Chapter 13 - The Deadline
Friday morning arrived.
Michael’s hearing was at ten.
He asked me to come.
I said no.
Not because I wanted him to fail.
Because Lucas deserved one day that was about his father acknowledging him, not about our marriage.
At 10:47, Michael texted.
It’s official.
I am legally recognized as Lucas’s father.
I stared at the message for a long time.
Then I wrote back.
Good.
Be worthy of it.
He did not respond.
At noon, I drove to Diane’s house.
Rachel came with me.
Michael did not know.
Diane opened the door wearing pearls.
Of course she did.
Her eyes landed on my cheek.
The mark from her slap was almost gone.
Her expression hardened.
“You’re not welcome here.”
I held up Thomas’s letter.
Her face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“We need to talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
Rachel stepped forward.
“We have the trust records too.”
Diane’s hand tightened around the door.
“You went through Thomas’s private property?”
“He left it for Claire.”
Diane looked at me.
For the first time since I met her, she looked uncertain.
We entered.
The dining room was exactly as it had been Sunday night.
Same table.
Same chandelier.
Same chair.
I stood beside the place where Diane had hit me.
“You forged the paternity report.”
“No.”
“Thomas says you admitted it.”
“Thomas was sick.”
“He wrote it years before he became ill.”
“He hated confrontation.”
“So you used that.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“Careful.”
That one word revealed more than a denial.
I placed the trust documents on the table.
“You took more than two hundred thousand dollars.”
“I borrowed it.”
“For twelve years?”
“I intended to repay it.”
“With Michael’s money?”
Diane stared at me.
So I had guessed correctly.
Michael’s seventy-one thousand dollars had not merely saved her house.
He had been helping her quietly refill money she took from Thomas’s trust.
“Michael knows?” Rachel asked.
“No.”
Diane answered too quickly.
I felt something settle inside me.
There it was.
Another layer.
She had convinced her son he was rescuing his mother from debt.
In reality, he was cleaning up the remains of her theft.
“Why did you destroy Natalie’s marriage?”
Diane sat down.
“She was wrong for him.”
“That wasn’t your decision.”
“I am his mother.”
“That sentence is not a license.”
“She would have dragged him down.”
“So you erased his son?”
Diane looked away.
“I believed Michael would have other children.”
Rachel inhaled sharply.
I stared at her.
“Lucas was replaceable to you?”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said.”
Then the front door opened.
Footsteps entered the hallway.
Michael appeared in the dining room.
He looked from me to Rachel.
Then to the papers.
“What is going on?”
Diane’s face went pale.
I picked up Thomas’s unopened letter.
“Your father left this for you.”
Michael stared at it.
Then at his mother.
May you like
And Diane whispered the sentence that finally destroyed her last defense.
“I can explain why I hid it.”
