Chapter 7: What Elena Deserved to Know
Luca asked Elena to come to the study at five o'clock.
She arrived three minutes early, which he had come to understand was how she operated.
She knocked once, came in when he said to, and stood near the door in the way she no longer did — she had stopped positioning herself near exits about two weeks ago.
Today she was back near the door.
She had seen Marco leave that morning.
He could tell from the set of her shoulders.
"Sit down," he said.
"Please."
She sat.
He told her about the trust documents first.
He told her about the amendment and the forged letter and the secondary clause.
He told her what Marsh had said about the legal challenge.
He told her about the camera footage of Marco on the lawn with Maya.
She listened without speaking.
Her hands were in her lap.
She did not cover her mouth this time.
She sat very still and listened to all of it, and when he finished, she looked at him with an expression he recognized because he had seen it on her daughter's face: direct, clear, and not afraid of what it was looking at.
"He came here to see if she looked like you," she said.
"Yes."
"And she does."
"Apparently."
Elena looked at the desk.
"What does he want?"
"Everything," Luca said.
"He's wanted it since before our father d*ed.
The p0isoning was the method.
The wheelchair was the result.
The trust was the goal."
"And Maya is the complication he didn't plan for."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
"What happens to her if you acknowledge her and he challenges it?"
"She gets pulled into a legal fight that could last months.
Her birth, her parentage, our relationship — all of it becomes part of a court record.
Public."
Elena's jaw tightened.
"She's nine."
"I know."
"She doesn't know any of this yet.
She doesn't know you're her father.
She doesn't know any of it." Her voice stayed level but something underneath it did not.
"She came through that hedge because there was a gap and she wanted to see the baseball diamond.
She's nine years old and she's been through enough."
"I know," Luca said again.
"So what are you going to do?"
He looked at her.
"Marsh believes there's a way to preempt the challenge.
To make the legitimacy clause significantly harder to apply." He paused.
"If we were married before I file the acknowledgment, Illinois family law would make it very difficult for Marco to argue Maya's illegitimacy."
Elena looked at him.
A long moment passed.
"You're asking me to marry you," she said.
"I'm telling you what Marsh told me," he said.
"What I'm asking is different."
"What are you asking?"
He looked at his hands on the wheels of the chair.
"I'm asking if you would consider it.
Not as a legal maneuver.
I understand that's how it sounds.
I understand I have no right to ask it." He looked up.
"I'm asking because I think the summer meant something.
I think the twelve years in between were taken from both of us.
And I think Maya came through that hedge for a reason that has nothing to do with the gap in the privet."
Elena looked at him for a long time.
"I need to think," she said.
"Take whatever time you need."
She stood.
Moved toward the door.
Stopped.
"Luca." She did not turn around.
"If I say yes — it's not for the trust.
It's not for the legal strategy."
"I know," he said.
"It's because she deserves to have her father without a court deciding whether she's allowed to." She paused.
"And because I think you're telling the truth.
About all of it."
She walked out.
He sat in the study until the light changed again.
At four fifteen, he heard the sound of the baseball hitting the backstop through the open window.
Then Maya's laugh when she missed the angle she'd been trying to correct for a week.
He wheeled to the window and watched her.
She was wearing a new coat.
May you like
Elena had bought it last week.
It fit.
