43
LUCA BELLANDI
Between the sample collection and the results, I attended two sessions with Marina, the psychologist Gabriela had contacted.
I told her about going to their accommodation too.
Describing the broken promise aloud was harder than admitting I’d lost control.
The lawyers were gathering the documents to establish paternity; Marina was helping us prepare for a first meeting, if Gabriela and the children were willing.
We sat in a meeting room at the law firm she’d retained: Gabriela’s lawyer, mine, a laboratory representative, Gabriela, and me. An identical envelope lay before each of us.
Matteo had rearranged my schedule. For the first time in years, I was letting other people conduct meetings without waiting for me to enter the room.
The representative explained the statistics, methodology, and chain of custody. I barely heard her. I watched Gabriela’s hands on the table. She wore no wedding ring. The relief was so selfish it shamed me.
The samples had been collected at separate times, at a laboratory with no ties to the group. Both parties had reviewed the conditions and how the results would be delivered before authorizing the test. Every precaution was a direct consequence of the man I’d been.
Gabriela had messaged that Camila cried at the sight of the collection swab. Heitor asked whether the cotton tip would find dinosaurs. Noah wanted to know when the results would come. I’d reread those three lines more times than I could count.
“You may open them,” the representative said.
Gabriela broke the seal without hesitation. I did the same. I read Noah’s name first, then Heitor’s, then Camila’s. Each report confirmed paternity. I went back over the three conclusions, checking the names again. I laid the pages on the table. The paper trembled beneath my fingers.
“They’re mine.”
Gabriela looked up.
“They always were.”
Next I opened the birth documents the lawyers had gathered. On a separate sheet, Gabriela had authorized a summary of their neonatal history: twenty-nine weeks' gestation; Noah weighing one kilogram, two hundred grams, Heitor one kilogram, one hundred fifty grams, Camila less than a kilogram.
“They were so small.”
“They spent sixty-three days in intensive care. Camila stayed longer.”
I read the weights again, trying to turn them into something I knew. Less than a bottle of wine. A little more than a heavy book. Absurd comparisons, offensive beside bodies that had fought to breathe, but my mind was reaching for scale because my heart couldn’t bear to imagine.
“Was there a risk you might . . .” I couldn’t finish.
“There was a complication after the cesarean. My mother was there. You can read the summary.”
I gripped the table’s edge. At some point, four people who belonged in my life could have died while I attended meetings, slept between clean sheets, and held on to the comfortable certainty that I’d been deceived.
“And Camila stayed after the boys went home?”
“Yes. She had her first surgery before leaving the hospital.”
I looked at the date on the report. I tried to remember where I’d been that day, in which country, with whom. I couldn’t.
Cris had known where to be. My grandmother had told me about the hemorrhage and the three babies; I hadn’t even asked when they were due.
“I’m sorry.”
“They needed you then. Now they need you not to let guilt make you rush.”
Her lawyer waited for me to set aside the report, then opened the paternity-acknowledgment documents.
“I want to begin today,” I said. “And discuss contributing to their expenses, including what Gabriela was left to pay alone. I also want to set up a fund for each of them.”
My lawyer brought out the proposals he’d prepared. I knew them. Still, I waited for Gabriela to read instead of pointing to the signature line.
“None of this can depend on visits,” she said.
“It won’t.”
I wanted to ask when I’d see them. I let the lawyers continue.
Gabriela reviewed a page with her lawyer and squared the papers before her.
“We can begin the acknowledgment,” she decided. “The funds will be reviewed. As for Camila, the institute has already accepted her case through its assistance program.”
“The program isn’t a favor from me.”
“Good. Then don’t try to treat it as one.”
The meeting moved through dates, documents, and proposals. I signed the applications the lawyers had prepared. The acknowledgment still had to go through the procedures required to update the birth certificates. Gabriela refused an immediate change of last names.
“Duarte is the name they know. We’ll handle any change carefully and listen to all three.”
I looked at their names on the reports.
“We can start that way.”
We also agreed that no assets would depend on their taking the surname, living in Italy, or joining the group in the future. My children wouldn’t inherit an obligation along with their rights.
We returned to the proposal for short visits with Gabriela or Cris present. Marina had spoken to her and met the children. She could attend the first meeting in the institute’s garden; later arrangements would be reviewed as they got to know me.
I agreed. No signature guaranteed those meetings, and my visit to their accommodation still weighed on the way Gabriela looked at me.
As everyone stood, she put away her copy of the results.
“I’ll explain them to the children today.”
“Will Marina be with you?” I asked.
“I’ve spoken to her. I’ll talk to the three of them at home.”
I wanted a time, a place, some certainty I’d see them. Gabriela closed the folder.
“I’ll let you know how it went.”
I nodded before impatience could make me press.
She left with her lawyer. Through the glass wall, I saw her meet Cris in the hall. He held two coffees and handed her one. She said something; he set down his drink and hugged her. I looked away, not quickly enough to stop the stab of jealousy.
My lawyer asked whether he could send the documents on. I said yes. I kept looking at the empty hall a moment longer, hating how easily Gabriela had leaned on Cris, and hating even more that I knew why.
Outside, I dismissed the driver and walked aimlessly along the avenue. S?o Paulo hurried around me, indifferent. People crossed streets, vendors called out water for sale, horns competed. No one knew the man on business-magazine covers had just confirmed he was the father of three children.
I stopped outside a school at dismissal. Parents collected backpacks, bottles, breathless accounts of the day. A man crouched to tie his daughter’s shoe without ending a call. A woman checked her son’s forehead for fever. Gestures so ordinary no one photographed them.
A little girl came out crying over a lost pencil. Her father listened to the entire tragedy, opened her backpack, and found it in the side pocket. The crisis was over in less than a minute.
I envied that stranger not for being loved, but for knowing exactly where his daughter kept things.
I didn’t know which pocket Noah put his pencils in.
I didn’t know whether Heitor still needed help getting dressed, or which story put Camila to sleep.
The man zipped his daughter’s backpack, and they left me standing at the gate. I stopped at a children’s store.
The window held dresses, toy cars, books, and a set of little dinosaurs.
I went in, chose three things, and took them to the register.
I imagined Noah seeing me arrive with shopping bags after he’d refused to wave.
I didn’t even know what he liked. I apologized to the saleswoman and put the toys back.
“Changed your mind?” she asked.
“It’s not the time.”
I left without buying anything. At the hotel, I opened the selection of public articles I’d asked Matteo to gather after our encounter.
Gabriela had restored churches, old houses, and the guesthouse she ran in Paraty.
She’d won a national award. Cris was listed as a minority partner in the firm; his work there was administrative, with no professional responsibility for the restoration.
There were project photographs and interviews.
In a picture from the award coverage, Gabriela stood in front of the guesthouse’s blue facade.
I enlarged her face. The article mentioned three young children but gave no names or photographs.
I closed the page, missing things I’d never had the right to demand.
I pushed the laptop aside and took the folded copy of the results from my wallet. I ran a finger over the names. Noah Duarte. Heitor Duarte. Camila Duarte.
That was how they existed in the records and the life built without me. Perhaps one day they’d want to add Bellandi. Perhaps not. I wouldn’t let my pride decide.
At 6:40, my phone sounded with a message from Gabriela.
They know the test confirmed it. Noah wants to ask why you weren’t with us.
Heitor wants to meet you. Camila asked whether you’re afraid of hospitals too.
Tomorrow, ten a.m., in the institute’s garden.
Thirty minutes. Cris, Marina, and I will be there. I read it five times.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I read the time again, ten in the morning, and had to brace my elbows on my knees. Tears fell onto the screen before I could move it away.
Later, I opened a notebook and began writing questions: what they ate, what they liked, which bedtime stories they asked for. I stopped at the bottom of the page.
I crossed out almost everything. I wanted to hear their voices, not make them work through a list.
At the time we’d arranged, I called Marina. I still held the notebook.
“Can I tell them I love them?”
“You can talk about what you feel, but leave room for their reaction. They may not want to respond yet.”
I thought of Noah’s gaze.
“What if he won’t even come near me?”
“Respect it. Be available without insisting. It’s the first meeting, Luca.”
I laid out my clothes for the morning and left the notebook on the table. I went back to the phone. The message was still there, with a time and my children’s names. I didn’t sleep before reading it once more.