Diane pushed back her chair so abruptly it scraped hard against the wood floor. “Walter, don’t speak to her like that. We need to calm down.”
“Calm down?” he repeated. “You allowed her to say that to a child.”
My chest tightened when he said child. Not granddaughter. Not Sophie. A child. It still hurt, but in that moment I understood he was ashamed enough that the word barely made it out.
The doorbell rang again. Robert left the dining room and returned with a tall woman in a charcoal coat carrying a leather briefcase. She introduced herself as Amanda Pierce, his attorney. Her expression was not curious or dramatic. It was efficient, which somehow made everything feel more serious.
Claire laughed once, thin and brittle. “This is absurd. Are we in a movie now?”
Amanda set her briefcase on the sideboard. “No, Ms. Bennett. In a movie, people act without documentation. Mr. Bennett documented everything.”
That was when I realized how long Robert had been carrying this alone.
I looked at him. “Six weeks?”
His jaw flexed. “The anonymous envelope came to my office the Monday after Sophie’s school concert. No return address. Fake lab report. A note that said, ‘Ask your wife where Sophie got her green eyes.’”
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