Chapter 5 - Victor Mercer
Victor Mercer was sixty-three and lived outside Asheville.
Nina found him.
Daniel wrote first.
No response.
Then again.
Nothing.
Finally Daniel sent a photograph of the paternity report.
Three days later, an email arrived.
Seven words.
Ask Cornelius who drove us to St. Agnes.
Daniel read it twice.
Then called.
Victor answered.
Neither man spoke for several seconds.
Finally Daniel said:
“Are you my father?”
Victor exhaled.
“That question has more than one answer.”
“Biologically.”
“Yes.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
I sat across the room.
He wanted the call private but wanted me nearby.
“Did you sleep with my mother?”
“No.”
Immediate.
“Then how?”
Another pause.
“Your dad needs to tell you.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I made a promise to Evelyn.”
“She’s dead.”
“I know.”
“And Cornelius chained my son to a patio post because he said I wasn’t really his.”
Silence.
Then Victor cursed quietly.
“What?”
Daniel repeated it.
Victor’s voice changed.
Not anger exactly.
Grief with somewhere to go.
“He did what?”
“Tell me.”
Victor finally said:
“You were wanted.”
Daniel’s face crumpled.
“What does that mean?”
“You were not an affair.”
“Then what was I?”
“A child your parents spent four years trying to have.”
Daniel stopped breathing normally.
Victor continued.
“Cornelius couldn’t have biological children.”
Daniel looked at me.
Victor said:
“Your mother asked me to help.”
“Help how?”
“You know how.”
Daniel stared at the photograph from St. Agnes.
“No.”
“I donated.”
The word landed quietly.
Donated.
Not affair.
Not betrayal.
Not secret lover.
Victor continued:
“Cornelius drove us to the clinic.”
Daniel stood so suddenly his chair tipped backward.
“What?”
“He agreed.”
“No.”
“Daniel—”
“He agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did he test me eight years later?”
Victor went silent.
“I don’t know everything about that year.”
“You knew there was a test?”
“Afterward.”
“What happened?”
“Cornelius called me drunk.”
Victor’s voice hardened.
“He said the result proved you were never really his.”
Daniel whispered:
“But he knew.”
“Yes.”
“He always knew.”
“Yes.”
The conversation ended shortly afterward.
Not because there was nothing left.
Because Daniel could not absorb another sentence.
The affair story was gone.
Something uglier had taken its place.
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Cornelius had not discovered Daniel wasn’t biologically his.
He had helped create him that way.
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