Her hand went to her mouth.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I swear to God I didn’t know he was lying. I thought—I thought you—”
“I know what you thought.”
“He told me you didn’t want her.”
“I have spent seven years looking for both of you.”
The silence that followed was different from the ones before it. This one was not loaded. It was empty. It was the silence of a room after every piece of furniture has been removed and you can finally see the shape of the floor and realize it was always bigger than you thought.
Maya chewed her bread. She looked at her mother. She looked at Julian. She dipped another piece in oil.
“Are you my daddy?” she asked.
No preamble. No hesitation. Just the pure, unobstructed directness of a five-year-old who has not yet learned that the most important questions are supposed to be complicated.
Julian looked at her.
The fracture in his voice became visible.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I’d like to be.”
Maya considered this with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice.
“Okay,” she said. “But you have to like dinosaurs. Mommy doesn’t like dinosaurs.”
A sound escaped Hannah. Not a laugh. Not a sob. Something in between. Something that had been trapped in her chest for seven years and just broke free.
Sloane turned away. Just slightly. Just enough to give them the privacy of her not watching.
Julian closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet.
He didn’t wipe them.
He just looked at Maya and said, “I like dinosaurs very much.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“T-Rex.”
“That’s a basic choice,” Maya said, with the devastating authority of a child who has opinions. “Ankylosaurus is better. It has armor.”
“Then I change my answer.”
Maya nodded, satisfied, and returned to her bread.
Hannah was crying. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just silently, with tears falling onto the linen, her hands still flat on the table, her shoulders barely shaking.
Julian reached across and laid one hand over hers.
She didn’t pull away.
“I have to tell you something,” he said.
She looked up.
“Richard Hale is dead. He died four months ago. Heart attack in his office in the Waldorf. When his files were opened, we found the original communications. The forgeries. The payments. The letter he drafted in my name and sent without my knowledge or consent.”
