Chapter 4
The DNA test results came five days later.
The envelope was thick, plain white, sitting on my front porch when I got home from Liam’s first doctor’s appointment.
My hands shook so bad I almost dropped the keys getting the door open.
I laid Liam in his bouncer in the living room and tore the envelope open.
My eyes skipped straight to the final line.
Probability of paternity: 99.97%.
Liam was Mark’s.
Of course he was.
I’d never cheated on him.
Not once.
But instead of relief, all I felt was white-hot rage.
Mark had thrown away our marriage, our family, over a lie.
He’d looked at our newborn son and called him a stranger, because someone had whispered poison in his ear.
I grabbed the envelope, strapped Liam into his car seat, and drove straight to Mark’s hotel.
I didn’t call first.
I banged on his door so hard my knuckles stung.
It took a full minute for him to open it.
His eyes were red, his face unshaven, and behind him, sitting on the couch with a beer in his hand, was Jake.
Jake smirked when he saw me standing there, the envelope clutched in my hand.
“Told you not to open that, Mark,” he said, leaning back, like he was enjoying this. “She cheated. You don’t need proof to know it.”
Mark didn’t look at me.
He stared at the floor, his jaw tight.
I stepped past him, slammed the door shut, and threw the envelope hard at Mark’s chest.
“Open it,” I said, my voice shaking with anger. “Now.”
Mark fumbled with the envelope, his hands shaking.
He pulled the papers out, his eyes scanning the page fast.
His face went white.
Then red.
He looked up at Jake, his voice cracking.
“You said you saw her,” he whispered. “You said you saw her with another guy at the grocery store, that she was sneaking around. You said—”
“I lied,” Jake said, cutting him off, standing up, the smirk gone from his face, replaced by cold anger. “Of course I lied. I followed her for three months. She never even looked at another man. But it was too easy to make you doubt her. You’ve always been so weak, so desperate for someone to tell you what to think.”
Mark stepped toward him, his fists clenched.
“Why?” he yelled. “Why would you do that? I thought you were my brother.”
Jake laughed, a sharp, bitter sound.
“Ask your mother.”
Before either of us could say another word, the hotel door burst open.
Eleanor stood there, her face streaked with tears, her chest heaving like she’d run all the way up the stairs.
She looked straight at Jake, and her whole body crumpled.
“I’m your mother,” she sobbed.
The room went dead silent.
Mark’s head snapped between Eleanor and Jake, his eyes wide with shock.
Jake’s face went pale, all the anger draining out of him, leaving just a lost, hurt kid standing there.
I held onto the doorframe, my legs shaking, because I’d known.
I’d known the secret.
May you like
But hearing her say it out loud made it real.
And I had no idea how any of us were going to survive it.
