Chapter 61
I sit there in the bedroom, my head spinning.
Teddy is my son. Teddy is Dominic.
Dominic is alive.
Naomi is the one who took my baby. She stole him from me, and then she falsified his birth certificate.
I hate her more than I ever thought possible.
I feel way too many emotions right now. Joy, sadness, anger, but also confusion.
Jeremy told me he took a paternity test that was positive.
But how could that be? Clay is Teddy’s biological father.
My understanding is the only way Jeremy could have had a positive test for paternity is if he and Clay were identical twins.
And that seems pretty unlikely, considering they weren’t even the same age.
That leaves two possibilities. He might have been lying about the paternity test, but I don’t think so. After all, he never would have married Naomi without that proof. No, he definitely wasn’t lying. Which leaves one other possibility:
Somehow, Naomi tricked him.
I’ve got to talk to Jeremy.
I manage to pull myself together enough to get out of the bedroom and stumble downstairs.
The first thing I do is scan the first floor, looking for Teddy.
He isn’t there, and I feel a stab of panic.
I already lost him once. What if he vanishes again?
But then I go out in the backyard and find him in the bouncy house.
Okay, he’s having fun. I can leave him alone for a short time while I talk to Jeremy.
Not that I know what I’m going to say.
But I’m not sure where Jeremy has gone. I look all over the first floor for him, but I don’t see him. The last place I look is the downstairs office, which is where we are keeping the presents. When I get there, the door is already cracked open, but Jeremy isn’t inside. Somebody else is there.
It’s Naomi.
Naomi is grabbing for something on the coffee table in the den.
It takes me a second to realize that it’s one of the rocks that Teddy collected—one that Jeremy has been using as a paperweight.
I watch as Naomi lifts the rock up over her head and brings it down as hard as she can on an object next to the coffee table, which cracks and breaks into several pieces.
And then I realize what she has smashed with the rock. It’s the robot car that I bought for Teddy’s birthday, which she has unwrapped and destroyed.
I back away from the door to the office, my eyes filling with hot tears. First, Naomi steals my son. Then she destroys the elephant that I saved for him since he was a tiny baby. Then she wrecks the birthday present that I spent way too much money on. The gift I bought for my son’s sixth birthday.
I run up to the second floor, hoping to find Jeremy up there. I finally locate him in his upstairs office, making a phone call. He works far too hard, even though I know he’s been desperately trying to cut back for Teddy’s sake. He is really dedicated to being a good father.
Except he’s not actually Teddy’s biological father.
“Ronnie?” Jeremy’s face blanches when he sees the tears streaming down my face. “Christ, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
Your son is not actually your son. Your wife stole him from me when he was an infant. I’ve been searching for him for six years.
How can I tell him that?
“Naomi smashed the present I bought for Teddy!” I sob instead. “I saw her do it!”
All the color rushes back into his face at once. “Are you serious?”
I nod wordlessly.
“I knew it was a mistake to let her stay,” he rants. “You’re too soft, Ronnie. I knew she was going to pull some shit like this.”
“I was wrong,” I concede. “She needs to leave this party. Right now.”
I need to get her away from my son—now. Very soon, I will have to call the police, armed with my DNA test, and tell them everything Naomi has done. But I can’t do that to Teddy on his birthday. I can’t do it to Jeremy either.
But very soon, the truth will come out. And after six long years, I will have my Dominic back.