Chapter 3 - THE FAMILY DINNER THAT WASN’T ABOUT DINNER
Lorraine invited the family to dinner two nights later.
Marin refused.
Callum went.
That became their first serious fight.
“You’re rewarding her,” Marin said.
“I’m trying to stop this from spreading.”
“She nearly dropped our baby into the Connecticut River.”
“She didn’t.”
“Because I stopped her.”
Callum closed his eyes.
“My sister is flying in. Uncle Peter will be there. I need to explain what happened before Mom tells everyone her version.”
Marin looked at him.
“She already has a version prepared?”
He didn’t answer.
That told her enough.
Marin stayed home with Elise.
Three hours later, Callum returned looking sick.
“What happened?”
He removed his coat slowly.
“She told them.”
“Told them what?”
“That Elise might not be mine.”
Marin stared at him.
Callum continued before she could speak.
“She said you refused testing.”
“I’ve never been asked to take a paternity test.”
“I know.”
“Did you say that?”
“Yes.”
Immediately, this time.
Too immediately.
Marin knew him.
“What else happened?”
Callum sat down.
Lorraine had presented a timeline.
Marin’s business trip to Boston the previous spring.
The date she became pregnant.
The fact that Callum had been traveling for work during part of that month.
Ordinary details arranged to suggest betrayal.
Lorraine had even mentioned Marin’s former college boyfriend, who now lived in Massachusetts.
“How does she know where Evan lives?”
Callum looked away.
Marin stopped.
“Callum.”
“I don’t know.”
“You just lied.”
“I don’t know how she knows.”
“Different sentence.”
He said nothing.
At the dinner, Peter had apparently made a joke about “mailmen and redheaded babies.”
Callum’s sister Caroline told him to shut up.
Lorraine let it happen.
Then she said Marin should take a paternity test “if she had nothing to hide.”
Marin felt physically ill.
“And you stayed?”
Callum looked at her.
“Twenty minutes.”
“You sat at that table for twenty minutes while your family laughed about whether our daughter was yours?”
“I was trying to get Mom to explain where this came from.”
“You could have stood up.”
“I did eventually.”
“Eventually.”
Elise stirred in her bassinet.
Marin lowered her voice.
She thought of the dock.
Callum frozen two steps away.
Lorraine pulling.
Marin screaming for help.
Eventually.
That word was becoming the shape of their marriage.
Callum finally defended her.
Eventually.
He challenged Lorraine.
Eventually.
He told Marin the truth.
Eventually.
Marin sat beside the bassinet.
When Elise woke, she smiled sleepily.
Marin touched one tiny hand.
Then Callum said something that made her look up.
“My mother asked me for one of Elise’s pacifiers six weeks ago.”
Marin stared.
“Why?”
“She said she’d dropped it and wanted to replace the brand.”
“And you believed her?”
“At the time.”
Marin stood.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
A terrible possibility entered the room.
May you like
Lorraine had not only been questioning Elise’s paternity.
She may have been collecting something.
