Page 112 of Ruthless Claim

“You weren’t,” I murmur.

I don’t know if that’s true yet. I don’t know what it means, or what I’m capable of, or what any of this looks like in three months, or a year, or eight years that have already passed without me there.

I say it anyway because it’s the only true thing I have right now: that I wouldn’t have chosen to be absent. Whatever else is true about me, that much is.

We arrange the clinic visit for the following week. I get in my car.

I sit in traffic on the BQE for forty minutes, staring at the brake lights of the car in front of me.

I think about a blank line on a birth certificate and a mouth pressed flat in a school photograph.

I should call Valentina right now and tell her where I’ve been and why. I should pull over on the BQE and call her.

I rehearse the words in my head: there’s something I have to tell you.

I don’t.

I drive home and say nothing.

The third meeting is where everything starts to fall apart. But it has nothing to do with anything in a coffee shop.

It has everything to do with at home.

It’s been a few days since Valentina came home early and caught me on the phone with Claire.

I lied to her and I know she knows I’m lying. I hate that I can’t tell her what’s going on. But not yet. I need to know if Finn is really mine or not first.

Valentina is making ginger tea when I head into the kitchen to leave. She’s wearing her dark burgundy robe, the one that drives me fucking mad, and her hair is pulled into a loose braid.

She looks tired. Exhausted really.

It’s evident in the way she’s standing—leaned into the counter, taking the weight off her feet without quite realizing it. She does this more now, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She looks up when I come in. Her brows furrow as she glances at the clock.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Connor’s,” I tell her, even though it’s not the truth. I look her in the eyes when I say it anyway. I’ve learned that not looking is what gets you caught, and I’m not going to get caught. Not yet. Not until I have something real to say.

Something moves quickly across her face and there’s a tightening around the eyes, the faintest pull at the corner of her mouth. She looks back at the kettle.

“Okay,” she says.

That’s it. Just okay. Not what time will you be back or tell Connor I said hello with that particular dry edge she has. Just okay. Then she goes back to making her tea, and I stand there feeling as if I’ve just been dismissed.

“I won’t be long,” I tell her.

She nods but doesn’t look up.

Claire has a new photograph today from last month. Finn in a muddy soccer uniform on a field somewhere, squinting into the low sun. He’s caught mid-turn toward the camera, slightly off-guard, and his hair in this light⁠—

It’s a good thing I’m sitting down because my knees feel weak.

In this light, at this angle, his hair looks auburn.

It’s not as light as mine. It’s a shade warmer than brown but not fully there.

I look at it for a long time, tilting the photograph slightly, watching the way the color shifts. In the first photograph it looked solidly brown. In this one, it could be called auburn by someone who wanted to call it auburn.