CHAPTER EIGHT
ALEXANDER
I do not know how many seconds I spend staring at the little girl.
She looks about five. Small, wearing an open coat over her pajamas, she is holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear. Her dark brown hair has been tied back unevenly, as though someone tried to fix it in a hurry.
Isabella crouches in front of her, and the girl says something I cannot hear. My former fiancée answers with a reprimanding expression but smiles before she finishes.
Then I see the dimple.
My father had one exactly like it. So do I, although mine appears only when I smile properly. Edmund used to say that tiny indentation was the only aesthetically respectable contribution the Thorne bloodline had ever made to humanity.
It is such an ordinary family trait that I have never given it much thought until I see it on the face of a child who calls Isabella Mum.
“Alexander?”
I do not answer.
Richard is standing beside me. He arrived less than ten minutes ago and had been talking about one of the board members when the side door opened.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
The girl lifts her face again and pulls an annoyed expression. Even the shape of her eyebrows looks familiar.
No.
Five years.
The calculation happens before I can stop it: her age, the length of Isabella’s pregnancy, and the time that has passed since the birth I tried so hard not to mark on any calendar.
The champagne flute threatens to crack beneath my fingers.
“Who is she?” Richard asks.
I look at him.
“I don’t know.”
But I do.
Or I am afraid I do.
“She must be Isabella’s daughter,” he murmurs.
“I gathered that.”
“She could be Daniel Mercer’s.”
I turn slowly toward him.
“Why would you say that?”
Richard blinks. “He was the man she was with at the hotel.”
“Five years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And you still remember his name.”
“It was a significant situation, Alexander. Of course I remember.”
Something feels wrong. Perhaps it is only my mind searching for patterns because I saw a dimple on a little girl. Perhaps five years of guilt have finally found a way to turn ordinary similarities into evidence.
Even so, I set my glass on a passing tray and start across the ballroom.
Isabella notices me approaching. So does her mother, who gives me a look that might have killed a less resilient man.
Isabella shifts subtly until she is standing between me and the girl.
The gesture sends something violent through my chest.
Protection.
She believes the child needs to be protected from me, and considering our last conversation, she is not wrong.
When I stop in front of them, Isabella straightens her shoulders.
“Alexander.”
My throat tightens at the sound of my name in her voice. Five years ago, she used to say it in ways no one else knew. Now it is nothing more than a cold, formal word.
“Isabella.”
The girl tilts her head and studies me without the slightest embarrassment.
“Who’s he?”
Isabella does not take her eyes from mine.
“Someone I used to know.”
Used to.
I deserve the past tense, but I hate it anyway.
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
“Five minutes.”
“I’m busy.”
The girl tugs at the fabric of Isabella’s blue dress.
“Mum, is he the man from the picture?”
Isabella freezes.
So do I.
“What picture?” I ask.
She crouches immediately.
“Lily, go with Grandma.”
Lily.
The name enters me with an inexplicable force.
Lily.
Perhaps Isabella chose it when she still believed we would have a daughter together. Perhaps she chose it without me after she left. I do not know why the name feels familiar, but I can imagine it written in her handwriting somewhere, in one of the notebooks filled with plans I never saw.
Mrs. Costa takes the girl’s hand, but Lily does not leave immediately. She continues looking at me with green eyes.
“You’re very tall.”
The corner of my mouth almost lifts.
“Lily,” Isabella says again.
“I’m going.”
The girl walks away with her grandmother, glancing back once before disappearing into the crowd.
I watch every step.
When I look at Isabella again, there is an entire wall where there was once only distance.
“How old is she?”
“No.”
“Isabella.”
“You lost the right to say my name like that.”
I am not entirely sure what like that means. Perhaps it is the tone I used when I still believed she belonged to me.
“How old?”
She holds my gaze.
“Five.”
The floor seems to tilt beneath me.
“Date of birth.”
“No.”
“Is she mine?”
The question comes out low and rough.
I expect anger, perhaps even satisfaction at finally seeing me confronted by the doubt I refused to face. Instead, there is only exhaustion in Isabella’s expression.
“You chose the answer to that question five years ago.”
“Was I wrong?”
A single laugh leaves her.
“Now you want to ask?”
“I need to know.”
“You needed to know that night. You needed to repeat the tests, call my doctor, or wait for a paternity test before accusing me. Instead, you decided you already knew.”
Isabella turns away.
I grip my own arm to keep from touching her. The impulse to stop her from leaving is almost impossible to control, but I remember the way she recoiled the last time I tried.
“I want a test.”
She stops and turns back slowly.
“You want one?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask.”
“I am asking.”
“No. You’re demanding, the way you always do when you’re afraid of the answer.”
I go still.
“What’s the difference?”
Her eyes shine.
“Everything.”
Around us, the gala continues. Music plays, conversations carry across the ballroom, and hundreds of people go on living through an ordinary evening while my entire life rearranges itself in front of me.
I breathe.
The word is harder than any negotiation I have ever conducted.
“Please.”
Isabella does not react.
“Please let me take a DNA test.”
She swallows.
“Yes.”
The answer should bring relief, but it only makes room for more questions.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Can I see Lily before then?”
“No.”
“Isabella—”
“My solicitor will contact yours. Everything will be done through an independent clinic, under strict confidentiality.”
“We don’t need lawyers.”
“I do.”
The words hurt because I understand exactly what they mean. Isabella believes I might use money, influence, or the Thorne name against her.
Five years ago, she gave me her trust without asking for guarantees. I destroyed it. I have no right to feel offended because she now requires documents before allowing me anywhere near her daughter.
“Bella…”
Her face hardens.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Isabella,” I correct myself. “I have no intention of doing anything against you.”
“You didn’t intend to throw me out either until you decided I was guilty.”
I have no answer to that.
“Tomorrow,” she repeats.
She walks away, and this time I do not try to stop her. I watch her reach her mother and lift Lily into her arms. The girl loops both arms around Isabella’s neck, still clutching the rabbit, and rests her head against her shoulder.
The sight creates a pain I do not know how to name.
I return to the other side of the ballroom. Richard is waiting near the table where I abandoned my glass.
“Well?”
I take out my phone.
“Alex?”
“I’m calling my solicitor.”
“Perhaps you should think before starting anything.”
I look up.
“I’ve spent five years thinking.”
Five years without answers because I chose not to look for any.
If Lily is mine, the thought cannot finish because my body refuses to let it.
I leave the ballroom and call the family solicitor. Within twenty minutes, a team is available to arrange the test for the following morning.
I do not sleep.
When I get home, I open the safe in my study and take out the unmarked box. Isabella’s engagement ring is still inside, beside the tiny white sock I kept for five years.
I place it in my palm and think of Lily’s glittery shoes.
There was probably a time when this sock would have fit her.
At three in the morning, I search online for photographs from the gala.
No photographs of the girl have been published, but I find an older article about Isabella’s consultancy.
There is a photograph of her in her office, and on a shelf in the background sits a framed picture turned partly toward the camera.
I enlarge it until the image loses almost all definition.
I can just make out Isabella sitting on the grass beside a small child. Even blurred, the smile on her face is unmistakable.
I think of everything that happened without me: the pregnancy, the birth, first steps, first words, five birthdays.
I close the screen before I can follow the thought any further.
The following morning, I arrive at the private clinic forty minutes early.
The doctor tries to explain the procedure, but almost none of the information stays with me.
I understand only that they will take a sample from me, another from Lily, and that the results will be available within forty-eight hours.
Isabella arrives with a solicitor.
She is dressed for work, her hair pinned back, a folder tucked beneath one arm. Lily is not with her.
“Where is she?”
“At school.”
“They need a sample from her.”
“It will be collected this afternoon at another location.”
I frown.
“Why?”
“Because I am not going to let you meet my daughter for the first time in a DNA collection room before we know anything.”
My daughter.
The words are generic, perhaps automatic, but they enter me like confirmation.
“Right.”
Her solicitor introduces herself and hands me a stack of documents. The results may be used only for their stated purpose, confidentiality is absolute, disclosure is prohibited, and neither party may begin custody proceedings before a formal discussion has taken place.
I sign the final page.
Isabella takes the documents from me before I can hand them back.
“You didn’t read them.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Read them.”
“I’ll agree to any reasonable condition.”
“Five years ago, I thought you would be reasonable too.”
I take the papers back and read every clause.
The irony almost makes me laugh. Isabella does not trust me and requires written proof that I will not use a child against her.
I sign every indicated space.
The sample collection takes less than a minute. A clinician swabs the inside of my mouth, seals the specimen in front of me, and asks me to confirm the details on the label.
Something capable of defining five years of our lives fits inside a transparent tube.
When I leave the room, I find Isabella alone in the corridor. Her solicitor is taking a call several feet away.
“I wish I’d done this five years ago,” I say.
She looks at me.
“Then why didn’t you?”
I have answers, but none of them absolves me. I was frightened. I was angry. I preferred a painful certainty to a possibility that might destroy me, and repeating the tests would have meant admitting that I might have made a mistake.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You just don’t like the answer.”
“Isabella…”
“You had five years to find the truth. I was pregnant, I never hid where I lived, and I would never have refused a test. You were the one who decided not to ask.”
“I thought—”
“I know what you thought. I had to live with it every time Lily asked why she didn’t have a father.”
My chest tightens.
“She asks about me?”
“She asks about her father. She doesn’t know you well enough to ask about Alexander.”
Her solicitor finishes the call and walks toward us. Isabella reaches for her bag.
“The results will be ready in forty-eight hours.”
She leaves without saying goodbye.
Forty-eight hours.
I return to the office and attempt to work. I sit through two meetings, approve documents, and answer questions without retaining almost anything. My assistant notices and clears the rest of my schedule without being asked.
That night, I sleep for less than two hours. When I wake, I open the drawer again and take out the white sock.
I leave it on the desk.
For the first time in five years, I can no longer tell myself that it means nothing.
If Lily is mine, that sock will be the only thing I possess from the first years of her life, and I will have been the one who chose to lose everything else.