Lawyers if you want them.
You choose the facility.”
Mara watched him.
“And if they are yours?”
Grant looked at the four birth records.
“Then I start with the fact that you did six years of this without me.
I don’t get to arrive with money and call that fatherhood.”
Mara’s eyes lowered.
“Good answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
The DNA test was performed two days later.
Grant’s mother called seventeen times before the results arrived.
He answered once.
“Whatever Mara told you,” she said, “you should remember that people alter history when money becomes involved.”
Grant stood by his office window.
“She kept the letter.”
Silence.
“What letter?”
“The one your office sent using my name.”
His mother’s voice sharpened.
“I protected you.”
There it was.
Not denial.
Justification.
Grant felt something inside him settle.
“From what?”
“From making a life-changing decision while your father was dying and the company was unstable.
You were thirty seconds from throwing away everything generations of this family built.”
“So you decided four children should grow up without their father?”
“We did not know there were four.”
Grant shut his eyes.
She had confirmed it without realizing what she had said.
“You knew there was a pregnancy.”
His mother said nothing.
“And you let me spend six years believing Mara left me.”
“You moved on.”
Grant looked toward the unopened velvet box still sitting on his desk.
“No.
I obeyed.
There’s a difference.”
He ended the call.
The laboratory results came that afternoon.
Mara sat across from him in a private conference room while an independent attorney opened the report.
Grant had imagined the moment dozens of ways.
None prepared him for the quiet.
The attorney read the conclusion once.
Then again.
The probability of Grant’s paternity was greater than 99.99 percent for each of the four boys.
Milo.
Mason.
Max.
Micah.
Grant stared at their names.
Six years of birthdays existed behind each one.
First words.
Fevers.
