“This conversation is not happening in front of the children,” I said.
Marcus’s father, Harold, appeared from the dining room doorway. He looked thinner than I remembered, his silver hair combed carefully, his Christmas sweater slightly crooked at the collar. He stared at the children, then at me, and his expression held something I had not expected.
Shame.
“Kesha,” he said quietly. “There’s a sitting room down the hall. The children can have cocoa there.”
“No,” Ethan said immediately.
I looked down.
His small jaw had tightened. That same jaw. Marcus’s jaw. “We came with Mom.”
“And you’re staying with me,” I assured him. “But grown-up conversations can be boring.”
Sophia whispered, “Or scary.”
I knelt in front of them, smoothing Olivia’s coat sleeve, brushing snow from Noah’s hair. “Nothing scary is going to happen. You are safe. You are loved. And we’re only staying as long as we choose to stay.”
Noah studied my face. He was the oldest by six minutes and acted as if that gave him responsibility for the others. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
A teenage girl I didn’t recognize stepped forward from behind the Christmas tree. She had Patricia’s eyes and a shy, uncertain smile. “I can take them. I’m Rachel. Their cousin, I guess.”
The words came out awkwardly, but kindly.
Patricia made a faint sound at “cousin,” as if the word had opened another door inside her.
I looked at Rachel. “Thank you.”
The children hesitated, then followed her toward the sitting room. Olivia looked back once at Marcus.
“You didn’t answer,” she said.
Marcus flinched.
When they were gone, the room exhaled.
Celeste turned toward Marcus fully. “I need the truth.”
He ran a hand down his face. “I didn’t know.”
I almost laughed, but there was no humor left in me. “You chose not to know.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said, my voice steady. “What wasn’t fair was changing your number after I sent you the first ultrasound. What wasn’t fair was having your lawyer tell mine you wanted no further contact. What wasn’t fair was calling me a liar before a doctor ever said a word.”
Patricia covered her mouth.
Marcus looked at his mother, then back at me. “I never got an ultrasound.”
The room went still again.
I stared at him. “What?”
“I never got one,” he said. “I got your voicemail. I got the message saying you were pregnant. I thought—”
“You thought I invented four children?” I asked.
“No. Back then I thought you invented one.”
Celeste’s eyes closed briefly.
Harold stepped forward. “Marcus.”
His tone held a warning.
I turned toward Harold. Something in his face made a cold thread pull through me. “What do you know?”
He looked at Patricia.
Patricia wouldn’t meet my eyes.
My heartbeat changed.
Eight years of carefully sealed pain shifted beneath my ribs. I had come prepared for Marcus’s shock, for embarrassment, for apologies that came too late, for questions my children deserved answers to. I had not come prepared for the feeling that the story I knew might not be complete.
“Patricia,” I said.
She looked older now. Not because of wrinkles or gray hair, but because guilt has a way of aging the eyes before the face.
“I thought I was protecting him,” she whispered.
Celeste stepped back as if she needed distance from all of us.
Marcus stared at his mother. “Protecting me from what?”
Patricia’s hands shook. “From making the same mistake twice.”
“Twice?” I asked.
Harold said her name again, softer this time, but she lifted a hand to stop him.
“No. It’s Christmas. And those children are in my house, and they should have been in my life. No more pretending.”
