Chapter 6: The Son
I read the message three times.
Each time, the words rearranged themselves into the same shape.
"He asked to meet his father," I said out loud.
Not a question.
Just the sentence, placed in the air between us so we could both look at it.
Ethan sat very still.
"Did you know?" I asked.
"No."
"Michael never said anything?
Not once?"
"Not once." His voice was careful.
"But it fits.
The timing fits.
Eighteen months before the diagnosis — that's when Diane resurfaced.
If the boy had started asking questions around that age —"
"He would have been about twenty." I set the phone down.
"Michael found out he had a son.
And then six months later he found out he had cancer."
"That's what I think, yes."
"And instead of telling me any of this, he made you promise to marry me."
Ethan looked at the floor.
"He wanted someone he trusted inside the house.
Someone who would see it coming if Diane ever made a move."
"He used our grief," I said.
"He used his own death to position you here."
"He loved you.
That part was real."
"I know it was real." My voice came out harder than I intended.
"That's what makes it worse."
I walked to the desk and sat down.
I needed something solid under my hands.
I pressed my palms flat against the wood the same way Ethan had done earlier, and I understood now why he'd done it.
"What's the boy's name?" I asked.
Ethan picked up the phone and read the earlier messages.
"She hasn't said."
"Does he know about us?
About the children?"
"I don't know."
"If Michael met him — if they had any kind of contact before Michael passed —"
"Then he might know everything." Ethan set the phone down.
"Or he might know nothing.
Diane controls what he knows."
I thought about my three children asleep down the hall.
My oldest, seventeen.
My middle child, fourteen.
My youngest, ten.
They had buried their father.
They had watched me grieve, and then slowly, carefully, they had watched me find my footing again.
They had been at the backyard wedding that afternoon, my youngest holding a small bunch of flowers she'd picked herself from the garden.
They did not know any of this existed.
"I'm meeting her," I said.
"I'll come with you."
"No.
I need to meet her alone first."
"That's not a good idea."
"Ethan." I looked at him directly.
"She spent twenty-three years waiting.
She timed this call for our wedding night.
She has a son who may or may not know he has half-siblings.
I need to look at her face when she talks to me.
I can't do that with you in the room, because she'll talk to you instead of me."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"One hour," he said finally.
"Public place.
And you call me the moment it's done."
"Agreed."
I picked up my phone and typed a reply to Diane.
*"Tomorrow.
Eleven o'clock.
The coffee shop on Mercer Street.
Just you."*
Three dots appeared immediately.
Then her reply.
*"I'll be there.
And — thank you.
I know this isn't easy."*
I put the phone face-down on the desk.
Easy.
The word sat in my chest like a splinter.
I looked at Ethan sitting across the room — this man who had fixed my porch and taught my son to shave and cried quietly at my daughter's school play.
This man who had married me today because a dying man had asked him to.
This man who had been carrying Michael's secret for over twenty years and had never once let it show.
"Go to sleep," I said quietly.
"We'll figure the rest out tomorrow."
He nodded.
He didn't move toward me.
He never did.
I turned off the light on my side of the room and lay down on top of the covers, still dressed, Michael's letter on the nightstand beside me.
May you like
Down the hall, my youngest coughed once in her sleep and went quiet.
Somewhere across the city, a twenty-two-year-old man who shared Michael's b100d didn't know that by this time tomorrow, his life was going to change too.
