Family Business
Chapter 5 — Family Business
Paul’s office sat on the twenty-third floor of Henderson Properties, high enough above the city that traffic became silent and people looked replaceable.
Claire had always hated the view.
Mark used to say it made him feel like God owed him rent. Paul said it reminded him to think broadly. Their father had built the company from cold calls, bad loans, and apartment buildings nobody else wanted to touch.
Now Paul sat behind the glass desk as if he had inherited not just the company, but gravity.
“Claire,” he said warmly. “You should have called.”
“I wanted to see your face.”
His smile did not move.
“All right.”
She placed the photocopied visitor log on his desk.
Paul glanced at it.
Not long enough.
Claire noticed.
His eyes should have searched it. Should have asked what it was. Should have narrowed in confusion.
Instead, they landed at once on the circled name.
His own.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“From someone who remembers the night my son died.”
Paul leaned back.
“That was a terrible night.”
“My son didn’t die.”
The room held still.
Paul folded his hands.
“Claire.”
“No.”
“Grief has a way of reopening when we least expect it.”
“Don’t you dare make this grief.”
His jaw tightened, then softened again.
Too smooth.
Always too smooth.
“I assume this is about the child from the shelter.”
“His name is Elias.”
“We don’t know that.”
“He has the locket.”
“Lockets can be stolen.”
“He has Theo’s face.”
“Children resemble strangers every day.”
Claire leaned across the desk.
“He had my photograph around his neck.”
Paul’s eyes cooled.
“And how exactly did a homeless child end up with access to a private family photograph?”
The question was meant to unsettle her.
It did.
Not because it made her doubt Elias.
Because it proved Paul had already begun planning what to say.
Claire straightened.
“You were on the maternity floor.”
“My brother’s wife was in surgery. Of course I was.”
“You met a private adoption broker.”
“No.”
“You spoke with Dr. Kline.”
“I spoke with many people.”
“You told the hospital our family had agreed to something.”
Paul stood.
The city light caught the silver at his temples.
“I protected Mark that night.”
Claire’s breath caught.
“From what?”
“From losing his wife while she bled on an operating table.”
Her hand froze on the strap of her purse.
Paul stepped around the desk.
“You don’t remember what that night was like.”
“I remember enough.”
“You remember waking up. Mark remembered making decisions while doctors asked impossible questions.”
“What decisions?”
“Medical decisions.”
“About Elias?”
“About everyone.”
Claire stared at him.
Paul’s voice softened.
“Claire, Mark was destroyed. He blamed himself for things that were no one’s fault. If you start pulling at that night, you may not like what comes undone.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a warning from family.”
She laughed.
The sound surprised them both.
“Family doesn’t hide a living child.”
Paul’s face went blank.
There it was.
The door behind the door.
“You should be careful,” he said.
“With what?”
“With attaching yourself to a child whose documented identity does not match your fantasy.”
Claire stepped closer.
“I’m requesting DNA.”
“You can request anything.”
“And if he is mine?”
Paul smiled sadly.
“Then we’ll all have to ask why Mark allowed him to disappear.”
Claire’s body went cold.
“You don’t get to use my husband as a shield.”
“I don’t need to. He left enough shadows on his own.”
The elevator ride down made Claire nauseous.
She stood between mirrored walls and saw herself from too many angles: pale, furious, forty-two years old, wearing pearl earrings Mark had given her the Christmas before the twins were born.
On the sidewalk, the city smelled like hot metal and rain.
She bent over near the curb and breathed until she could stand.
Paul had denied everything.
But he had not asked the one question an innocent man would ask.
What adoption broker?
At the shelter, Dana allowed another visit after the DNA swab was ordered.
“Fifteen minutes,” she warned.
Claire nodded.
She would have taken three.
Elias sat with Theo at the same table as before. This time the green dinosaur stood between them. Elias had placed it upright, facing the door.
Claire noticed.
So did Theo.
“You kept him,” Theo said.
Elias shrugged.
“He was in my pocket.”
“You put him there.”
“Maybe he climbed.”
Theo grinned.
Elias looked away quickly, but not before Claire saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
She sat down slowly.
“Hi.”
Elias did not answer.
Theo leaned in.
“Mom met Uncle Paul today.”
Elias’s head lifted.
Claire froze.
“You know Paul?”
Elias looked at Theo.
“Is that the man from the picture?”
Theo nodded toward Claire’s phone lying on the table. The lock screen was an old photograph of Mark holding Theo at eighteen months.
Elias stared at it.
Then he said, almost bored, “A man came to the home once who looked like him.”
Claire’s pulse hammered.
Theo leaned forward.
“My dad?”
Elias shrugged.
“Maybe.”
Claire’s voice came out thin.
“When?”
“I dunno.”
“Was it Paul?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
Elias finally looked at her.
“Because Paul smells like flowers.”
Claire’s stomach turned.
Paul’s cologne.
“And the other man?”
Elias glanced back at the photo.
“He smelled like rain.”
Theo went very still.
Claire’s hand moved toward Mark’s face on the phone screen.
“Did he talk to you?”
Elias picked at the dinosaur’s missing tooth.
“He cried.”
Claire could not feel her fingertips.
“What did he say?”
Elias’s mouth tightened.
“I don’t remember.”
But his eyes had gone far away, into some hallway or room no one else could see.
Theo whispered, “Was it Daddy?”
Elias looked down.
May you like
“He looked like Daddy in the picture.”
Eli had never met his father. So who was the man he remembered visiting him?
