PART 2
The question came from Olivia.
Of course it did.
She was the smallest of the four by six minutes, but she had always been the one who stepped toward silence instead of away from it.
She looked up at Marcus with her dark curls tucked beneath a red velvet headband, her mittened hands folded politely in front of her coat.
“Are you our dad?” she asked.
The room did not simply go quiet.
It seemed to lose its air.
Marcus stared at her as if the question had crossed a distance he could not measure. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Beside him, his fiancée pressed one hand against the back of a dining chair, the diamond on her finger flashing under the chandelier.
Patricia gripped the doorframe.
Noah shifted closer to me. Ethan’s chin lifted in that brave way children sometimes have when they know adults are behaving strangely but cannot understand why. Sophia slipped her hand into mine.
I squeezed it gently.
I had imagined this moment a hundred different ways during the flight. Marcus angry. Marcus defensive. Marcus pretending not to see what every person in that house could see. I had prepared myself for denial, for coldness, for one more performance from a man who had always cared more about being believed than being honest.
What I had not prepared for was the look on his face now.
Not guilt alone.
Recognition.
Fear.
And something that looked dangerously close to grief.
“Olivia,” I said softly, kneeling beside her, “remember what we talked about?”
She nodded, but her eyes stayed on Marcus. “That grown-up stories are complicated.”
“That’s right.”
