Don't Let Her
Adam read the message twice. Then he set the phone face-down on the windowsill, screen to the wood, the way you put away something you don't want to keep looking at.
"He knows we're thinking about a test," Paula said. Not a question.
"He guessed," Adam said. "Or he assumed. It's the obvious next move, and Ryan's not stupid."
"No," she said. "He isn't."
I was still looking at the phone. *Don't let her do the test.* Not "let's talk first." Not "don't do the test." *Don't let her.* Like I was a situation to be managed. Like the decision belonged to Adam and Ryan, and I was just the woman who'd spent ten years and six losses trying to carry a baby long enough to bring one home.
"Answer him," I said.
Adam looked at me.
"Tell him you'll meet him. Not here. Not in this room. Somewhere outside the hospital where he can say whatever it is he needs to say." I kept my voice level. "And I want you to record it."
Paula cut a look at me. "Claire."
"He wants to give his side before I do something I can't take back. Fine. Let him give it. I want to hear what his side actually sounds like — not the polished version he'll have ready in a week, the version that comes out right now, while he's scared and hasn't had time to build it."
Adam picked up the phone. He read the message again. "If I tell him I'll meet him, he's going to think I'm on his side."
"Good," I said. "Let him."
Adam was quiet a moment. Then he typed. He showed me the screen before he sent it.
*The parking garage on Fillmore, third floor. Give me twenty minutes.*
I nodded. He sent it.
Ryan's reply came in under a minute. *Thank you. I'll explain everything. I swear it's not what it looks like.*
Adam pocketed the phone. "What do you want me to say to him?"
"Nothing, at first. Let him talk. Ask him what happened. Ask him how many times. Ask him if he ever once stopped to think about what it would do to us." I paused. "Then ask him why he called you last night instead of coming to me."
"Because he's afraid of you," Paula said quietly.
"I know," I said. "I want Adam to make him say it out loud."
Adam left at nine fifteen. Paula stayed with me. She held the baby while I tried to rest, though I didn't sleep. I lay with my eyes shut and listened to my daughter make the small, soft sounds of someone who'd just gotten here and was still learning how the air worked.
At nine forty-seven, Adam called. I picked up on the first ring.
"Are you recording?"
"I was." His voice was strange. Flat in a way I'd never heard from him. "Claire, I need you to listen to me very carefully."
"Tell me."
"He admitted it." A long pause. "He says it happened twice. Says the first time was an accident — his word — and the second time he told himself it wouldn't happen again, and then it did. He says he's been living with it since April. Didn't know how to tell me. He thought —" Adam stopped. "He thought if the baby turned out to be mine, he'd never have to."
I stared at the ceiling. "So if she was yours," I said slowly, "he could just walk away from it."
"Yes."
"And if she wasn't?"
Another pause. "He said he'd figure that out when he had to."
Paula was watching my face. I didn't look at her. "Is there more?"
"He asked me not to tell you. Even now. He said it would blow up the whole family, and you'd already been through so much, and maybe the test would come back mine and none of us would ever have to know."
"He asked you to lie to me."
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I told him I was going to tell you every word of it the second I walked back through that door." A breath. "And then I stopped the recording."
"Come back up," I said. "Bring it."
"Claire —"
"Adam. Come back up."
He came. He sat on the edge of the bed and played it for me off his phone. I listened to my brother-in-law's voice — a voice I'd known for eleven years, a voice that gave a toast at my wedding, that called me every single birthday — explain, in a concrete parking garage at nine in the morning, how he'd decided my grief was an acceptable risk to work around as long as it kept him comfortable.
When it ended, the room was quiet.
"I want to see a lawyer," I said. "Before the results come back. I want to know what my options are no matter what that test says."
Adam nodded. "I'll make some calls."
"And Adam." I looked right at him. "I need to ask you something, and I need the honest answer."
"Anything."
"Did you have any idea? Any feeling, any moment where something seemed off — anything at all — before last night?"
He held my eyes without flinching. "No. I swear to you. Nothing."
I looked at him a long time. "Okay," I said finally.
"Do you believe me?"
"I'm trying to," I said. "That's the most honest thing I've got right now."
May you like
He took it. He didn't push for more. And that — more than anything he'd said all morning — made me think I might make it through this with him still standing next to me.
I didn't tell him that yet. Some things had to wait for the test.
