Chapter 3: The Name She Said

Marcus.

That was the name.

Marcus Hale.

My best friend for eleven years.

The man who had stood beside me at our wedding.

The man who had held our firstborn son in the hospital car park because Claire and I were too nervous to buckle the car seat properly and we'd needed someone steady.

The man I had trusted without a second thought for over a decade.

I sat down in the chair beside Claire's bed.

Not because I felt calm.

Because my legs stopped working.

"Say it again," I said.

"Daniel—"

"Say the name again.

Out loud.

I need to hear you say it."

She closed her eyes.

"Marcus."

The baby made a small sound in her arms.

Neither of us looked at her.

"How long?" I asked.

Claire's jaw tightened.

"It doesn't matter how—"

"How long, Claire."

She opened her eyes.

They were wet, but her voice was flat, like she'd already rehearsed this and the rehearsal had run out.

"Eight months.

It ended eight months ago."

I did the arithmetic without meaning to.

Eight months ago.

The pregnancy was confirmed six months ago.

The overlap sat between those two numbers like something I couldn't unfeel.

"Did you know?" I asked.

"When you found out you were pregnant — did you already know it might not be mine?"

She didn't answer immediately, and that pause was its own answer.

"Claire."

"I didn't know for certain," she said.

"I told myself it had to be yours.

I wanted it to be yours.

I—"

"That's not what I asked."

She pressed her lips together.

The baby shifted, and Claire adjusted her hold automatically, the way a mother does without thinking.

That small, instinctive gesture — it nearly undid me.

"I was scared," she said.

"I was so scared that I just...

I chose not to think about it.

I decorated the nursery and I counted the weeks and I told myself it was fine.

That it had to be fine."

"And tonight?" I said.

"When you looked at her face?"

Claire looked down at our daughter.

At the baby's closed eyes and the small curve of her nose and whatever it was she saw there that I couldn't see yet.

"She looks like him," Claire said quietly.

"Around the eyes.

The shape of them."

"You don't know that.

She's hours old."

"I know what I saw."

I stood up.

I didn't trust myself sitting still.

I walked to the window and looked out at the car park below — the ordinary rows of cars, a man walking a dog along the pavement, a world entirely unaware that mine had just caved in.

"Did he know?" I asked.

"Does Marcus know you were pregnant?"

Another pause.

I turned around.

"Claire.

Does he know?"

"I told him," she said.

"Two weeks after I found out.

I told him there was a chance."

"And?"

Her chin dropped.

"He told me it wasn't his problem.

That it was over and I needed to handle it."

The room was very quiet.

"He said that to you."

"Yes."

I looked at my wife — exhausted, pale, our newborn daughter in her arms — and I felt something I hadn't expected to feel in that moment.

Not rage at Claire.

Not grief.

Something colder and more focused, aimed entirely at the man who had stood beside me at my wedding and then told my wife that our possible child was not his problem.

"I'm going to need some air," I said.

"Daniel, please don't—"

"I'm not leaving.

I just need air."

I picked up my jacket from the chair.

At the door I stopped, my hand on the frame.

"What's her name?" I asked.

"We never settled on one."

Claire looked up.

"I thought you'd want to choose."

I looked at the baby one more time.

At her small face.

At whatever it was Claire had seen in it.

"Not tonight," I said.

And I walked out into the corridor and stood there alone, with the sound of the maternity ward around me, and tried to remember how to breathe.

I had Marcus Hale's number still saved in my phone.

I hadn't deleted it.

I'd never had a reason to.

I found it before I reached the end of the corridor.

I pressed call.

It rang four times.

Then his voice — familiar, easy, the same voice that had laughed at my wedding table — came through the speaker.

"Daniel?

It's late, mate.

Everything alright?"

My hand tightened on the phone.

"We need to talk," I said.

"Tonight."

A beat of silence.

Then: "Yeah.

Alright."

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He knew exactly why I was calling.

I could hear it in the two words he'd chosen.