Chapter 2 - The Drive Home
I did not stay for the cake.
I carried Maisie to my car while Daniel followed me down the driveway.
“Claire, wait.”
I opened the back door.
Maisie clung to my neck.
“I want to go home.”
“We’re going home, baby.”
Daniel reached toward her.
She pulled away from him.
That tiny movement changed his face.
“Maisie, Daddy didn’t know Grandma was going to do that.”
She buried her face against me.
I looked at him.
“You were twenty feet away.”
“I thought she was sitting outside because she had a tantrum.”
“With a chain around her ankle?”
“I didn’t see the chain.”
“You didn’t bother checking.”
Judith appeared on the porch.
She still looked offended, as if I were the one ruining everything.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“Claire, please.”
“You asked for a DNA test.”
“I was shocked.”
“You asked for one in front of everyone.”
“My mother said she had evidence.”
I stopped.
“What evidence?”
He hesitated.
That told me there really was something.
“Daniel.”
“She has photographs.”
“Of what?”
“You and Aaron.”
I almost laughed.
Aaron Blake had been my college friend.
He was also married, gay, and living in Seattle with his husband.
“What photographs?”
“Lunches.”
“You mean the lunches where Aaron helped me design your anniversary gift?”
Daniel looked away.
I stared at him.
“Your mother knew exactly what those lunches were.”
“I didn’t know she knew.”
The sentence told me more than Daniel intended.
Judith had been feeding him suspicions privately.
“How long has she been talking to you about this?”
He did not answer.
“Daniel.”
“A few months.”
My chest tightened.
“For months, your mother has been telling you Maisie might not be yours?”
“She noticed things.”
“What things?”
“Maisie doesn’t look like me.”
“She has your smile.”
“She has blue eyes.”
“So does my mother.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It mattered enough for you to doubt your five-year-old daughter.”
He looked toward the porch.
“My mother said my father’s family has dominant brown eyes.”
I almost couldn’t process the stupidity of it.
“That is not how genetics works.”
“I know.”
“No, you obviously don’t.”
Maisie shifted against me.
I stopped arguing.
She had already heard too much.
I placed her in the car and buckled her seat belt.
Then I turned back to Daniel.
“You want a DNA test?”
His face tightened.
“Claire.”
“No.”
“You asked for one.”
“So we’re getting one.”
I stepped closer.
“But when that test says exactly what I know it will say, you and your mother are going to explain to our daughter why you doubted she belonged to her own family.”
Daniel looked ashamed.
I thought that would be the hardest part.
I was wrong.
Because two days later, the laboratory called me before the official report was even released.
The technician sounded nervous.
“Mrs. Mercer, your daughter’s paternity is conclusive.”
I closed my eyes.
“Daniel is her father?”
“Yes.”
Relief washed through me.
Then the technician continued.
“But we found something else.”
Something in her voice made my relief disappear.
“What?”
“There appears to be a significant inconsistency in your husband’s paternal family line.”
I sat down slowly.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
She paused.
“It means the man Daniel Mercer has believed was his biological father for forty years almost certainly wasn’t.”
