Chapter 6: What the Youngest One Asked

Claire came home on a Tuesday.

I drove to the hospital to collect her.

We didn't speak much on the way.

The baby — we were still calling her "the baby," still hadn't named her — slept in the car seat in the back.

Claire sat beside her in the rear, one hand resting near the seat without quite touching it.

I watched them both in the mirror at the traffic lights.

The boys were waiting at the front door when we pulled up.

The twins pushed to the front.

Sam hung back slightly.

Noah had his phone out, ready to take a photo.

Ethan stood at the top of the steps with his arms folded, watching me get out of the car.

The next hour was noise and movement — the twins wanting to hold her, Sam asking if she could already walk, Noah filming everything, my mother appearing from the kitchen with food she'd prepared without being asked.

Claire moved through it all carefully, answering questions, letting the boys crowd around the baby, holding herself together with a precision that I recognised as effort.

When the boys finally settled and my mother took the twins upstairs for a nap, Claire and I were left alone in the kitchen.

She stood at the counter.

I stood near the door.

"I've made an appointment," I said.

"At a private clinic.

DNA test.

They can do it with a cheek swab — the baby, me.

Results in five days."

Claire nodded.

"Okay."

"You don't have any objections?"

"No.

Of course not.

You need to know."

"We both need to know."

"Yes."

She turned and looked out the window at the garden.

The boys' football was still in the middle of the lawn from last weekend.

A lifetime ago.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm fine," I said.

"I'm not.

But I'm not going to fall apart in front of the boys either.

So while we wait for the results, we keep things as normal as we can.

For them."

"I understand."

"After we know — we talk.

Properly.

Everything."

"Yes," she said.

"Everything."

I left her there and went back to the living room.

It was Finn who broke me.

Not Ethan, who was old enough to understand that something was wrong.

Not Claire, with her pale face and her careful movements.

It was Finn — six years old, gap-toothed, who still called me Daddy instead of Dad — who came and found me sitting on the bottom stair twenty minutes later.

He climbed up beside me.

He was carrying his stuffed rabbit, the one he'd had since he was two and refused to acknowledge embarrassment about.

"Daddy," he said.

"Hey, bud."

"Is Mummy sad?"

I looked at him.

At his small, serious face.

"Why do you ask?"

"She keeps looking at the baby like she's going to cry.

But she doesn't cry.

She just looks."

I put my arm around him.

He leaned into my side, the way he'd done since he was old enough to lean.

"Mummy's just tired," I said.

"Having a baby is hard work."

"Harder than football?"

"Much harder than football."

He thought about this.

"Is *you* sad?"

The grammar of it.

The absolute directness of six years old.

"A little bit," I said.

"But I'm okay."

"Because of the baby?"

"No.

The baby's great.

The baby's perfect."

"Then why?"

I pulled him a little closer.

"Grown-up stuff, bud.

Nothing for you to worry about."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then: "Are you and Mummy going to stop being married?"

The question dropped into the stairwell like a stone into water.

"Where did you hear that word?" I asked.

"Tyler at school.

His mum and dad stopped being married.

He had to get two bedrooms."

"Finn—"

"I don't want two bedrooms," he said.

Very simply.

Very clearly.

"I want this bedroom."

I held him tighter than I meant to.

He didn't pull away.

"You're keeping your bedroom," I said.

"I promise you that."

He nodded, satisfied, and slid off the stair and went back to the living room, rabbit under his arm, the conversation already behind him the way only a six-year-old can leave a conversation.

I sat on the stair alone.

My hands were shaking.

I pressed them flat against my knees and waited for it to pass, and while I waited I heard Claire moving around in the kitchen, and the baby making small sounds in the Moses basket in the corner of the living room, and the twins laughing at something upstairs.

All of it ordinary.

All of it mine.

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Or possibly not.

Five days felt like a very long time.