Chapter 6: The Conversation That Couldn't Wait
I didn't go back to the office.
I drove home and sat in the car in the driveway for four minutes.
Then I went inside.
Vanessa was on the couch with her laptop.
She looked up when I came in and whatever she saw in my face made her close it slowly.
"You're home early."
"I met Diane."
She set the laptop on the cushion beside her.
Her expression didn't collapse.
It reorganized — a small, careful shift, like furniture being moved one inch to the left.
"She's been trying to cause problems between us since before we moved in together," Vanessa said.
"I should have warned you more clearly."
"She showed me the texts."
Silence.
"The ones to Ryan," I said.
"Four months of them.
Dated."
Vanessa stood up.
"Those are private—"
"She heard about the concert in her room.
You said it was better she understood now." I looked at her.
"Understood what, Vanessa?
What exactly did you want my daughter to understand?"
"You're taking them out of context."
"Then give me the context.
Explain the one where you said if you could get her to ask to go live with her aunt, I wouldn't fight it."
Her chin came up.
"I was venting.
People vent to people they trust.
That doesn't mean—"
"You were planning."
"I was frustrated." Her voice rose slightly.
"Do you have any idea what it is like to come into a home where a child has decided she doesn't want you there?
Where every room you walk into, she goes quiet?
Where her father looks at her like she hung the moon and looks at you like you're a problem to be managed?"
"She's twelve years old.
She lost her mother.
And you have been systematically—"
"Don't." Vanessa's voice cracked.
"Don't make me the villain in this.
I have been trying.
I have been trying every single day to make this work and nobody in this house has made it easy."
"You told her I wasn't at her concert.
I was home, Vanessa.
I was twenty minutes away and you told her I had a work trip."
"Because I needed one night — one night — where she wasn't the center of everything."
The room went quiet.
I heard what she'd said.
I let it sit there between us so she could hear it too.
Her hand went to her mouth.
"That's not what I meant," she said.
"I think it is."
"Marcus—"
"I want a paternity test."
The color left her face.
"What?"
"When the baby is born.
I want a paternity test."
"How dare you." Her voice dropped to something cold and precise.
"How dare you stand in this house and say that to me."
"You've been in contact with Ryan for months.
You lied to me about who he was.
You're asking me to trust you." I held her gaze.
"I need to know."
"I am not going to—"
"Then we have a bigger problem than the test."
She stared at me.
Her eyes were bright, her breathing fast.
I watched her cycle through the responses available to her and find none of them sufficient.
"If you do this," she said quietly, "we are done."
"That may already be true."
She picked up her phone from the coffee table.
Her hands were shaking.
"I'm calling my lawyer," she said.
"That's your right."
She walked past me toward the bedroom.
At the doorway she stopped.
"You have no idea," she said, "what I gave up to be here."
"Neither do I," I said.
"That's the problem."
She went in and closed the door.
I stood in the living room for a moment.
Then I went upstairs.
Maya's door was open.
She was at her desk doing homework, headphones around her neck.
She looked up.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
"Not yet," I said.
"But it's going to be."
She looked at me for a moment with those careful eyes of hers.
"Okay," she said.
And turned back to her work.
I went back downstairs.
Vanessa's voice was coming through the bedroom door, low and fast, talking to someone.
I picked up my own phone.
I called a family lawyer I'd used once before, years ago, when Maya's mother passed and there were estate questions to sort through.
His name was Gerald Fitch.
He answered on the third ring.
"Gerald," I said.
"I need an appointment.
Tomorrow if you can."
"Of course," he said.
"Is this urgent?"
I looked at the bedroom door.
May you like
"Yes," I said.
"It is."
