Dad stepped forward. He put the plate of cookies down on the end table.
“Claire, please let me explain.”
“Then explain!”
He sighed. He looked a hundred years old.
“After Megan died,” he said, “Ethan was struggling. He had a full-time job. He had a little girl who’d just lost her mother and was moving to a whole new city where she didn’t know anybody. Megan’s parents are elderly. They live in a retirement community in Florida. They couldn’t take her. So I offered to help.”
“So Lily lives here?”
“Yes,” Dad said. “We thought it would be temporary. Just for a few months. Then there were legal things to sort out. Megan’s sister contested the custody for a while. That took over a year. And by then, Lily was settled here. She was happy. She had her school and her friends and her room. We didn’t want to uproot her again.”
“I take her to school every morning,” Ethan said. “I come here every night for dinner and homework. I’m here every weekend.”
I shook my head.
I remembered all those afternoons Dad had invited me over. Lily’s visiting today, why don’t you come by? She’d love to see you.
“You were watching me spend time with my boyfriend’s daughter,” I said, “while pretending she was a stranger.”
“I thought if you got to know her naturally…” Dad began.
“Naturally?” I said. “You lied to my face, Dad! Over and over! You made up a fake friend! You made up a whole fake family for her!”
“I was trying to help you two build a relationship,” Dad said. “Before the truth came out. So that when it did, you’d already love her.”
“By tricking me?”
Dad didn’t answer.
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.”
