Chapter 6 - THE FOURTH CHILD
Emily did not tell David at the park.
The afternoon belonged to the triplets.
Whatever new disaster had surfaced could wait two hours.
David pushed Ellie on the swing.
He helped Ben assemble a tiny solar-powered car Emily had allowed him to bring.
He sat beside Owen on the grass and drew a terrible picture of a duck.
Owen stared at it.
“That looks like a potato.”
David laughed.
“It’s definitely a duck.”
“It has no wings.”
“I forgot them.”
“Ducks need wings.”
“I’ve been informed.”
Emily watched from a bench.
Something painful and complicated moved inside her.
This was what she had wanted six years earlier.
Not the limousine.
Not the successful company.
Not revenge.
This.
A father laughing with his children in a park.
But wanting something in the past did not mean she had to trust it in the present.
When the visit ended, David crouched in front of the triplets.
“Can I see you again?”
Ellie nodded immediately.
Ben looked at Emily.
Owen asked, “Will there be marshmallows?”
David smiled.
“I can arrange that.”
Emily said, “We’ll talk about next Saturday.”
The children walked toward her car.
David stayed behind.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I know you didn’t have to do this.”
“No. I didn’t.”
He nodded.
Emily hesitated.
Then she said, “Nathan called.”
David’s face changed.
“The results?”
“You’re their biological father.”
He closed his eyes.
His shoulders dropped.
The reaction was almost relief.
When he opened his eyes, they were wet.
“All three?”
“Yes.”
He laughed softly.
“Okay.”
Emily wished the conversation could end there.
It couldn’t.
“There’s something else.”
His smile disappeared.
“What?”
“The lab found a close familial match already in their system.”
David frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“They think you have another biological child.”
He stared at her.
“That’s impossible.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Emily said nothing.
His certainty weakened.
He looked away.
“Vanessa.”
Emily already knew.
“When were you together?”
“About ten months.”
“After we separated?”
David’s face answered before his words.
“Some of it.”
Emily looked toward her children.
She did not want to reopen that wound.
“Could she have had a baby?”
“She would have told me.”
Emily gave him a look.
He almost laughed at the absurdity.
“Right.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I don’t know.”
“Ask Nathan for the report.”
“Who is the match?”
“Privacy laws prevent the lab from identifying them without proper authorization.”
David nodded slowly.
Then he said, “I’ll call Vanessa.”
He did.
Vanessa arrived at his apartment that evening.
For the first time since his canceled wedding, David was alone in the place where he had planned to begin married life.
Olivia’s clothes were gone.
Her makeup had disappeared from the bathroom.
The framed engagement photograph on the mantel had been removed.
A pale rectangle remained where it had stood.
Vanessa refused wine.
That was how David knew something was wrong.
She stood beside the window.
“How much do you know?”
David’s chest tightened.
“So it’s true.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“Probably.”
“You had my child?”
“I had a child.”
“And you never told me?”
She turned around.
The anger in her face shocked him.
“You do not get to say that sentence to me today.”
“Why not?”
“Because somewhere across town Emily Carter could say the exact same thing.”
“That’s different!”
“No.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“It really isn’t.”
David stared.
“Boy or girl?”
“A girl.”
“How old?”
“Six.”
His heart began pounding.
“Name?”
“Clara.”
David sat down.
Four children.
He had four children.
Three he had unknowingly ignored.
One Vanessa had deliberately hidden.
“Why?”
Vanessa crossed her arms.
“Because by the time I realized I was pregnant, our relationship was over.”
“You still should have told me.”
“I planned to.”
“What happened?”
“You.”
He stared.
Vanessa continued.
“The week I found out, my father told you he wasn’t giving you the vice-president position you wanted.”
David remembered.
He had been furious.
He had accused Vanessa of not advocating for him.
“I came to your office that night.”
David’s stomach sank.
“You were drunk.”
He remembered pieces.
“I told you I wanted space.”
“You told me I was useless if my family connections couldn’t help you.”
He looked away.
“You said you should have stayed married to Emily until you got what you needed from her too.”
David closed his eyes.
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“I do.”
Vanessa’s voice trembled.
“I stood outside your office bathroom with a positive pregnancy test in my purse.”
He looked up.
“I went home.”
She took a breath.
“And I decided I would tell you once you calmed down.”
“What changed?”
“Two days later, Emily called.”
David froze.
“What?”
“She called my father’s office.”
Vanessa nodded.
“She was looking for you.”
“Pregnant?”
“Yes.”
David went pale.
Vanessa continued.
“I answered because Dad was in a meeting.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked whether you were there. Then she started crying.”
Vanessa looked ashamed.
“She told me she was pregnant with triplets.”
David stopped breathing.
“You knew?”
“Not for long.”
“You knew!”
“Yes!”
“You knew I had children!”
“I knew she said she was pregnant.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I thought you knew!”
David stared.
Vanessa shook her head.
“You had already told me she would probably fake a pregnancy to get money.”
“That was stupid.”
“I know.”
“What did you say to her?”
Vanessa looked down.
David stood.
“What did you say?”
“I told her you weren’t there.”
“Anything else?”
She hesitated.
David’s voice sharpened.
“Vanessa.”
“I told her you had moved on.”
He stared.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
“What else?”
Vanessa’s eyes filled.
“I told her not to embarrass herself.”
David’s face tightened.
“I said you were finally happy and she should stop trying to pull you backward.”
David sank into the chair again.
The two people most responsible for Emily’s isolation sat facing each other.
Neither looked proud.
Vanessa continued.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I kept thinking about that phone call.”
David whispered, “So you punished me.”
“At first? Maybe.”
“And Clara?”
“She wasn’t punishment.”
“Does she know about me?”
Vanessa nodded.
“She knows your name.”
His head lifted.
“She’s seen pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Has she asked?”
“Of course.”
“What do you tell her?”
Vanessa’s tears finally fell.
“That I made a complicated decision.”
David laughed bitterly.
“That’s kinder than what I deserved.”
“She doesn’t need to carry my anger.”
That sentence sounded like Emily.
David covered his face.
For years he had bragged that he had escaped emotional women, needy women, complicated women.
Now he was discovering that those women had spent years protecting children from the consequences of knowing him.
“Can I meet her?”
Vanessa hesitated.
“You’re asking me two days after your wedding collapsed.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“That doesn’t automatically make meeting you good for her.”
David looked up.
“Emily said the same thing.”
“Emily is right.”
He gave a hollow laugh.
“That’s becoming a theme.”
Vanessa sat across from him.
“I heard you met the triplets today.”
“How?”
“Bellhaven has approximately nine people in it when there’s gossip.”
Despite himself, David smiled.
“It went okay.”
“Did they like you?”
“Ellie did.”
“And the boys?”
“Ben interviewed me.”
Vanessa smiled.
“Owen gave me a marshmallow.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think I passed some kind of test.”
Then David’s expression faded.
“I missed everything.”
Vanessa was quiet.
“First birthdays. First words. Kindergarten.”
He looked around the empty apartment.
“I spent years chasing promotions because I thought that was how you proved you mattered.”
Vanessa did not interrupt.
“I bought watches, cars, a condo. Then a bigger condo.”
He laughed once.
“I invited Emily to my wedding because I wanted her to see all of it.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
He stopped.
The answer embarrassed him now.
“Because if she looked impressed, I would know I won.”
Vanessa stared.
“Won what?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the terrible part.
He truly didn’t.
Vanessa leaned forward.
“You kept fighting a war against being poor long after you stopped being poor.”
David looked at her.
“And you started treating everyone who remembered the old you like the enemy.”
He thought of Emily.
The woman who had loved him when his bank account contained eleven dollars.
The woman who had known his father drank too much.
The woman who had cut his hair in their kitchen because they couldn’t afford a barber before his first interview.
She remembered the version of David he wanted buried.
So he buried her instead.
His phone rang.
Richard Sterling.
David stared at the screen.
Vanessa stood.
“You should answer.”
David did.
“Richard.”
The older man’s voice was cold.
“We finished the preliminary internal audit.”
David’s stomach tightened.
“And?”
“There are irregularities.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Sterling legal found three additional contracts tied to Mercer Creative.”
David stood.
“I didn’t forge anything.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Then what?”
Richard paused.
“The payments didn’t all go to your company.”
David frowned.
“Where did they go?”
“A holding account.”
“What account?”
“One registered under Calvin Ross.”
David froze.
His former assistant.
Richard continued.
“There’s almost four hundred thousand dollars we can’t immediately account for.”
David’s heartbeat thundered.
“I never received four hundred thousand dollars.”
“Then someone may have used your company.”
David looked at Vanessa.
She could see something had changed.
Richard said, “David, whatever happened seven years ago is bigger than Emily’s notebook.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Every financial record you still have.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
David closed his eyes.
“Fine.”
Then Richard added:
“And you should probably call a lawyer.”
The line disconnected.
Vanessa stared.
“What?”
David lowered the phone.
“Calvin.”
“What about him?”
David remembered the letters.
The notarized signature.
The company paperwork.
The money.
Then he remembered something else.
Calvin had disappeared from Bellhaven five years earlier.
No goodbye.
No explanation.
David had assumed he found another job.
Now, for the first time, David wondered whether Calvin had not simply screened Emily from his life.
May you like
Maybe he had been doing something much worse.
And Emily’s forged signature might only be the beginning.
