“Claire,” he said calmly, too calmly, “we need to get a DNA test for Ethan.”
The sentence didn’t land. It detonated.
I laughed — a thin, involuntary sound that didn’t belong to humor — because my brain refused to accept what my ears had just heard.
“You’re kidding,” I said, searching his face for irony, for a crack, for anything human. “You coached his Little League team. You slept on the floor next to his bed when he had pneumonia. You cut the crusts off his sandwiches until he was ten.”
Richard didn’t blink.
“I’ve had doubts for years,” he said. “And I’m done pretending they don’t exist.”
I turned to Ethan.
He had gone completely still, staring at his plate as if it had personally betrayed him, his shoulders folding inward, shrinking, the light in his eyes dimming in real time.
I should have screamed. I should have thrown the plate. I should have protected him louder.
Instead, I agreed to the test.
Because I believed truth was enough to heal us.
