Page 44 of A Castle in the Sky: Fern & Connor
“I feel bad for Jacob. I still care about him,” He admitted with a guilty expression. “I want to do right by him”
Her eyes had softened since they'd walked into the solicitor's office. No matter how she felt about Matilda, Fern couldn't switch off the part of her that worried about any child, and Jacob had been in their lives almost as long as Coral. "I know. I can’t tell you what is right or wrong in this situation"
She hesitated, then added, "And... in case your brain has not registered it—he's not secretly related to you, either. The report said there aren't any shared genetic markers. So, he's not related to you, oranyone on your side. He's not family that way. I mean, Matilda was lying when she said you may be siblings."
"But he may think I'm his dad." The words scraped his throat. "He... loves me. I've been in his life for two years. That doesn't—this doesn't—switch off like a light."
"No," she agreed. "It doesn't."
"I can't just disappear on him."
"No one's asking you to," she said quietly. "But what you tell him may not be up to you... That's up to Sawyer, probably, and the court and whatever's best for him." She paused. "But your choices with Matilda? With us? That's different."
He flinched. "Fern... "
"I'm not trying to hurt you," she said. "I meant what I said. I don't want to make things harder if you want to stay in touch with Jacob if they let you. But I can't live like this anymore."
He stared at her, throat closing. "You're leaving."
She drew in a breath. "I've been in touch with a solicitor of my own," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm not asking for much, just my share of the house sale, and child support for Coral. I can manage fine."
He blinked, the words filtering through sluggishly. Share of the house. Child support. They should belong to someone else's life, not his.
He nodded like a robot because it seemed expected. He wasn't sure what his face was doing, but Fern's expression flickered when she saw his eyes. Connor knew his eyes well enough—light brown, almost yellow like Coral's. Now they stung, wet and raw, and he watched her chest rise on a sharp breath as if his pain physically hit her.
"Fern—"
"There's something else," she cut in, voice thinner now. "Something I need to show you."
She reached into her handbag and pulled out a folded piece of paper, edges soft from being handled. For a moment she just held it, thumb smoothing over a crumpled corner. Then she pushed it across the table.
He opened it with clumsy fingers.
It was a drawing. A little stick figure girl standing on a chair in front of a cooker, a pan balanced precariously over a hotplate. Brown curls around her face, the smile crooked but recognisable. Coral.
Behind her stood a taller stick-figure, long straight hair drawn in a swoop of dark red down her back. Matilda.
The little girl was labelled CORAL in shaky letters. The woman's name was scrawled above her head, too: MATY. Little orange lines radiated from the pan. Red splashes licked up Coral's arm. Coral may not like speaking but she was way ahead of the rest in writing.
Connor's heart thundered while his sluggish brain caught up with what he was looking at.
"I was talking to Coral about what happened," Fern said quietly. "I asked her to show me. This is what she drew."
He couldn't look away from the picture. The chair. The pan. The way Matilda hovered so close to Coral's back.
"I'm taking this to the police," Fern went on. There was only steel now. "This isn't just... negligence or a mistake. She allowed our daughter on a chair, near boiling water. A child who doesn't talk much, a child who doesn't complain. That's not neglect, Connor; that'sassault. Maybe even attempted murder, depending on how far they want to go. I am not keeping this quiet to protect her."
His head snapped up, incredulous light in his widened eyes. "You think I will stop you?"
Her hesitation shattered him, though he couldn't blame her.
Her eyes held his when she finally conceded. "No. I expect you to want me to pursue this. You've been protecting her for years, and I... I needed you to know I'm not playing along anymore."
His fingers tightened around the drawing until the paper crackled.
He thought about Coral in the hospital, how her blistered little hand was swallowed by bandages. He thought about Matilda's shrill voice down the phone, insisting it had been an accident, that Coral had been "naughty", that nobody could have predicted—
He had known in his subconscious that there was more to it.
