Chapter 2 - The Question No One Could Answer for Him

For a second, Marcus looked as if Noah had asked him to explain the weather.

His lips moved. Nothing came out.

Noah waited with the patience of a child who had learned that adults sometimes needed more time than children did to say something true.

I stepped beside him before the silence could become an answer.

“Yes,” I said. “Marcus is your father.”

A sound moved through the foyer—not quite a gasp, more like twelve people remembering how to breathe at once.

Marcus stared at me. “You told them?”

“I told them their father left before he knew them.”

His face tightened.

“That is what happened,” I added. “I never told them you were dead. I never told them you hated them. I never made them carry the story you told about me.”

Noah’s shoulders lifted beneath his navy coat. “So you didn’t know there were four of us?”

Marcus finally looked at him.

“No,” he said.

One word. At least it was honest.

Ethan stepped closer to his brother, studying Marcus with open curiosity instead of fear. Sophia held Olivia’s hand so tightly their knuckles had gone pale.

Claire—the blonde woman in red—removed her hand from Marcus’s sleeve.

I did not know her name yet, but I knew the expression on her face. It was the look of someone discovering that the room she had entered was built on a floor plan no one had shown her.

Patricia recovered first.

“This is absurd,” she said.

Noah turned toward her.

Children have a special way of making cruelty look ridiculous simply by taking it literally.

“What part?” he asked.

Patricia blinked.

“The part where we’re his kids,” Ethan supplied, “or the part where Mom said she tried to tell you?”

“Ethan,” I said quietly.

He glanced at me. “What? She said no like she was answering something.”

Marcus looked at his mother.

Patricia’s face had gone rigid. “We are not discussing private family matters in the foyer.”

I almost admired the instinct. Eight years had passed and she still believed changing the room could change the truth.

“I’m happy to leave,” I said. “We came because Marcus invited me. The children did not come here to be interrogated.”

Marcus’s attention snapped back to me. “You can’t leave.”

The words were too sharp.

Olivia flinched.

Marcus saw it immediately.

He lowered his voice. “I mean—please. Don’t leave yet.”

I rested a hand against Olivia’s back. “That depends on what happens next.”

The woman in red stepped away from Marcus and came toward me.

“I’m Claire Dalton,” she said. Her voice was controlled, but not cold. “I’m—”

Her gaze fell to the black velvet box on the floor.

“Apparently I’m the person who was about to be proposed to.”

Marcus closed his eyes for half a second.

Claire gave him a look that could have cut glass, then turned back to me.

“Did you know?”

“No.”

“Did you come here to stop it?”

“No.”

That answer seemed to matter to her.

I nodded toward Marcus. “I didn’t know there was anything to stop.”

Patricia found her voice again. “Claire, you do not need to entertain this.”

Claire looked over her shoulder. “Four children walked into your house looking exactly like your son. I think ‘entertain’ stopped being the relevant word.”

A few relatives suddenly found the chandelier fascinating.

Marcus bent and picked up the ring box. He did not open it. He closed his fist around it and shoved it into his pocket.

Then he faced me.

“Are they mine?”

There it was.

Not denial. Not exactly.

But not belief either.

Eight years earlier, that question would have broken me.

Now it only made me tired.

“You’re allowed to want certainty,” I said. “But choose your next words carefully. They can hear you.”

His gaze moved over the four children.

“I’m not accusing you.”

“You did once.”

His jaw flexed.

Noah looked between us. “Did you think Mom was lying?”

Marcus did not answer quickly enough.

Noah’s expression changed.

I had spent years trying to protect the children from the ugliest version of their beginning. I had always known that truth, once opened, would not fit neatly back into its box.

Marcus crouched so he was closer to Noah’s height.

“Yes,” he said.

Patricia inhaled sharply. “Marcus—”

He raised a hand without looking at her.

“I thought your mother was lying,” he continued. “I was wrong to decide that before I knew the facts.”

“Why?”

The question came from Sophia.

Her voice was softer than Noah’s, but it hit harder.

Marcus looked at her.

“I was angry. Your mother and I had been having problems. I didn’t trust her.”

“That’s not a reason,” Sophia said.

No one corrected her.

Marcus swallowed. “No. It isn’t.”

Something in my chest shifted, not toward forgiveness, but toward attention.

Eight years ago Marcus had defended himself with certainty. Now, for the first time I could remember, he had let an answer make him look bad because it was true.

That did not erase anything.

But it was different.

Ethan pointed toward the open front doors. “Can we close those? It’s freezing.”

A laugh escaped one of Marcus’s cousins before he could stop it.

The tension cracked just enough for everyone to move again.

The doors were closed. Coats were taken. Someone quietly cleared Patricia’s shattered wineglass from the floor.

I kept the children beside me.

Marcus kept looking at them.

Not staring anymore.

Looking.

He noticed that Noah automatically checked where his sisters were before moving. He noticed Ethan’s fascination with the enormous mechanical clock beside the staircase. He noticed Sophia rubbing Olivia’s hand to warm it.

Eight years of their lives were passing across his face in fragments he could not possibly collect fast enough.

A tall silver-haired man approached from the dining room.

Robert Reynolds. Marcus’s father.

Unlike Patricia, he did not deny what he saw.

He stopped in front of the children, pressed his lips together, and looked at me.

“Kesha.”

“Robert.”

He had never returned my calls because I had never been given his direct number. Patricia had always been the gate between me and the family.

His eyes were wet.

“Are these really—”

“Yes.”

He looked at Patricia.

She stared back at him with a warning I recognized immediately.

Robert’s expression hardened.

“What did you know?”

“Not here,” she said.

“Where would you prefer? Another eight years from now?”

Marcus stood.

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

Robert looked from his son to his wife. “I’m asking a simple question.”

Patricia’s chin lifted. “Kesha called me after the separation. She made claims. I did not believe them.”

Marcus went still.

I watched his face carefully.

“You spoke to her?” he asked.

Patricia’s eyes flickered.

There was the first crack.

“I told you she was trying to create drama.”

“No. You told me she was asking for money.”

I stared at Marcus.

“I never asked her for money.”

He looked at me.

I held his gaze.

“Not once.”

Claire exhaled softly behind him.

Marcus turned back to his mother. “You said she wanted a settlement before the divorce was final.”

“She was pregnant,” Patricia said. “Or claimed to be. What did you expect me to assume?”

“That you would tell me exactly what she said.”

Patricia looked offended by the idea.

“I was protecting you.”

“No,” Robert said. “You were deciding what he was allowed to know.”

The children were listening.

Too much.

I touched Noah’s shoulder. “We’re going to the sitting room.”

Marcus took a step toward us.

“No. Wait. Kesha, I need to understand this.”

“And I need to take care of four children who just learned the man standing in front of them is their father.”

The words stopped him.

“You have questions,” I said. “So do they. Their questions come first.”

For once, Marcus did not argue.

I led the children into a smaller room off the foyer, where a fire burned behind a glass screen and a Christmas tree stood covered in white lights.

Noah sat on the edge of a sofa.

Ethan remained standing.

Sophia and Olivia climbed beside me.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Then Olivia whispered, “Does he want us?”

My throat closed.

I had prepared for anger.

I had prepared for accusation.

I had not prepared for that.

I drew her against me.

“He doesn’t know you yet,” I said. “Wanting to know you is something he has to prove with what he does next.”

Noah frowned. “That sounds like a business answer.”

“It’s a mom answer.”

“It sounds like both.”

Despite everything, I smiled.

Then a quiet knock came at the open doorway.

Marcus stood there alone.

He did not enter.

“I called my attorney,” he said.

My body stiffened.

His eyes caught the reaction.

“Not for custody.”

“Then why?”

“For a paternity test. If you agree.”

Ethan folded his arms. “You still don’t believe her.”

Marcus looked at him.

“I believe I made one terrible decision because I chose certainty over evidence. I’m not going to make another one.”

That was a better answer than I expected.

I looked at the children.

Then back at him.

“We do it through an independent clinic,” I said. “No family doctor. No private lab you own. The results go to both of us at the same time.”

Marcus nodded immediately.

“Agreed.”

“And until then, you do not call yourself their father to them unless they choose that word first.”

Pain crossed his face.

He accepted that too.

“Agreed.”

He started to leave.

“Marcus.”

He turned.

“There’s something else you should know.”

He waited.

“I tried to tell you about the babies after they were born.”

His expression changed.

“I sent photographs. Hospital information. Letters.”

“I never got them.”

“I know.”

The room behind him had gone very quiet.

I looked past him.

Patricia stood at the far end of the hallway.

May you like

[COMPLETED] “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DRESS! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OLD SEAM...

[COMPLETED] At the Mafia Boss's Engagement Party, I Served His Hungry So...

[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Tried to Dismiss His Father’s Loyal...

She had heard every word.

And for the first time that day, she looked afraid.