Chapter 3: What Thomas Did With That Call
Thomas stared at the phone for a long moment.
Then he picked it up and answered it.
"Julian." His voice was completely flat.
Not angry.
Not cold.
Just empty in a way I had never heard before.
I couldn't hear Julian's side.
But I watched Thomas's face, and that was enough.
"No," Thomas said.
"Don't come to the house." A pause.
"Because I said so." Another pause, longer this time.
"I think you already know why."
He ended the call.
He set the phone face-down on the bedside table, picked up his jacket from the chair, and walked to the window.
He stood there with his back to me, one hand pressed flat against the glass.
"Thomas." My voice cracked.
"Look at me.
Please."
He didn't move for a long moment.
Then he turned.
"I need you to tell me the truth," he said.
"Right now.
Not later.
Not when we get home.
Right now, in this room."
"I have never—" I started.
"Did anything happen between you and Julian?"
"No." The word came out hard and fast.
"Thomas.
No.
Nothing happened.
Not once.
Not ever."
He looked at me the way you look at something you are trying very hard to still believe in.
"Then explain the mark."
"I can't explain it.
I don't know how to explain it.
But I am telling you the truth."
He turned back to the window.
A nurse knocked softly and opened the door.
"We have your discharge paperwork ready whenever you are."
"Give us a few minutes," Thomas said, without turning around.
The door closed again.
The silence between us was different from the one before.
That silence had been shock.
This one was something harder.
Something with edges.
"I want a paternity test," he said finally.
I had expected it.
I had known, from the moment Julian's name appeared on that phone, that this was coming.
But hearing the words out loud still felt like the floor dropping away beneath me.
"Okay," I said.
He turned to look at me then.
I think he had expected me to argue.
"Okay?" he repeated.
"Yes.
If that's what you need.
Then yes."
Something moved across his face — not relief, not exactly, but the faintest loosening of the grip he was keeping on himself.
He nodded once and looked away.
We drove home from the hospital in near silence.
Leo slept in his car seat between Emma and Zoe.
Clara held his little hand the entire ride.
Mila pressed her face against the window and watched the houses go by.
I watched Thomas drive.
His jaw was set.
His eyes were straight ahead.
We pulled into the driveway.
The welcome banner was still visible through the front door glass, bright and colorful and completely out of place with everything happening inside me.
Thomas carried Leo's car seat in without a word.
I followed.
That night, after the girls were asleep and Leo had been fed and settled in his bassinet, Thomas sat at the kitchen table with his laptop open.
He didn't tell me what he was doing.
He didn't have to.
I could see from across the room that he was researching paternity testing.
I sat down across from him.
"Thomas."
He kept his eyes on the screen.
"I need you to hear me," I said.
"Whatever that test shows — and I already know what it will show — I need you to remember that I have never lied to you.
Not once in fourteen years."
He looked up then.
His eyes were red in a way they hadn't been earlier.
"Then why," he said, very quietly, "does my best friend's name keep running through my head every time I look at our son?"
I didn't have an answer for that.
Not one that would satisfy him.
He closed the laptop.
"Get some sleep," he said.
"We'll talk more tomorrow."
May you like
But tomorrow brought something neither of us had planned for.
Julian showed up at our front door at seven in the morning.
