CHAPTER TEN
ALEXANDER
I read the conclusion so many times that the numbers eventually stop meaning anything. Even then, I return to the beginning of the document and go through the names, the collection dates, and the scientific explanation confirming what Isabella told me from the very first moment.
Lily is my daughter.
Isabella never betrayed me.
I destroyed our family before I even knew I had one.
All three truths exist at once, and I cannot bear any of them.
After Isabella leaves the solicitor’s office, I remain alone in the conference room until someone knocks and asks whether I need anything. I tell them no, fold the test result, and slip it into my pocket.
My driver is waiting outside, but I decide to walk. I do not know where I am going until I realize I am heading toward the house where Isabella and I once lived together.
The same house. The same gate, the same stairs, the same corridor.
Five years later, everything looks almost unchanged, which somehow makes it worse.
Time moved forward everywhere else but here.
The furniture Isabella chose is still in the sitting room, the garden still has the roses she planted, and the kitchen still holds the island where I cut strawberries on the last morning we were happy.
I go upstairs to the bedroom that was once supposed to be ours and open the drawer where I kept the tiny white sock. Then I sit on the floor with my back against the bed and let the fabric rest in my palm.
Five years.
I take out my phone, open the calendar, and find the date of birth Isabella just gave me. Then I work backward through the years.
Five birthdays.
Five Christmases.
First steps, first word, first tooth. Fevers, sleepless nights, tears, laughter, and questions I was not there to help answer.
I missed every one of them.
Worse, I could have been there.
The nausea comes without warning. I make it to the bathroom in time and then remain kneeling on the cold floor, trying to breathe while my body reacts to something my mind still cannot fully absorb.
I have not felt this broken since the accident when I was twenty-three. Perhaps not even then, because that time I lost a possibility I had never known.
Now I am discovering that I had an entire daughter living in the same world as me.
And I was the one who rejected her.
My phone rings in the bedroom. I do not need to look to know it is Richard, but the sound continues until I go back and see his name on the screen. I reject the call. When he tries again, I switch the phone off.
Edmund calls the house landline an hour later.
I answer.
“She’s mine,” I say before he can speak.
My grandfather is silent. I hear his breathing on the other end.
“Oh, Alex.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t.”
I almost laugh.
“Good.”
“I feel sorry for the little girl.”
The words enter like a blade.
“And for Isabella,” he adds.
I close my eyes.
“I know.”
“You know now.”
“Yes.”
Edmund softens nothing, and I am grateful for it.
“What are you going to do?”
I look at the sock.
“I don’t know.”
My grandfather coughs. It lasts longer than it should, and I hear someone enter the room with him, probably his nurse. Edmund waves them away and comes back to the call.
“First, do not try to buy forgiveness.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“You’ve been buying solutions since you were sixteen.”
“Not everything can be bought.”
“You’re finally learning that.”
I tighten my fingers around the sock.
“Second,” he continues, “do not turn your guilt into more work for Isabella.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you do not show up expecting her to teach you how to be a father, explain how to soothe your conscience, and somehow still find time to comfort you.”
I say nothing.
“And third—”
“How many items are there?”
“As many as necessary to stop you from ruining everything again.”
I rest my head against the wall.
“She’s letting me meet Lily on Sunday.”
Edmund goes quiet.
“What’s her full name?”
“Lily Costa.”
My surname is not there. Of course it is not.
“It’s beautiful,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell her the truth?”
“Together.”
“Good.”
I breathe, but it still feels as though there is not enough air.
“Grandad.”
I have not called him that in years.
Edmund notices. His voice softens.
“Yes?”
“I told Isabella not to use another man’s child to make me a father.”
The silence is long.
“My God, Alexander.”
My throat closes.
“She was pregnant and came to tell me because she thought I would be happy. I saw the socks, the test, and…”
I cannot finish.
Edmund does not rescue me. He does not tell me I was frightened, that the medical results had seemed conclusive, or that any man might have made the same mistake.
He simply stays with me in the silence.
It is worse than condemnation.
And somehow better.
After we hang up, I message my assistant.
Cancel everything until Monday.
She calls immediately.
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“There’s a board meeting tomorrow, and the representatives from Zurich—”
“Cancel it.”
“Alexander, there are commitments that—”
“All of them.”
I end the call and return to the bedroom.
On Friday morning, I open a blank folder on my laptop and type a single word.
LILY
Beneath it, I try to organize what I know.
Full name: Lily Costa
Age: Five
Date of birth: The date Isabella gave me
After that, there are only blanks.
School: I don’t know.
Favorite food: I don’t know.
Allergies: I don’t know.
Fears: I don’t know.
Favorite cartoon: I don’t know.
Favorite animal: I don’t know.
I could call my head of security. Within an hour, I would have the name of her school, her medical records, photographs, and a detailed account of her routine.
I do not.
Edmund was right. Collecting information is not the same as knowing someone, and using my power to invade Lily’s life would only be another way of putting my needs ahead of Isabella’s.
I close the file.
On Saturday, I make another mistake.
I walk into a children’s shop intending to buy one simple present and leave having purchased a bicycle, a dollhouse, two boxes of books, a telescope, and a rocking horse that costs more than my first car.
When I see everything gathered together, I imagine Isabella’s face.
I have the entire order sent to storage.
Buying things is easy. Giving Lily expensive gifts would allow me to pretend I am doing something when none of it can return what I lost.
On Sunday, I wake at five in the morning.
I change shirts three times and reach Isabella’s street at nine forty. I remain inside the car for eighteen minutes, watching the house.
It is smaller than the one we shared, elegant and full of signs that people actually live there. Flowers sit in the windows, a child’s drawing is taped to the glass, and a small bicycle leans against the wall.
My pulse accelerates when I see it.
Alexander Thorne, who has sat across from hostile governments and armed men without changing his heart rate, is frightened of a five-year-old girl.
At nine fifty-eight, I get out of the car and ring the bell.
Isabella opens the door.
She is wearing jeans and a pale sweater, with no makeup. For one second, five years disappear. My body remembers mornings when she would come out of the bathroom looking almost exactly like this, her hair tied up carelessly.
Then I see the distance in her eyes.
“Come in.”
The sitting room contains an entire life that happened without me. There are drawings on the walls, tiny shoes beside the sofa, and a pink backpack hanging from a chair. Photographs of Lily fill one shelf: first as a baby, then older, covered in cake at birthdays I never saw.
I cannot look for long.
Footsteps approach from the corridor.
Lily appears, stops when she sees me, and tilts her head.
“The tall man.”
My throat tightens.
Isabella crouches beside her.
“Lily, remember I told you we needed to talk about something important?”
She nods and looks directly at me.
“Is he my dad?”
No adult in the room breathes.
Isabella blinks.
“How did you—”
Lily shrugs.
“Grandma cries when she sees him on television.”
Isabella closes her eyes. I almost laugh, not because it is funny but because the answer is so unexpectedly childish that it breaks through some of the terror.
My former fiancée takes her daughter’s hands.
“Yes.”
Lily keeps looking at me.
“You’re my dad?”
I do not know how to make my voice work.
“Yes,” I manage, rougher than I intend. “I am.”
She thinks about that for five or ten seconds.
“So you always were?”
The question destroys me in a way the test result could not.
I lower myself to my knees, careful not to move too close.
“Always.”
“Since I was a baby?”
“Before that.”
“When I was in Mummy’s tummy?”
Isabella catches her breath.
“Yes.”
Lily frowns.
“Then why weren’t you here?”
The world stops.
I could say I did not know. Technically, I did not know until the test result came back. I could tell her adults had argued or that the situation was complicated.
I look at Isabella.
She does not help me. She should not.
I turn back to my daughter.
“Because I made a very big mistake.”
Lily waits.
“Your mum told me about you when she was still pregnant, and I didn’t believe her.”
She looks at Isabella and then back at me.
“Why?”
There is no answer a child deserves.
“Because I was wrong.”
“Mummy was right?”
“Yes.”
“And you were wrong?”
“Yes.”
Lily accepts the logic with an ease that makes it hurt more.
“Did you say sorry?”
My chest contracts.
“Not properly yet.”
She looks at her mother.
“He needs to.”
Isabella bites the inside of her cheek.
“I know.”
Lily takes one step toward me.
“Do you like chocolate?”
I almost cry.
“I do.”
She smiles, and the dimple appears.
Mine. My father’s. Edmund’s.
Ours.
“I knew it,” she declares.
And in that moment, I discover there is something worse than losing five years.
It is realizing how easy it would have been to love every single one of them.