I turned to Ethan.
“And Lily? Does she know who you are?”
He nodded.
“She’s always known I’m her father. From the first day.”
I swallowed. “And me? Does she know who I am?”
Ethan looked miserable.
“Claire,” he said. “Lily’s known about you for years.”
“What exactly did you tell her about me?”
Ethan rubbed his forehead.
“That you’re the woman I love,” he said. “She’s wanted to get to know you better for a long time. She asks about you every single day. ‘Is Claire coming? Does Claire like horses? What’s Claire’s favorite color?’”
My throat closed up.
“Then why didn’t she ever say anything to me?” I said. “Why didn’t she ever call him Daddy in front of me?”
Dad cleared his throat.
“Because I asked her not to,” he said.
I stared at him.
“You asked a seven-year-old to lie for you?”
“I told her we were planning a surprise for you!” Dad said. “A big special surprise. And that it would be ruined if she called Ethan Daddy when you were around.”
“A surprise? Dad, she’s a child!”
Then I remembered a family dinner last summer. Lily had been there. She’d asked Dad, out of nowhere, why Ethan wasn’t there that night. Where’s… and then she’d stopped, and looked at me, and said Ethan instead.
Dad had changed the subject immediately. He’d started talking about the weather. I’d thought it was odd. I’d forgotten about it by dessert.
Now I understood.
She’d almost said Daddy.
Ethan lowered his head.
“She asked me once,” he said quietly. “Why you didn’t know I was her dad.”
I looked at him. “What did you say?”
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was so quiet I could barely hear it.
“She asked me if I was ashamed of her.”
My heart broke right there in my father’s living room.
“And what did you tell her?” I whispered.
“That I was proud of her,” Ethan said. “That I was the proudest dad in the world. That I wasn’t ashamed of her at all.” He swallowed. “That I was just scared of losing you.”
I shook my head slowly.
“And now,” I said, “you might lose me because you lied.”
“Claire, please…”
“No, Ethan. You made your daughter keep secrets. A seven-year-old girl who just lost her mother. You made her think she was something to hide.” My voice cracked. “And you made me feel like I wasn’t worth marrying. For three years. I cried in the bathroom at Christmas. Did you know that? I thought there was something wrong with me.”
“There was never anything wrong with you,” Ethan said. “Never.”
“Then why?”
That’s when Dad said it.
He sat down heavily on the arm of the couch, next to the red-haired doll. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Because of me,” he said. “Because I made him wait. It was my idea, Claire. All of it. Not his. He wanted to tell you that very first night. I stopped him.”
“Why?”
Dad looked up at me.
“Because three years ago,” he said quietly, “was the month you found out you couldn’t have children.”
The room went completely silent.
I sat down on the edge of the coffee table. My legs just gave out.
Three years ago, in October, I’d gone to a specialist because of the pain. The endometriosis I’d had since I was a teenager had gotten worse. After the tests and the ultrasounds and the surgery, the doctor sat me down in her office with the box of tissues already pushed across the desk.
I’m so sorry, Claire. The damage is extensive. It’s very unlikely you’ll ever be able to conceive naturally. And IVF would be… difficult. I’m so sorry.
I’d gone home and lain on the bathroom floor for most of a week.
Ethan had held me. He’d brought me tea. He’d told me it didn’t matter, that he loved me, that we’d figure it out, adopt maybe, or just be the two of us, and that was enough.
He’d said all of that.
And Megan had called him two weeks later.
“You were lying on that bathroom floor,” Dad said. His voice was thick. “I came over every day. You wouldn’t eat. You wouldn’t get dressed. You kept saying, ‘I’ll never be a mother. I’ll never have a baby.’”
I remembered. I remembered all of it.
“And two weeks later,” Dad said, “Ethan came to me white as a ghost and said, ‘Robert, I have a daughter. A woman I dated eight years ago just called. I have a four-year-old daughter.’”
Dad shook his head.
“I couldn’t let him walk into your house and tell you that, kiddo. Not then. Not two weeks after the doctor told you that. I thought it would break you. I thought you’d look at that little girl and see everything you’d lost.” He wiped his eyes. “So I told him to wait. Just a few weeks. Until you were stronger.”
“And then?”
“And then Megan got sicker,” Dad said. “And then she died. And then there was the custody fight. And every time Ethan said, ‘Now, Robert, I have to tell her now,’ I said, ‘Not yet. She’s finally happy again. Not yet.’” He looked at me. “I kept thinking there’d be a right time. A time when it wouldn’t hurt you.”
He shook his head.
“There’s no right time to hurt your own child,” he said. “There’s only the time you tell the truth and the time you don’t. I chose wrong. Over and over. For three years.”
I looked at Ethan.
“And what did you do?” I said. “In the kitchen. Dad said you’d have to tell me what you did. What did you do, Ethan?”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“When Megan first called me,” he said slowly, “I didn’t believe her. I told her she was lying. I told her she was trying to trap me. I said terrible things to her, Claire. I hung up on her. And then I didn’t call her back. For almost three months.”
He opened his eyes. They were wet.
“She called me eleven times. I let it go to voicemail every time. She was dying, and she called me eleven times to tell me about my daughter, and I didn’t pick up. Because I was scared. Because I didn’t want it to be true. Because I’d just found out you couldn’t have kids, and I thought, if this is real, it’ll ruin everything.”
He looked at my father.
“Robert’s the one who made me call her back,” he said. “He found out. He sat me down in this kitchen and told me, ‘Son, if that little girl is yours, and you let her mother die without meeting you, you’ll never forgive yourself.’ He made me take the test. He drove me to the lab.”
Ethan’s voice broke.
“When I finally met Lily, Megan only had eight months left. I lost three of them. Because I was a coward. Lily’s never going to get those three months with her mother and me together. Never.” He put his face in his hands. “That’s what I did, Claire. That’s what I’ve been ashamed of. That’s the other thing I was afraid you’d find out.”
I sat there on the edge of the coffee table for a long time.
I didn’t know what to feel. I felt everything at once. Angry and sad and betrayed and heartbroken. And underneath all of it, something I didn’t want to feel. Understanding. Just a little.
They’d both been trying to protect me.
They’d both done it in the worst possible way.
“Claire?”
A small voice came from the stairs.
We all turned.
Lily was standing on the bottom step in her horse pajamas, clutching the red-haired Christmas doll against her chest. I hadn’t even seen her come down and get it from the couch. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Are you leaving?” she said. “Because of me?”
I immediately got up and went to her. I knelt down on the floor in front of her, right at the bottom of the stairs, on the same spot where I used to sit and tie my shoes as a little girl.
“Oh, honey,” I said. “No. I’m not mad at you. Not at all.”
“But you were shouting.”
“I know. I’m sorry you heard that. I’m upset with the grown-ups. Not with you. Never with you.”
Lily looked down at the doll in her arms. She was petting its red hair.
“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “Lots of times. Like at Christmas. And at Grandpa’s birthday. And when you came over and we made the cupcakes.”
My heart ached.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Grandpa said it was a surprise.” She hesitated. Her chin wobbled. “And I thought… I thought maybe if you knew, you wouldn’t like me anymore.”
I took both her small hands in mine. They were sticky from cookie dough.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I said. “None of this is your fault. None of it. Do you understand me?”
She nodded slowly.
“But Daddy loves you,” she said.
“I know he does.”
“And I like you too,” Lily said. “A lot. You’re nice. And you got me Ruby.” She held up the doll. “Ruby’s my favorite.”
I pulled her into my arms.
“I like you too, Lily,” I said into her curly hair. “Very much.”
She hugged me so tightly. She smelled like chocolate chip cookies and baby shampoo.
When she finally let go, I stood up and looked at Ethan.
“I need time, Ethan,” I said. “I’m not coming home tonight.”
He nodded. He didn’t argue.
Lily tugged on my sleeve. I knelt down beside her again.
“Can we make cookies together?” she asked. “Sometime? Even if you’re still mad at Daddy?”
I smiled. It was the first real smile I’d had all day.
“Absolutely,” I said.
I kissed her forehead.
Then I picked up my bag and walked toward the door.
I left Ethan standing in my father’s living room beside the little girl I was already ready to love. Even though I wasn’t ready to forgive her father.
Not yet.
I stayed with Sarah for three weeks.
She has a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Uptown with a cat named Pickles who hates everybody except me. I slept on her pullout couch. Pickles slept on my feet.
I went to work. I came home. I watched bad TV. I didn’t answer Ethan’s texts. He sent one every night at nine o’clock.
Thinking of you. I’m sorry. No pressure.
Every single night. At nine o’clock exactly.
I didn’t answer Dad’s calls either. He called every morning. I let them go to voicemail. He left the same message every time.
It’s Dad. I love you. I’m sorry, kiddo. Call me when you’re ready.
On the fourth day, Sarah sat down on the end of the pullout couch with two glasses of wine.
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
So I talked. I told her everything. Lily. Megan. Walter, the fake friend from the teachers’ union. The bathroom floor three years ago. The eleven voicemails.
When I was done, Sarah was quiet for a long time.
“That’s a lot,” she said finally.
“That’s a lot.”
“Can I say something you’re not going to like?”
“You’re going to anyway.”
“Your dad’s an idiot,” Sarah said. “Ethan’s an idiot. They’re both enormous idiots. They should both be ashamed of themselves. That whole thing with the fake friend is insane.” She sipped her wine. “But I don’t think either of them is a bad person.”
“I didn’t say they were bad people.”
“I know. I’m just saying it out loud. So you hear it.” Sarah looked at me. “Your dad thought he was protecting you from the worst pain you’d ever had. And Ethan thought he was protecting you from finding out he’d been a coward. They were both wrong. But they were wrong because they love you. Not because they don’t.”
I looked down into my wine.
“That’s what makes it so hard,” I said.
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “That’s always what makes it hard.”
The only person I did talk to during those three weeks was Lily.
It started on the second Saturday. I was at the grocery store when my phone rang. It was an unknown number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Claire! It’s Lily!”
I almost dropped my basket of apples.
“Lily? How did you get my number?”
“Grandpa wrote it on the fridge. In case of emergencies.” There was a pause. “This isn’t really an emergency. I just wanted to say hi.”
I stood in the produce section and laughed.
“Hi, Lily.”
“Hi. Ruby says hi too.”
“Tell Ruby I said hi back.”
“Okay. She says thank you.” Another pause. “Are you still mad at Daddy?”
I closed my eyes.
“A little bit,” I said honestly.
“Okay,” Lily said. “That’s okay. I’m mad at him sometimes too. Like when he makes me eat broccoli.”
I laughed again. Somebody’s grandmother gave me a funny look by the lettuce.
“Daddy cries sometimes,” Lily said. “At night. When he thinks I’m asleep. He’s really sad.”
My throat tightened.
“I’m sorry he’s sad,” I said.
“Me too.” She paused. “Can we still make cookies?”
“Yes,” I said. “We can still make cookies.”
