Chapter 5 #4
I told myself I'd tell her when the results came back negative. When this whole nightmare was over and I could explain it as a misunderstanding, a crazy accusation from someone desperate, a story we could almost laugh about.
The email loads.
Probability of paternity: 99.9%
I phone Jensen before I finish reading the page.
"Tell me this is the wrong attachment," I say the second he picks up.
"Mr. Williams?" His voice is careful. "I was going to call after you had a chance to read it."
"I've read the number," I tell him. "Explain how it got there."
"The report's in your name," he says, measured, like he's reading from a card. "It matches the collection details."
"That wasn't my question." I press my fist against the desk. "I didn't sleep with her. I want somebody to explain how this can say I did."
"A report can't establish what you remember," Jensen says. "It establishes what the samples show."
I get up so abruptly the chair hits the wall. "Don't talk to me as though I've forgotten where I parked. I had barely one glass of wine. Then there's nothing. Hours missing. That isn't me making a bad decision after a party. My body was wrong."
"Then you should take a breath before deciding what to do," he says in that careful voice. "You're upset."
"I'm appropriately upset," I snap. "Find out who can check this. A different test, a different lab. I want an answer I can understand."
Paper rustles on his end. "I'll look at the options. But Kendall has to cooperate with any new collection. We can't arrange it around her without telling her."
"Then tell her," I say.
"I'll speak to her," he says. "You should think about how you're going to handle this with Molly."
I look at the closed door. My wife is upstairs. I could walk twenty feet and tell her the truth I have, ugly and incomplete. Instead I hear the doctor telling us to help her rest. I turn concern into permission so quickly I almost miss myself doing it.
"Not until I know," I say.
Molly's face flashes in my mind—not the anger she'd have every right to feel, but the hurt. The way she'd look at me and wonder. My wife, who trusts me with everything, learning that someone claims I—
I love Molly. There isn't a part of me reaching for anyone else. I can't hand her that pain without knowing if it's even true.
If the new test comes back negative, she never has to carry this. She never has to lie awake wondering if I touched someone else. I'll have spared her the worst of it, and we can go back to normal, and—
And I'm protecting her.
That's what this is. Protection.
"All right," Jensen says.
He accepts it too easily. I take that for kindness.
"Don't send anything to the house," I tell him. "Don't call her. This comes through me."
"Understood," he says. "I'll be in touch when I've spoken to Kendall."
I end the call and sit staring at the number. The report isn't certainty. It isn't even an explanation. But it is a thing I can hide, and hiding suddenly looks easier than opening the bedroom door.
I call Kendall. She answers immediately.
"Jensen said you had the results," she says, breathless, the phone clearly already in her hand.
"You're moving out tomorrow," I tell her.
Her voice climbs. "Taz, I don't have anywhere ready—"
"I'll pay for a condo," I say. "You'll have a place to stay. But you can't stay in this house."
She's quiet for a beat. "What have you told Molly?"
"Nothing," I say. "Don't mistake that for me accepting this report. I'm having it checked."
"I didn't ask you to choose between us," she says softly.
"There isn't an us," I tell her. "There's my marriage, and there's a claim I don't understand. I will not have this conversation with my wife sleeping upstairs while you're under the same roof."
Her voice goes small and wounded. "I'm trying to think about the baby."
"You can do that from the condo," I say. "Pack tonight."
She draws a slow breath. "All right. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
I put the phone down before she can say anything else.
The email is still open. I save the attachment, print it, and bury the copy in the bottom drawer under old paperwork. Then I delete the message. Nothing has been solved. I have simply made it harder for Molly to find out.
I lock my office door and go upstairs. Molly's already in bed, half-asleep. She never did show me the ultrasound photos from her appointment. I never asked to see them.
I lie down beside her, careful not to wake her, and stare at the ceiling in the dark.
The bed we've shared for seven years. The woman I've loved for ten. The baby growing inside her that I swore I would protect.
And another baby, somewhere, that might also be mine. That I might have made while unconscious, while drugged, while—
I don't know what happened that night in Santa Barbara. I don't remember, and the not-remembering is its own kind of hell.
But I know one thing for certain: if I tell Molly now, I lose her. I lose everything.
So I won't tell her until I figure out what really happened.
I pull her closer, breathe in the smell of her hair.
And I hate myself.