Chapter 7
The room went silent.
I stared at Mark.
“Your what?”
Mom’s face looked even worse than his.
That told me everything.
She knew.
Of course she knew.
I laughed.
One broken sound.
“Another secret.”
Mark stood slowly.
“Claire.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
He flinched.
“Since before I met your mother.”
I turned toward Mom.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“How old is she?”
Mark swallowed.
“Thirty-four.”
Older than me.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t know where your own daughter is.”
Pain crossed his face.
“No.”
The hypocrisy hit me so hard I almost laughed again.
“You stood in that hallway and asked David where he was for every moment of my life.”
“I know.”
“And you have a daughter you don’t even know how to find?”
Ethan said softly, “Claire.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
Then at Mark.
“Truth. All of it.”
Mark sat down.
For the first time in my life, he looked old.
“My first wife was named Elaine.”
Mom sat beside him.
“They married young.”
Mark nodded.
“We were twenty.”
I crossed my arms.
“And Sarah?”
“Born the next year.”
“Did you leave them?”
“No.”
He looked at the floor.
“Elaine left me.”
“Why?”
Mark took a long breath.
“Because I was an alcoholic.”
The room seemed to shift.
I had never seen Mark drink more than one beer.
He had never kept liquor in the house.
I always thought he just didn’t like alcohol.
“I was bad,” he said.
“How bad?”
“I never hit them.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He nodded.
“Bad enough that Elaine was afraid to leave Sarah alone with me.”
My throat tightened.
“What happened?”
“She filed for divorce.”
His voice shook.
“I promised I would change.”
“Did you?”
“Not immediately.”
That honesty hurt.
“I missed visitation.”
The words echoed.
He had condemned David for missed visits.
Now Mark was confessing the same thing.
“I showed up drunk once.”
Mom squeezed his hand.
Mark kept going.
“Elaine moved away.”
“Where?”
“Arizona.”
“Did you follow?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
I stared at him.
“That’s David’s excuse.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t defend himself.
That made it worse and better at the same time.
“I got sober when Sarah was seven.”
He looked at me.
“The same year I met your mother.”
My heart twisted.
“I tried to find her.”
“How hard?”
“Not hard enough.”
I looked away.
Mark’s voice broke.
“I sent letters. Most came back.”
“Did you go to Arizona?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“Elaine refused to let me see Sarah.”
“So you stopped?”
“No. But I listened to lawyers who told me pushing could hurt Sarah more.”
“You paid child support?”
“Every month.”
“That doesn’t make you a father.”
“I know.”
His eyes filled.
“I know.”
That silenced me.
Detective Alvarez stepped back into the conversation.
“Does Sarah have any reason to harm you?”
Mark looked horrified.
“No.”
“Does she know about Claire?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“She contacted me twelve years ago.”
My pulse jumped.
“What?”
Mark nodded.
“She was twenty-two.”
“What did she want?”
“To meet.”
“And?”
He looked at Mom.
My mother closed her eyes.
I knew before he spoke.
“You said no.”
Mark whispered, “Yes.”
My anger exploded.
“Why?”
“Because your mother had just been diagnosed—”
Mom interrupted.
“No.”
Mark looked at her.
She shook her head.
“Don’t blame my cancer.”
I froze.
Mom had been treated for breast cancer when I was eighteen.
She had survived.
Barely.
Mom looked at me.
“I asked him not to meet Sarah.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
Her voice broke.
“Because I was terrified.”
“Of his daughter?”
“Of losing him.”
I couldn’t understand.
She wiped her eyes.
“I was sick. I was scared. Claire had just left for college. Mark was taking care of me.”
She looked at him.
“And suddenly his first daughter appeared.”
“So you told him to abandon her again.”
Mom flinched.
“Yes.”
I turned toward Mark.
“And you did it.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
Again.
That made the betrayal cleaner.
Harder to fight.
“What did you tell her?”
Mark’s voice became small.
“That it wasn’t a good time.”
I closed my eyes.
“What happened after?”
“She wrote back.”
“What did she say?”
“I kept the letter.”
“Of course you did.”
He looked at me.
“I deserved that.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead I said, “What did the letter say?”
Mark’s eyes filled.
“She said there would never be a good time for me.”
Silence.
“And that she hoped the family I chose was worth the daughter I didn’t.”
My breath caught.
Because I was that family.
I had spent years believing Mark chose me.
I just hadn’t understood what that choice cost someone else.
“Did she contact you again?”
“No.”
“Did you try?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After your mother recovered.”
“So two years later.”
“Yes.”
“Too late.”
“Yes.”
Mark looked destroyed.
I wanted to comfort him.
I also wanted to hit him.
Both feelings existed at once.
Detective Alvarez said, “Do you have Sarah’s full legal name?”
“Sarah Henderson Cole. At least that was her married name when she wrote.”
The detective wrote it down.
“What about the text?”
Mark looked at the message again.
ASK MARK ABOUT SARAH.
“I don’t know who sent it.”
“Could Sarah know where you are today?”
“The wedding website was public.”
Ethan swore quietly.
I felt sick.
Everything about my wedding had been public.
Venue.
Date.
Hotel.
Registry.
Photos.
Names.
We had made it easy.
Detective Alvarez’s phone rang.
She stepped outside.
I looked at Mark.
“You said you were my father.”
“I am.”
“How can you say that after abandoning your own daughter?”
His face crumpled.
“I don’t have a good answer.”
“Try.”
He stared at his hands.
“You were seven when I met you.”
His voice shook.
“You hated peas.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“You hated peas.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“You had nightmares about your mother disappearing.”
He swallowed.
“You asked me to sit outside your room until you fell asleep.”
My throat tightened.
“Sarah was already gone.”
He looked at me.
“And every time you needed me, I got another chance to be the father I had failed to be.”
That hurt in a completely different way.
“So I was your replacement.”
“No.”
“Wasn’t I?”
“Never.”
“You just said—”
“You gave me another chance at fatherhood.”
He stood.
“But you were never anyone’s replacement.”
His voice cracked.
“I loved Sarah first.”
He pressed a hand to his chest.
“And I failed her.”
Then he looked at me.
“I loved you too.”
Tears fell.
“And loving you did not erase what I did to her.”
Nobody spoke.
For the first time that day, Mark stopped looking like the hero.
He looked human.
Flawed.
Ashamed.
Capable of hurting someone and still loving someone else.
That was harder than having a villain.
Villains were easy.
People were complicated.
Detective Alvarez returned.
“We located Sarah.”
Mark stopped breathing.
“What?”
“She lives in Charlotte.”
Less than two hours away.
Mark gripped the back of a chair.
“Is she—”
“She’s alive.”
Relief flooded his face.
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
The detective looked at me.
“She denies sending the messages.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Mark asked, “Did she know about the wedding?”
“Yes.”
His face changed.
“How?”
“She received an invitation.”
I turned toward Mom.
She looked confused.
“We didn’t send one.”
Detective Alvarez nodded.
“Sarah said the invitation arrived six weeks ago.”
My heart pounded.
“Who sent it?”
“There was no return address.”
Ethan leaned forward.
“Six weeks ago is when David hired the investigator.”
Alvarez nodded.
“Exactly.”
I whispered, “David knew about Sarah.”
Mark’s expression hardened.
“He could have found her.”
“But why?”
Detective Alvarez didn’t answer.
Then my phone buzzed again.
Another unknown message.
This one contained a photograph.
An old photograph.
Mark at maybe twenty-five.
A little girl beside him.
Sarah.
Someone had written across the bottom:
HE ABANDONS DAUGHTERS TOO.
Mark stared at it.
Then another photo arrived.
A young woman.
Same eyes.
Same smile.
Sarah as an adult.
Standing beside a man I recognized.
My blood turned cold.
David.
The timestamp was six weeks earlier.
Mark whispered, “No.”
I enlarged the photograph.
David had his arm around Sarah’s shoulders.
They were sitting in a restaurant.
Both looking at the camera.
Underneath was a message.
YOU THINK DAVID FOUND YOU BY ACCIDENT?
Another followed.
SARAH FOUND HIM FIRST.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown caller.
Detective Alvarez gestured for me to answer and put it on speaker.
I did.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice said,
“Claire?”
I looked at Mark.
His face was white.
“Yes?”
“My name is Sarah.”
Mark stopped breathing.
She continued.
“I’m sorry for everything that happened today.”
Her voice trembled.
“But David lied to me too.”
I swallowed.
“About what?”
A long pause.
May you like
Then she said,
“He told me Mark killed my mother.”
