Chapter 30 David
David
The Canning residence is exactly what I expected and nothing I was prepared for.
It’s a brownstone in Lincoln Park. Understated.
The kind that whispers money so quietly you’d miss it if you didn’t know what wealth sounds like.
Stone steps, wrought iron, a front door painted navy.
A topiary on either side of the entrance, shaped into something geometric and pretentious.
Brass fixtures polished to a high shine.
I ring the doorbell at six fifty-four. Six minutes early, because I’m impatient as fuck and can’t wait a second more.
The door is opened by a woman in her mid-fifties, dark hair pulled back, wearing a uniform that places her as staff. Housekeeper is my guess.
“Mr. Kingsley?” she says. “Please, come in.”
I step inside. The foyer is marble, warm lighting, a staircase that curves upward. There’s art on the walls and flowers on the entry table that look like they were arranged by someone who went to school for it.
Everything is beautiful. Everything is curated. Everything is exactly the backdrop Kelsie would choose—I remember vividly how important the appearance of wealth was to her.
“Mr. Canning and the young miss are in the greenhouse. I’ll let him know you’ve arrived,” the housekeeper says, and disappears down the hallway toward what I assume is the garden entrance.
I wait, standing in Thomas Canning’s foyer with my jacket buttoned and my hands at my sides, trying to force them to stay relaxed.
Laughter finds my ears—distinctly Michaela’s—and the sound does something complicated to my chest. I should be relieved, and I am, but the relief has an edge to it that I don’t want to examine too closely.
I shift my stance, distracting myself by looking around before I can resent a little girl for doing what I begged the universe to let her do.
And that’s when I see Kelsie.
She’s alone in the sitting room just off the foyer, visible through a wide arched doorway.
She’s seated on a pale velvet sofa under a portrait of her and Thomas, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of white wine on the side table.
Her blonde hair is arranged within an inch of its life.
Cream silk blouse. Gold bracelet. Composure lacquered on so thick it gleams.
She looks up and spots me.
Then she smiles.
It isn’t warm.
“David,” she says, rising smoothly. “You’re early.”
I don’t respond.
She rises and moves a few steps closer, stopping just short of the threshold between the sitting room and the foyer, like even now she understands staging. Close enough to speak privately. Not close enough to look eager.
“Thomas will bring Michaela in when our time is done. She’s been having a wonderful time—they found a caterpillar in the greenhouse, and she’s been lecturing him about metamorphosis for twenty minutes.”
“You’re not out there with them,” I say.
“I got a headache about an hour in.” She gestures to the glass of wine like it’s evidence. “I came inside to rest. Thomas has been incredible with her.”
Thomas has been incredible with her.
I look at her over the span of polished marble and old money and feel something inside me go glacially still.
“Of course he has,” I say.
Her eyes sharpen a fraction. She hears it. The contempt. The conclusion.
Kelsie lifts one shoulder, elegant as a knife. “There’s no need for that tone. I’m trying to reassure you.”
“No, you’re trying to manage me.”
A tiny pause. Then her smile returns, thinner now. “You do make everything sound adversarial.”
“You filed a custody petition.”
“And you made me go to court to see my daughter.”
“No. You chose that route.” I keep my voice level even though the sight of her is enough to boil my blood. “You could have called me. You could have reached out through a lawyer. You could have sent a letter. You did none of those things.”
Kelsie’s face arranges itself into something wounded. “What choice did I have? I was desperate, David.”
My laugh is short and joyless. “Desperate.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve had the same cell number for twelve years.”
Something flickers in her expression.
“We never moved,” I continue. “Not once. Same apartment. Same school district. Same city. Same life. Caleb still has the same number. My father still has the same office. If you were trying to find Michaela, Kelsie, you could have done it in under ten minutes.”
Her chin lifts. “It wasn’t that simple.”
“No?” I take one step closer, keeping my voice low because Michaela’s still somewhere in this house and I will not give Kelsie the scene she’d enjoy.
“Then explain to me how showing up at her school unannounced was simpler. Explain how forcing court-ordered visitation before she’d had any time to process your existence was simpler.
Explain how choosing the one route guaranteed to frighten and destabilize a little girl was your only option. ”
Her mouth tightens. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about.” The cold in me gets colder. “You didn’t choose the easiest way to reach her. You chose the most dramatic one. The one with the biggest audience. The one that gave you the strongest position and caused Michaela the most disruption.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is making my daughter carry your rebrand on her back.”
For a beat, she just looks at me.
The mask slips first at the eyes. Irritation. Then calculation again, fast as a card trick.
“You always did think the worst of me.”
“No,” I say. “I learned to.”
Her smile goes brittle.
“I made mistakes,” she says, in the tone of a person granting a great and noble concession. “I was young. I was overwhelmed. You made sure there was no room for me to come back without humiliation.”
I look at her and marvel, not for the first time, at her ability to sand down reality until it fits in her hand.
“You abandoned a baby,” I say. “Let’s not dress that up as me being inhospitable.”
Her eyes flash. Quick, hot, ugly.
“I was drowning.”
“And your solution was to drop Michaela in my arms and disappear.”
“You act like I had no right to fall apart.”
“You had every right to fall apart.” My voice stays calm, which is the only reason it stays remotely civil. “You didn’t have the right to vanish and then return seven years later demanding applause for wanting back in.”
The muscles in her jaw tick once. “I’m not demanding—”
“Don’t.”
The word comes out flat. Tired.
“Just don’t. Don’t do the performance,” I say. “Not with me.”
“I’m not—”
“Bullshit. I know you, Kelsie. I know you. And this redemption narrative you’re spinning might work on Thomas, the judge, and whoever else you need to convince. But it’s me. The guy who’s seen it all. I. Know. You.”
For a second, I think she’s going to slap me.
The impulse crosses her face in a bright, ugly flicker before she reins it back under the cream-silk composure and polished-wife poise.
Then she smiles again.
It’s impressive. Sociopathic, but impressive.
“What exactly is it you want from me, David?”
I look her dead in the face and say, “The truth would be a nice change.”
Her expression doesn’t move.
“Why now?” I ask.
There. The question that’s been rotting in me for weeks. Months, if I’m honest. Maybe years, because abandonment doesn’t actually stop happening when the person leaves. It just keeps unfolding in your head in quieter and quieter ways.
Kelsie tilts her head. “I’ve already told the court—”
“I don’t care what you told the court.” My voice stays low, but every word feels honed. “I’m asking you. No judge. No husband. No audience. Why now?”
She studies me like she’s deciding which version of herself would be most useful.
“I missed her.”
I smile at that, because sometimes contempt has nowhere else to go.
“No,” I say. “Try again.”
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t get to decide what I feel.”
“Maybe not. But I do get to recognize a lie when it puts on lipstick and calls itself maternal concern.”
A pulse jumps in her jaw.
“She’s eight, Kelsie.” I take another step, not enough to crowd her, enough to make retreat an active choice.
“You left before her first birthday—you missed all of them. Her celebrations. Her milestones. First day of school. Night terrors. Ear infections. The phase where she would only eat pasta if I called it lawyer noodles. You didn’t miss her enough to come back for any of that.
” My throat tightens, but I keep going. “So I’m asking one last time. Why now?”
A muscle moves in her cheek as she glances past my shoulder, and I understand.
“Did Thomas not know about her?”
Her reaction is tiny. The smallest shift at the corner of her mouth. A blink slightly too slow. But it confirms it for me.
My pulse pounds against my temple.
“He didn’t know you had a daughter.” The pieces start sliding together with nauseating ease. “Or he at least didn’t know the truth about why you lost her.”
“Lower your voice,” she says sharply.
I let out a laugh. Nothing about this is funny.
“Explain.”
She glances toward the cracked door. Listens. The faint sound of Thomas and Michaela’s voices in the greenhouse, too distant to hear words, close enough to confirm they’re still outside.
She looks back at me.
Her eyes haven’t changed. Cornflower blue, ringed with darker cobalt—the eyes that once made my stomach drop when they looked my way across a crowded bar.
But looking into them now is like staring at a beautiful house where the person you knew has moved out and left the lights on.
Behind that familiar blue, there’s nothing but cold arithmetic.
“Thomas had my background run before we got married,” she says, hushed.
“That must have been awkward for the version of history you’d already sold him,” I say.
Her nostrils flare. “I told him there had been . . . complications.”
“Complications.” I repeat it because the word deserves contempt. “Is that what we’re calling abandonment now?”