I walked toward the judge’s bench, the sound of my shoes echoing sharply on the linoleum floor. My own lawyer, a weary public defender named Hector Molina—who had previously advised me to “just sign and try to rebuild my life”—was staring at me with his mouth agape. I hadn’t breathed a word of this to him. I hadn’t told a soul.
There are some secrets you keep close to the chest until the trap is perfectly set.
“Your Honor,” I said, resting the envelope on the high wooden surface of the bench. “This contains the DNA test results for all three of the minor children listed in our custody agreement. Marcus, age twelve. Jolene, age nine. And Wyatt, age six.”
Judge Castellan took the envelope into his hands. He didn’t open it immediately. He simply looked at me, perhaps trying to gauge my mental state.
“For what purpose are you submitting these, Mr. Chandler?” he asked. “To formally establish paternity?”
The silence that followed was so profound I could hear the faint hum of the overhead fluorescent lights. I could hear the sharp, jagged intake of breath from Lenora’s side of the table.
“Paternity?” her voice was barely a whisper now, trembling with an underlying fear. “Crawford, what on earth are you doing?”
I looked the judge directly in the eye.
“I am establishing, for the official record, that I am not the biological father of any of the three children this court is ordering me to support.”
The judge opened the envelope. He scanned the first page, then the second, then the third. His face, which usually maintained a mask of professional boredom, underwent a transformation. It hardened into something resembling cold stone. He looked up from the documents and fixed his gaze on Lenora. It was an expression of deep, controlled disgust.
