Chapter 3 - What Ryan Thought I Had Taken From Him
Ryan refused to speak to me the next day.
I didn’t blame him.
He had lost his mother.
Then been taken into a house he apparently believed his father had promised him for years.
Instead, he arrived and found me.
Lily.
Our family photographs.
Our life.
Everything he had been told would someday include him.
Nobody had prepared him for the fact that I did not know his name.
Beth agreed to keep Ryan temporarily while the adults worked out what came next.
That was safer for everyone.
Before she left the hospital, she pulled me aside.
“Ryan thinks you didn’t want Daniel seeing him.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who told him that?”
“Megan.”
Of course.
“Why would Megan believe that?”
Beth looked uncomfortable.
“You really didn’t know?”
“No.”
She studied my face.
Then whispered:
“Oh God.”
Megan had apparently told her family that Daniel disclosed Ryan’s existence to me years ago.
According to Megan, I had agreed that Daniel could maintain contact as long as Ryan stayed separate from our household.
I almost couldn’t speak.
“She thought I made that condition?”
Beth nodded.
“Megan didn’t like it, but she said Daniel told her you were protecting Lily.”
Lily had not even been born when Daniel supposedly made that claim.
I felt physically sick.
“Did Ryan believe that too?”
“Not every detail. But he believed you knew his dad belonged to both families.”
Belonged.
That word hurt.
Not because Ryan was wrong.
Because Daniel had allowed a child to grow up treating fatherhood like something divided between two locked rooms.
Beth continued.
“Megan always said someday Daniel would fix everything.”
“When?”
“When Ryan was older. Or when circumstances changed.”
“And now she’s dead.”
Beth nodded.
“So Ryan thought the circumstances finally changed.”
I remembered his face in our living room.
I’m the one who belongs here.
He had not been attacking Lily because he hated a five-year-old.
He was a grieving child staring at the life he believed had been kept from him.
That did not excuse frightening Lily.
May you like
It explained the wound underneath it.
And the wound had Daniel’s fingerprints all over it.
