Chapter 3 - Ninety-Nine Point Nine Nine
Chloe's hand shook as she held the phone.
Daniel took one step toward her.
"Give it to me."
She moved the phone against her chest.
"No."
His face tightened.
"Chloe."
"You do not get to order me around right now."
The ballroom had become unbearable.
Too many eyes.
Too many half-empty champagne glasses.
Too many white flowers surrounding a family celebration that no longer existed.
I looked at the hotel manager.
"Is there somewhere private we can go?"
He nodded immediately.
"There is a conference room across the hall."
Daniel shook his head.
"We are done here."
I picked up the folder.
"You may be."
Robert followed me first.
Patricia hesitated, then followed him.
My mother remained with Lily in the ballroom.
I trusted her more than anyone else in the building.
Chloe lifted Noah's carrier and came with us.
Daniel came last.
The conference room was small and cold.
A long walnut table filled most of the space.
The hotel manager closed the door behind us and left.
For the first time that afternoon, there was no audience.
Daniel looked relieved.
That relief lasted three seconds.
I sat at the far end of the table.
"Read it."
Chloe remained standing.
"Jennifer, I do not know if this is something you need to hear."
"I have needed to hear the truth for months."
Daniel reached for the phone again.
Robert stepped between them.
"Stop grabbing things."
Daniel glared at his father.
"This is none of your business."
Robert's expression went cold.
"You made it my business when you invited me to applaud you as a father while you were hiding another baby upstairs."
Daniel flinched.
I had never heard Robert speak to him like that.
Chloe unlocked the screen.
Her thumb moved once.
Then she sat down.
"Probability of paternity."
Her voice cracked.
She swallowed.
"Ninety-nine point nine nine percent."
No one moved.
Daniel sat down slowly.
Patricia covered her face.
Robert turned away and looked through the glass wall into the empty hallway.
I stared at Daniel.
He looked back at me.
For a second, neither of us seemed to know what expression belonged on our faces.
Anger felt too small.
Grief felt too generous.
Shock felt ridiculous because the evidence had been sitting in front of me for months.
Still, some stupid part of me had clung to the possibility that Chloe's baby belonged to her former husband.
That stupid part died in the conference room.
Daniel whispered one word.
"Noah."
Chloe's eyes filled.
"Yes."
Patricia lowered her hands.
"So he is my grandson."
I looked at her.
She seemed horrified by her own sentence the moment it left her mouth.
"I am sorry, Jennifer."
I nodded once.
There was nothing to say.
Daniel rubbed his palms against his pants.
"The test could be wrong."
Chloe stared at him.
"It is a legal paternity test."
"Labs make mistakes."
"You wanted the test."
"I wanted certainty."
"Now you have it."
Daniel looked at me.
"Jennifer, I did not know."
I almost admired the instinct to center himself in the discovery.
"You knew it was possible."
"Possible is not the same thing."
"You were paying his mother's hospital bills."
"Because she needed help."
"You attended her appointments."
"Because she was alone."
"You slept with her while I was pregnant."
He looked down.
I leaned forward.
"Do not insult me by pretending the paternity result is the beginning of this story."
Daniel's face twisted.
"What do you want me to say?"
"Nothing."
"Then why are we sitting here?"
"Because every time you speak, I learn something else."
He stood.
"I am not doing this."
"Sit down."
He laughed.
"You do not control me."
"No."
I looked at him evenly.
"That is the point."
Robert pulled out the chair beside him.
"Sit."
Daniel glared at his father again.
This time, he did not sit.
He paced toward the door.
Chloe spoke before he reached it.
"Tell her about the apartment."
Daniel stopped.
I looked at Chloe.
"What apartment?"
She took a breath.
"Daniel found an apartment for me near the hospital."
"I helped her look."
Daniel spoke without turning around.
Chloe shook her head.
"He signed as guarantor."
Daniel turned.
"Because your credit was destroyed in the divorce."
"He also paid the first three months."
I felt my stomach drop again.
"From where?"
Chloe looked at him.
"I do not know."
I opened the folder.
The transfers I had found totaled a little over fifteen thousand.
That did not include three months of rent.
It did not include a deposit.
It did not include whatever else I had not known to look for.
Daniel saw me doing the math.
"Do not start inventing numbers."
"I do not need to invent them."
I took out my phone.
"My attorney can subpoena them."
He went still.
There it was again.
That flash of fear.
It was becoming familiar.
"Who is your attorney?"
I smiled without humor.
"You keep asking questions you should have asked before you spent four months lying to me."
Patricia wiped her face with a napkin she had brought from the ballroom.
"Could we please stop talking about lawyers?"
Robert looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because Lily is three months old."
"Exactly."
"This family can still figure something out."
I looked at Patricia.
"What family?"
She flinched.
I continued.
"The one where Daniel has a wife, a daughter, a girlfriend, and a newborn son?"
"I am not his girlfriend."
Chloe's voice was quiet.
I turned toward her.
She looked embarrassed.
"Not anymore."
Daniel laughed bitterly.
"Convenient."
She stared at him.
"You lied to me about your marriage."
"You knew I was married."
"You told me it was over."
"You chose to believe that."
"Because you showed me messages from a lawyer."
My head turned sharply.
"What messages?"
Daniel's face went blank.
Chloe looked at me.
"He showed me screenshots."
"Of what?"
"A lawyer telling him the divorce would be filed after the baby was born."
I felt cold.
"Did you see the lawyer's name?"
She frowned, trying to remember.
"Mason something."
Daniel interrupted.
"It was a consultation."
"You just said you never hired a lawyer."
He looked at me.
"I did not hire one."
"But you consulted one."
"Months ago."
"Before Lily was born?"
Daniel did not answer.
Chloe did.
"Yes."
My hands went numb.
The affair was one thing.
Planning a divorce while I was pregnant was another.
But a new question pushed through everything else.
If Daniel had been preparing to leave me, why had he kept adding money to joint accounts?
Why had he pushed for the baptism party?
Why had he spent weeks asking me to update household passwords and consolidate automatic payments?
My mind moved back through small conversations I had ignored at the time.
A month before Lily was born, Daniel had suggested refinancing the house because rates might change.
Two weeks after Lily was born, he asked whether I had updated my beneficiary paperwork at work.
Three days before the baptism, he placed a stack of documents on the kitchen counter and told me they were routine insurance forms.
I had been feeding Lily and had not signed them.
Daniel had asked twice.
The second time, he seemed irritated.
I looked at him now.
"What were the forms on the kitchen counter?"
His face changed.
"What forms?"
"Three nights ago."
"I do not remember."
"You said they were insurance forms."
Patricia looked between us.
"What is she talking about?"
Daniel shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Nothing."
I stood.
"Where are they now?"
"I threw them away."
"Why?"
"Because you never signed them."
"What were they?"
His jaw tightened.
"Household paperwork."
"That is not an answer."
He looked at the door.
"I am finished."
I walked around the table and stopped several feet from him.
"Were you planning to file for divorce after the baptism?"
He said nothing.
Chloe stared at him.
"You told me next week."
Daniel's head turned toward her.
My chest went hollow.
"Next week?"
Chloe looked stricken.
"He told me he was filing next week."
I nodded slowly.
Everything became strangely clear.
The party had never been just a party.
It had been a final performance.
A room full of clients and relatives seeing Daniel as the devoted father.
Then, days later, a divorce filing in which he could claim the marriage had collapsed suddenly because of my behavior.
If I reacted badly, he already had an audience who had seen him smiling, generous, and attentive.
He had been building witnesses without telling them they were witnesses.
I looked at him.
"You planned the timing."
He did not deny it.
Robert sat down heavily.
"Jesus, Daniel."
Daniel spun toward him.
"You do not know what our marriage was like."
"Neither did I, apparently."
I heard my own voice become very calm.
"What else did you plan?"
"Nothing."
"What was I supposed to sign?"
"Nothing."
"What was your plan to handle me?"
"It was a stupid phrase."
"Then explain it."
"I meant I would talk to you."
I stared at him.
"You needed months of secret transfers, a lawyer consultation, and unsigned paperwork in order to talk to me?"
Daniel opened the door.
"I am going to pay the hotel."
He walked out.
I watched him go.
For several seconds after Daniel left the conference room, nobody spoke.
The door clicked shut behind him.
I stared at the handle.
Part of me expected him to come back immediately with a new explanation.
He did not.
Patricia gathered the papers into one crooked stack, then stopped when she realized they were mine.
Robert rubbed his face.
Chloe rocked Noah slowly in the carrier.
I sat down again because my legs suddenly felt weak.
The paternity result had changed the shape of everything.
Daniel was not only a husband who cheated while his wife was pregnant.
He was now the father of two infants born within weeks of each other to two different women.
One of those women had been told the marriage was ending.
The other had been told money was tight because babies were expensive.
I wondered whether Daniel had ever stood alone in a room and allowed both truths to exist at the same time.
Maybe that was what he avoided most.
He kept every person in a separate compartment because the walls protected him.
Chloe knew one Daniel.
Patricia knew another.
His clients knew another.
I had known the husband version.
The moment those rooms connected, none of his stories could breathe.
I looked at Chloe.
"Did he ever talk about money problems?"
She nodded slowly.
"He said the divorce would be expensive."
"A divorce he had not filed."
"Yes."
"Did he ever ask you to sign anything for him?"
She looked down.
That pause was enough to make my stomach tighten again.
Then Chloe whispered from behind me.
Chloe whispered from behind me.
"Jennifer."
I turned.
She looked terrified.
"There is something else."
My heart sank.
"Of course there is."
She looked toward the door Daniel had just closed.
May you like
"He asked me to sign something too."
