Chapter 5 - Six years earlier
Claire and I were not married when I met Leah.
That mattered to me.
It mattered less to everyone else.
Ethan was eighteen months old.
Claire and I had been together for almost six years.
We had a child.
We had an engagement ring.
We also had a relationship that had become hostile enough that we separated for four months.
I moved into an apartment.
Claire stayed in our rental house with Ethan.
We shared parenting.
During that separation, I met Leah Bennett at a friend’s birthday dinner.
She was twenty-eight.
Funny.
Direct.
Recently separated from Mason Reed.
We went out three times.
Slept together twice.
I ended it because I realized I still wanted my family.
Not because Leah did something wrong.
Claire and I started therapy.
Reconciled.
Before moving back, I told Claire about Leah.
Everything.
At least everything I knew.
Claire cried.
Asked whether I loved Leah.
“No.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Twice.”
“Protection?”
“Yes.”
Not perfect protection.
No contraception is.
We spent months repairing.
Then married the following year.
Ethan was two.
I never heard from Leah.
I believed she had returned to Mason because a mutual friend mentioned seeing them together.
I never checked.
Why would I?
That chapter was over.
At least for me.
Claire apparently received an email from Leah seven months after our reconciliation.
Nora would have been roughly three months old.
That email became one of the most consequential documents in my life.
It said:
Claire,
I know this is awkward. I am not trying to interfere with your relationship.
There is a possibility Ryan is Nora’s biological father.
Mason and I were together around the same period, and I am not certain.
I have not told Ryan because I do not have his current contact information and I know he went back to you.
I need to know how he wants to handle paternity.
Please ask him to contact me.
Claire had never shown it to me.
She replied.
I learned that later.
Her response:
Ryan has chosen his family. He does not want involvement in this uncertainty. Please do not contact us again unless you have definitive proof.
She signed only:
Claire.
Not pretending to be me.
Not forging my words.
Still speaking for me without authority.
Leah replied once:
Understood.
Then stopped.
Claire archived the thread.
Did not delete permanently.
Why?
“I don’t know.”
That was what she said later.
Maybe guilt likes evidence because part of us imagines someday confessing.
May you like
Maybe she simply forgot to delete.
Human behavior rarely provides elegant symbolism.
