Chapter 7 — Ask the Child

Eleanor brought the documents the next morning.

She set them on the table beside my bed, then waited while I finished the slow walk back from the bathroom.

I hated how carefully everyone watched me stand.

I hated needing the chair Rachel pulled closer.

But I sat down.

Being angry with my body wouldn’t make it heal faster.

“The estate is in your name,” Eleanor said.

I looked at the first page.

My signature appeared near the bottom.

I remembered signing it at the dining table while Vincent took a call.

He had pointed to the line without interrupting his conversation.

“The whole house?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that?”

“There may have been several reasons. What matters now is what the records establish.”

She moved to the next document.

There were company interests too. Shares in property businesses. A controlling interest in a holding company I had barely heard mentioned.

Some were mine already.

Others remained tied to Vincent.

I looked at the stack.

“He made me useful without telling me.”

Eleanor nodded.

“Now you need to understand what you own.”

We spent an hour going through it.

I asked questions I should have asked when I first signed.

Who could sell.

Who had to approve.

What debt belonged to which business.

Eleanor answered without making me feel foolish for not knowing.

By the end, the estate was no longer just the place where I had lived.

It was something I could dispose of.

That distinction mattered more than I expected.

“What about his interests?” I asked.

“We can propose a settlement transferring them. His attorney will review it.”

“Will he agree?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

Eleanor looked at me.

“He’ll agree if he thinks it keeps a door open.”

“Then be careful what you say.”

“I will.”

She slid a draft across the table.

“No promises about the criminal case. No suggestion that this agreement changes your statement.”

“I understand.”

“And no assets are being hidden. Everything is disclosed.”

I turned the first page.

Vincent’s name sat beside mine.

For so long, seeing them together had made me feel secure.

Now it was a problem to solve.

That afternoon, Rachel returned with my belongings.

She had gone with Eleanor’s assistant and an arranged escort.

My overnight bag was intact.

The passport was still beneath the cardigan.

So was the medical folder.

“Was Vivian there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked whether you were really going to ruin everyone’s life.”

I stared at Rachel.

“What did you tell her?”

“That she should ask you that herself in front of the detective.”

Rachel sat on the edge of the chair.

“She didn’t like it.”

I opened my bag.

The folder smelled faintly of the bedroom wardrobe.

I pulled the papers out.

The procedure record was still there, along with pages I had barely looked at when I first found it.

I read them now.

Instructions.

Follow-up appointments.

A later note about an incomplete confirmation process.

I placed that page beside the procedure date.

Vincent had kept all of it.

He had known there were things left unresolved.

Yet in the study, he had spoken as if the matter were settled beyond question.

I called the clinic number printed at the top.

They would not discuss his medical history with me.

I hadn’t expected them to.

I asked how I could submit a request for records through an attorney, wrote down the answer, and ended the call.

Then I put the folder away.

There were questions I could not settle that afternoon.

There was one thing I could settle.

I would never again live in the same house as him.

The meeting took place several days later, after I was discharged into a private recovery residence.

Rachel drove.

Eleanor met us outside.

“Last chance to change your mind,” she said.

“I’m not changing it.”

“That’s fine. I want you to know you can.”

I looked at the building.

Then I went inside.

The room was smaller than I expected.

A plain table.

Four chairs.

A door with a narrow window.

Nothing Vincent could use to make himself seem important.

His attorney stood when we entered.

Vincent stood too.

For a moment, I barely recognized him.

His shirt hung loose at the collar. There was stubble along his jaw. A bruise marked one knuckle.

He looked at my face first.

Then lower.

He stopped there.

“Claire.”

I sat beside Eleanor.

He took a step around the table.

His attorney caught his arm.

“Sit down, Vincent.”

“I just want to—”

“Sit.”

Vincent obeyed.

That, more than his appearance, showed me how much had changed.

Eleanor opened the settlement folder.

“We’re here because Claire agreed to discuss the dissolution of the marriage and the related financial arrangements.”

Vincent didn’t look at her.

“I’m sorry.”

I kept my hands in my lap.

“I heard you.”

“No. You don’t understand.”

“I understand the words.”

He rubbed his palms together.

“Vivian got into my head. I was angry about what happened when she left. I thought—”

“You thought I deserved it.”

His mouth closed.

Then he shook his head.

“I never wanted this.”

“What did you want?”

He looked toward his attorney.

The man said nothing.

I leaned forward slightly.

“What outcome were you expecting when you told them to wait for the baby’s test?”

“Claire.”

“You had months to decide. Tell me.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“For months?”

He pressed his hand against his eyes.

“I know how it sounds.”

“No. You know how it looks now that other people can see it.”

He lowered his hand.

There were tears on his face.

Once, I would have reached for him before asking why.

I watched him wipe them away.

“When you called through the door,” he said, “I thought you were upset.”

“I was bleeding.”

“I didn’t know how serious—”

“I told you.”

He stared at the table.

“You told me to keep my voice down.”

His attorney shifted in his chair.

Vincent looked up again.

“I’ll make it right.”

“How?”

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

I waited.

For once, I let him sit inside a silence he couldn’t order me to fill.

“I’ll take care of you,” he finally said.

“You were supposed to do that already.”

He reached across the table.

I moved my hand before he could touch it.

“I need you to listen,” he said. “Vivian lied to me.”

“You let men into our bedroom.”

“I know.”

“You made a schedule.”

“I know.”

“You watched Dominic take me away.”

His breathing changed.

“Please stop.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I took the medical papers from my bag.

“You kept these.”

I laid the procedure record down first.

His eyes fixed on it.

Then I added the later page.

He picked it up.

“What is this?”

“You tell me.”

He read it twice.

“The procedure was done,” he said.

“That isn’t the same as the certainty you claimed.”

He looked between the pages.

His attorney leaned closer.

“Vincent?”

My husband didn’t answer him.

I took out the smaller envelope I had kept separate from Eleanor’s settlement folder.

He watched it come out of my bag.

“What else do you have?”

I placed the report in front of him.

He looked at the heading.

Then the names.

Then the conclusion.

“No.”

His voice was so quiet I almost missed it.

He turned the page as though there might be another answer on the back.

“There’s been a mistake.”

I said nothing.

He looked at me.

“Claire.”

I held his gaze.

The report trembled between his fingers.

“Tell me this isn’t what it says.”

I thought of his hand against my stomach while everyone watched.

His friends laughing in the study.

The nursery he would never enter with a child in his arms.

“Ask the baby whether you should be forgiven,” I said.

His chair scraped backward.

Eleanor put her hand near my folder, ready to end the meeting.

I didn’t move.

Vincent looked down at the report one last time.

Then he looked at me with an expression I had never seen on his face.

Not anger.

Not disbelief.

Fear.

“The baby,” he whispered. “Was it—”

I answered before he could finish.

“The baby was yours.”