Chapter 6
We stayed at the cottage until morning.
Theo slept beside Anwen.
I sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Alder.
She told me everything Felice had instructed.
No photographs sent to Anwen unless approved.
No unscheduled visits.
No calls to my estate.
If Theo became ill, contact Felice first.
If Anwen asked who paid, say “the family.”
Which family?
Never specified.
Felice had built control from pronouns.
Then Mrs. Alder gave me something useful.
Her old phone.
Voice messages from Felice.
Not proof for a court.
I did not care about court.
Proof for truth.
One message said:
“After the wedding, the arrangement changes.”
Another:
“Duncan cannot learn the mother still wants full access.”
I replayed that.
Anwen sat across the room holding Theo.
Her face went white.
Still wants full access.
Felice had planned to tell me something else.
“What?”
Mrs. Alder hesitated.
“She said after marriage she would introduce the baby to Mr. Wycliffe gradually.”
My stomach tightened.
“As whose child?”
The woman looked ashamed.
“Anwen’s.”
That surprised me.
Not a stolen identity.
Not yet.
Then:
“But she said Anwen would have left by then.”
There.
Felice planned to dismiss Anwen after the wedding.
Then approach me with a carefully edited story.
Former maid.
Unstable finances.
Unable to raise a baby.
She had supposedly abandoned Theo.
Felice, compassionate new wife, had stepped in quietly.
She would bring the child into my orbit as an act of mercy.
Then later, after enough attachment formed, reveal that she suspected I was the father.
Not before marriage.
After.
She wanted to become the person who “gave” me my son.
Anwen stared at me.
“She was going to make him think I left him.”
Not now.
Later.
When Theo was old enough to hear stories.
That was the cruelty beneath everything.
Felice did not only want the child hidden.
She wanted authorship over the story of who loved him.
I stood.
“We’re going home.”
Anwen looked uncertain.
“Whose home?”
Fair.
Not mine by default.
I corrected myself.
“Wherever you want to go first.”
She looked down at Theo.
“Mine.”
May you like
Good.
So we took him there.
