Chapter 9 - Mason Reed
Mason Reed complicated the story without becoming a villain.
He had dated Leah for years.
Their relationship was on and off.
He believed Nora might be his.
He had helped during the pregnancy.
Then left before birth after another breakup.
His name was not on the birth certificate.
He saw Nora several times during her first year.
Then less.
Eventually almost not at all.
Three years later, Mason’s mother began asking whether Nora was family.
Mason agreed to a private DNA test.
Negative.
He and Leah argued.
Not because he wanted custody.
Because he was angry she had allowed his family to believe possibility for years.
He cut contact.
The report in Leah’s file was genuine.
The testing laboratory confirmed.
That eliminated one candidate.
It did not automatically prove me.
Paige said Leah had never named another man after Mason’s test.
Still.
Evidence needed the new test.
Mason called me once.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
He sounded exhausted.
Then:
“I knew about you.”
“What?”
“Leah mentioned Ryan years ago.”
“Did you know she contacted Claire?”
“No.”
“Did you know Nora called me Daddy?”
Silence.
“Leah had a picture.”
There.
“What picture?”
“You at some restaurant with her.”
My chest tightened.
Leah had kept a photograph of us?
Mason continued:
“She showed Nora maybe last year. I heard Nora ask who it was.”
“What did Leah say?”
“I wasn’t there for exact words.”
Again.
No magical witness.
Fragments.
“Did Leah tell Nora I was her father?”
“I don’t know.”
That mattered.
May you like
We stopped treating the word Daddy as proof.
Children use what adults give them.
