Chapter 3 - THE FIRST PERSON HE COULD NO LONGER CONTROL
Daniel insisted Lucas was trying to create trouble.
Emma asked the same question four times.
“What did you promise him?”
Each time, Daniel answered differently.
First, Lucas had been promised reimbursement for travel and medical testing.
Then Daniel claimed Lucas expected a position in his construction company.
Finally, he said Lucas had demanded money after the pregnancy began.
By the time Emma’s parents returned with coffee, Daniel’s explanations no longer resembled one another.
The discharge delay became impossible to hide.
Emma’s mother, Linda, stood beside the bassinet with her purse clutched against her ribs.
“You told us the donor was anonymous.”
Emma looked at Daniel. “That’s what I believed at first.”
Her father moved toward the window, pressing two fingers against his forehead.
Linda stared at my brother. “Who is this man?”
“A former friend.”
“Former?”
Daniel’s voice sharpened. “Can everyone stop acting like I kidnapped somebody?”
The baby startled at the sound.
Emma lifted him immediately.
That small movement changed the room.
She turned her body away from Daniel and placed herself between him and the child.
Daniel saw it.
So did I.
Denise arranged for the hospital’s legal department to review the paperwork the next morning. Until then, Emma and the baby would remain in the maternity unit.
Daniel left to “find Lucas.”
I followed him into the parking garage.
“You aren’t going anywhere until you tell me what happened to the money.”
He unlocked his truck.
“It’s none of your business.”
“It became my business when you lied to get it.”
He opened the driver’s door.
I put my hand against it.
“You used Mom’s name.”
Daniel’s face hardened. “You got the house because you were executor. You got to decide when it sold, which realtor we used, how the furniture was divided. Don’t act like giving me some of the money made you a saint.”
“We divided everything evenly.”
“You always got to be the responsible one.”
“That isn’t what this is about.”
“It’s what everything is about with you.”
He pulled the door from my hand and drove away.
For the first time since the baby was born, I stopped trying to protect him.
I returned home and opened the estate records stored in my office closet. The transfer to Daniel had been marked FERTILITY TREATMENT in my spreadsheet.
I called the bank and reviewed the account activity Daniel had shown me when he asked for help. He had forgotten that he once added me as an authorized signer during a business loan application.
The money had arrived on January 8.
Two days later, eighteen thousand dollars went to Reed Auto Restoration.
Another ten thousand covered delinquent payroll taxes for Daniel’s company.
The remaining two thousand paid a credit-card balance.
Not one dollar went to a fertility clinic.
I printed the records and drove to the address attached to Reed Auto Restoration.
The shop stood near the old industrial blocks east of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. A rust-red Chevrolet sat beneath a partially open bay door.
A man in a gray work shirt emerged from under the hood.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and close to Daniel’s age.
When he saw me, he dropped the wrench in his hand.
For half a second, I thought he recognized my car.
Then I realized he recognized me.
“You’re Rachel,” he said.
I had never met him.
“How do you know who I am?”
Lucas wiped his hands on a shop rag. His eyes were gray, almost silver.
Our father’s eyes.
“I’ve known what you look like since I was twenty-three.”
He walked into the office and returned with a worn envelope.
On the front, in our father’s handwriting, were the words:
For Lucas, when he’s old enough to understand.
My knees weakened.
Lucas did not offer me a chair.
He did not need to.
I already understood enough to know that Daniel’s secret had started long before Emma’s pregnancy.
“What are you to us?” I asked.
Lucas looked toward the open garage door.
May you like
Then he answered.
“I’m your brother.”
