« You expect me to believe this is a coincidence? » Thomas dropped to his knees right there on the pavement, completely disregarding the mud and spilled coffee. He looked up at Victoria, his eyes welling with sudden, desperate tears.
« Mom, please. I need you to answer one question. Please, I’m begging you. » Victoria hesitated. The man wasn’t looking at her with the calculated greed of a blackmailer. He was looking at her with the raw, shattered agony of a grieving father.
« Make it quick. » she said coldly. Thomas swallowed hard, his voice shaking. « Does he Does your boy have a birthmark? Right here. » Thomas pointed a trembling finger to his own left collarbone.
« Shaped like a tiny pale crescent moon. » Victoria felt the earth drop out from beneath her. The ambient noise of Central Park, the laughing children, the rustling leaves, the distant traffic, suddenly faded into a deafening static ringing in her ears.
« How could he know that? » The birthmark was rarely visible. It was always covered by Harrison’s shirts. No one knew about it except her, her late husband, and Harrison’s pediatrician. « How do you know that? » Victoria breathed, the fight draining out of her, replaced by a cold, creeping dread.
Thomas let out a ragged sob, burying his face in his hands for a fraction of a second before looking back up. « Because I’m not an anonymous donor, lady. » Thomas said, his voice laced with years of buried trauma.
« Seven years ago, my wife, Sarah, gave birth to twins at St. Jude’s Medical Center. It was a complicated delivery. She hemorrhaged. She She died on the operating table. Thomas pointed to the little girl on the bench, who was now watching the scene with wide, frightened eyes.
Chloe was the firstborn. She survived. But the doctor The doctor came out an hour later. He looked me in the eye and told me my son’s lungs had collapsed. He told me my baby boy didn’t make it.
I buried an empty, sealed casket because they told me his remains were too traumatic to view. » Thomas rose slowly to his feet, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with a mixture of rage and desperate hope as he stared at Victoria.
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