The Child They Never Had
Chapter 05 - The Child They Never Had
Daniel lowered the phone.
He stared at Claire.
Robert quietly left the room.
This time Claire let him.
For several seconds, neither she nor Daniel spoke.
Then he asked, “Were you pregnant?”
Claire sat down.
The question opened a door she had kept locked for years.
“Yes.”
Daniel’s face emptied.
“When?”
“Three weeks before our wedding.”
He stepped back as if she had struck him.
“You never told me.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
Claire looked at her hands.
“The night before the rehearsal dinner.”
Daniel’s voice broke.
“What happened?”
“I lost the baby that morning.”
The room went silent.
Outside, the city moved beyond the windows.
Cars.
People.
Ordinary life continuing with unbearable indifference.
Daniel slowly sat in the chair across from her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because your father collapsed the next day.”
Daniel remembered.
Everyone did.
Thomas Bennett had suffered his first major heart episode during the rehearsal dinner.
The wedding had been postponed for four months.
“I was bleeding,” Claire said. “I was terrified. And suddenly your family was in crisis.”
“You were my family.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Claire looked at him.
“Because Emma told me not to.”
Daniel’s eyes hardened.
“What?”
“She found me at the hospital.”
“How?”
“I called you. She answered your phone.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“She said your father might die. She said you were barely holding yourself together.”
Claire swallowed.
“She told me if I loved you, I wouldn’t make you choose which tragedy to survive first.”
Daniel covered his mouth.
Claire continued.
“I was twenty-five. I believed her.”
“Why bring it up now?”
“I don’t know.”
But Claire did know.
Emma did not reveal secrets without purpose.
She was building another story.
Making Claire look deceptive.
Untrustworthy.
A woman capable of hiding a pregnancy could, in Emma’s version of events, hide money too.
Daniel stood abruptly.
“I’m going to find her.”
“No.”
He turned.
Claire’s voice remained calm.
“That is exactly what she wants.”
“What?”
“She wants you emotional.”
Daniel stared.
“She wants you reacting instead of thinking.”
He looked ashamed.
Because that was exactly what he had done at dinner.
Claire softened slightly.
“Daniel, Emma has been moving pieces around us for years.”
He sat again.
“What are you saying?”
“I think she has been afraid of me since before we got married.”
“Why?”
Claire thought of the torn ledger page.
The shell companies.
The forged transfer.
The pregnancy secret.
Then she remembered something Thomas Bennett had said to her the second time they met.
You notice numbers other people ignore.
At the time, she had thought it was a compliment.
Now she wondered if it had been a warning.
Claire reached for the ledger again.
“Your father knew I was an auditor.”
Daniel frowned.
“So?”
“What if he expected me to find something?”
Daniel looked at the torn page.
Claire did too.
Then Daniel said, “There’s one person who might know what was written there.”
“Who?”
“My mother.”
Claire looked up.
Daniel had not spoken to his mother, Evelyn, in almost six months.
Not since Emma told him Evelyn’s memory was failing.
But when they arrived at Evelyn Bennett’s home two hours later, the seventy-four-year-old woman opened the door herself.
Her eyes were sharp.
Clear.
And furious.
She looked at Daniel first.
Then Claire.
“Finally,” she said.
Daniel froze.
May you like
Evelyn stepped aside.
“Come in. I’ve been waiting nine years for one of you to stop believing Emma.”
