Chapter 11
Biology was never the issue.
That surprised Vanessa most.
She came to see me alone two days later and asked whether Elsie was “fully Lombardi.”
I stared at her until she looked embarrassed.
“What does that mean?”
“You know.”
“No.”
She swallowed.
“Her mother.”
Elsie’s mother had died eighteen months after childbirth.
Vanessa knew that.
She also knew Julian had spent the last year treating the story like inconvenient history.
“She was Julian’s wife.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
“He told me they were never married.”
There it was.
Another erasure.
I almost felt tired.
Not shocked.
Just tired.
Julian had not only turned Elsie into a housekeeper’s daughter.
He had turned his dead wife into a casual mistake.
“Her name was Marissa.”
Vanessa looked away.
“He said she was unstable.”
I felt anger rise again.
“She was sick.”
Silence.
Cancer.
Fast.
Cruel.
Julian had fallen apart after she died.
I had held Elsie while he sat beside Marissa’s hospital bed.
And now he had rewritten that grief because Cole found widower-with-child less attractive than unattached future son-in-law.
Vanessa looked sick.
“I slapped her.”
“Yes.”
“She brought him a flower.”
“Yes.”
“She thought I knew.”
That one mattered.
Elsie believed Vanessa’s cruelty happened with full knowledge of who she was.
Which meant she might have thought her father permitted it anyway.
Vanessa covered her mouth.
I did not comfort her.
Guilt should be allowed to finish its work.
Finally she asked:
“Can I apologize?”
I considered it.
“Not because you need forgiveness.”
She nodded.
“If Elsie wants to hear it.”
That surprised her.
Access to a child was not an adult right.
May you like
She was learning late.
Better than never.
