23. Chapter 23
Claire
The corridor wall is cold through my sweater, and I'm pressed against it anyway, three feet from my father's hospital room door and pretending that standing here is somehow different from eavesdropping.
It's not.
The door is closed. Darius is inside. My father specifically asked to speak to him alone. And yet here I am.
Maybe if Dad hadn't spent the last twenty-five years treating every conversation like a classified government briefing, I wouldn't be so curious.
Maybe if Grace hadn't looked at Darius like she already knew how this conversation was going to end, I could've gone back to the waiting room and minded my own business.
Instead I'm staring at a beige hospital door and wondering what kind of discussion is important enough to happen immediately after a heart attack.
A worse thought follows.
What if this isn't about Darius at all? What if it's about me?
My stomach tightens.
The last time my father asked to speak to someone privately about me, I ended up grounded for three weeks. I was sixteen then. The fact that I'm standing outside his hospital room doing the exact same thing at twenty-eight is probably something I should examine in therapy.
Later. Definitely later.
The voices are low, so I only catch pieces. My father's voice first. Stern. Deliberate. The cadence I grew up with, the one he uses from the pulpit when he wants every word to land like a stone in still water.
Then Darius. Steady. Unhurried. The tone he uses when he refuses to be shaken.
I hear my name once.
Then, a minute later, I hear a name that stops me cold.
Ethan.
He told my father about Ethan.
My hand comes up to my mouth.
Darius doesn't tell anyone about his brother. It took him weeks to tell me, and I had a contract and a notebook and a professional reason to ask. My father has a hospital gown and a heart monitor, and Darius gave him the thing he guards most.
The voices drop again. I catch fragments. My father saying responsibility. My father saying the kind of man you intend to be.
A long pause.
Then my father's voice, clear enough that the door doesn't matter.
"Will you be present for this child?"
My breath stops.
Child.
The headline. The pier video. Darius's hand spread across my stomach in grainy zoomed footage, and four million strangers deciding what it meant.
My father saw it hours before his heart gave out, and now he's lying in a cardiac unit asking the question every pastor's daughter dreads, except he's asking it of the wrong person, about a baby that doesn't exist.
Darius's voice comes through quieter. Confused. Respectful.
"Sir. I don't know what you mean."
I stay frozen against the wall, because if I move, I'll fall apart.
***
"Claire."
I jump.
My mother is beside me, holding two cups of vending machine coffee, and I have no idea how long she's been standing there. She hands me one without commenting on the fact that her oldest daughter is plastered to a hospital wall like a teenager listening through her parents' bedroom door.
"It's terrible coffee," she says. "Drink it anyway. Your hands need a job."
I take the cup. She's right. The warmth gives my fingers somewhere to go.
We stand together against the wall, and for a moment neither of us says anything. The cardiac unit hums around us. A nurse pushes a cart past, wheels squeaking on the tile.
"Dr. Osei came by while you were getting Jacob settled," Mom says. "He said your father's heart is responding well. The blockage was real, but it wasn't the whole story."
She turns the coffee cup slowly in her hands.
"He said stress like Samuel's doesn't build in a day. Thirty years of holding a church and a family together with his bare hands, and never once setting any of it down. The body keeps the score, even when the man refuses to."
The nurse nods.
"He's going to have to change how he lives."
"He's going to have to let people help him," Mom says. She gives a small, tired laugh. "Which for your father may be harder than the surgery."
I take another sip of coffee and immediately regret it. Hospital coffee tastes like somebody described coffee to a machine and then let the machine guess the rest.
My mother watches me over the rim of her cup the way birdwatchers probably look at rare species.
"Your father saw that article."
I groan. "Mom."
"The pregnancy one."
"Mom."
A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. It's small. Tired. The first real smile I've seen from her all night.
"It was all over Facebook."
"Of course it was."
I sink back against the wall. The story had started with footage from the proposal at the pier.
Katie's video caught Darius with his arms around me, and Ricky somehow managed to get three separate shots of his hand resting on my stomach.
By lunchtime the internet had assembled enough blurry screenshots, amateur theories, and unsolicited medical opinions to diagnose me from three different camera angles.
My mother hums.
Then she keeps looking at me.
And keeps looking.
The smile slowly disappears.
"Claire."
The warning in her voice makes me look up.
"What?"
She tilts her head slightly. It's the same expression she's worn my entire life. The one that usually means she already knows the answer and is waiting for me to catch up.
"You've seemed different lately."
I laugh. "Mom, I've spent the last month dealing with an NFL scandal, a fake engagement, a real engagement, a hospital visit, and a man who thinks sleep is optional. Different is kind of my baseline right now."
She doesn't laugh. Instead, she reaches over and smooths a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture is so familiar it almost hurts.
"I know my children," she says softly. "And lately you've seemed... happier."
The word catches me off guard.
Not because I've seemed tired or stressed lately. Anybody would be after the month I've had.
It's the happier part that throws me.
My mother isn't entirely wrong. For all the chaos, there have been moments. Darius making me laugh when I didn't want to. Darius showing up when things got hard. Darius fitting himself into spaces I never expected anyone to occupy.
My mother watches my face.
Then she asks quietly, "Are you pregnant, baby?"
I laugh again, but the sound comes out too fast and a little too loud, bouncing off the hospital walls before I can pull it back.
"No."
The answer comes out immediately, automatic and certain, but the certainty starts slipping almost as soon as the word leaves my mouth.
Because the moment the word leaves my mouth, another thought slips in behind it.
When was my last period?
I blink.
The question shouldn't be difficult.
It is.
My schedule flashes through my head. Charlotte. The summit. Camille. My father's collapse. The proposal. The engagement story. The pregnancy rumor. Weeks of chaos layered on top of each other, and as I count backward, then count again, the coffee cup slowly stills in my hands.
A strange feeling settles low in my stomach. It isn't panic, at least not yet. It's uncertainty, the kind that shows up right before you realize something you've been avoiding might actually be true.
"Claire?"
I look up.
My mother is watching me with that same quiet expression, neither pushing nor asking again, simply waiting for me to reach the conclusion she's already reached.
And somehow that's worse.
"I'm fine," I say.
The words come out smooth and professional, exactly the way they're supposed to.
Unfortunately, my mother has known me for twenty-eight years. She isn't buying a single syllable of it.
"All right, baby." She pats my arm.
And lets me keep lying to myself for another minute.
***
My mother is still standing beside me when the door to my father's room opens.
I look up so fast I almost spill my coffee.
Darius steps into the hallway and eases the door shut behind him. Then he just stands there with one hand on the handle, staring at absolutely nothing.
My stomach immediately drops.
What did Dad say?
For one terrible second, I wonder if my father somehow managed to interrogate, intimidate, and spiritually evaluate the man I'm dating in a single conversation. Honestly, none of those seem outside his skill set.
"Darius?"
He blinks twice like he forgot there were other people in the building.
Then his eyes find mine.
And I swear he looks like a man who walked into that room expecting a lecture and accidentally received a life-changing experience instead.
He doesn't look upset or angry or even confused. If anything, he looks stunned in the same way people do when life suddenly gets bigger than they expected.
My mother notices it too. I know she does because I hear her quietly clear her throat beside me.
Neither of us says anything. We're both waiting for Darius to remember he's back on Earth.
Mom touches my shoulder. "I'll go check on Jacob," she says, and she's gone before I can answer, because my mother has the timing of a stage manager.
Darius pushes off the door and tips his head down the corridor. We start walking, no destination, just movement, and he doesn't say anything for a few steps.
"Your father asked me if I intended to be present for my child."
I stop walking.
"What?"
Darius lets out a short laugh that doesn't sound amused.
"That was pretty much my reaction."
For a second I just stare at him.
"He said that?"
"He opened with it."
My brain scrambles to catch up.
"Darius, I'm not pregnant."
"I know that."
The answer comes too fast. His expression shifts.
"At least I think I know that."
Despite everything, a laugh escapes me. "Good recovery."
"I'm serious." He runs a hand through his hair. "I spent the first five minutes trying to figure out whether your father knew something I didn't."
That gets another laugh out of me. A small one. But real.
Darius shakes his head and looks down the hallway.
"He didn't explain it. He just asked whether I intended to be present for my child, and before I could tell him there wasn't a child, he started talking."
His voice changes on the last two words. Softer. Like part of him is still sitting in that hospital room.