Chapter 4 - THE FIRST TIME MARIN LEFT
Marin packed one suitcase.
Callum watched from the bedroom doorway.
“You’re leaving?”
“For a few days.”
“Where?”
“My sister’s.”
“Marin.”
She folded Elise’s sleep sacks into the bag.
“I need space.”
“You think I gave my mother the pacifier for a DNA test?”
“I think you knew she questioned our daughter’s paternity and decided I didn’t deserve to know.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“My mother.”
Marin looked at him.
“How’s that working?”
He flinched.
Good.
She hated that part of herself.
She wanted him hurt because she was hurt.
Then she hated Lorraine for making that feeling possible.
Callum sat on the edge of the bed.
“Don’t take Elise away because I handled this badly.”
“You didn’t handle it.”
“That’s fair.”
The quick admission slowed Marin down.
Callum continued.
“I should’ve told you the first time Mom said something. I thought if I shut her down privately, it would disappear.”
“And did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looked exhausted.
“Because that’s how my family works.”
“Not anymore.”
Marin drove to her sister Hannah’s home in Madison, forty minutes away.
It was smaller than the Kesler estate.
Louder.
Two kids.
A dog that barked at delivery trucks.
Nobody cared whether the towels matched.
Marin slept better there than she had in months.
The next morning, she called Elise’s pediatrician.
Not because she doubted Callum.
Because she needed to know whether any unauthorized genetic testing could have been performed.
The doctor explained that a legally useful paternity test would generally require proper identification and chain-of-custody procedures.
A home test using a pacifier could produce unreliable or unusable results.
“Could someone still try?”
“People can buy kits.”
Marin’s stomach tightened.
Then she asked about Elise’s toes.
The pediatrician reviewed the chart.
Partial syndactyly could run in families.
Callum’s childhood history made inheritance plausible.
It did not prove anything.
Marin already understood that.
What mattered was Lorraine’s behavior.
She possessed information supporting a family connection.
She hid it.
Then publicly suggested the opposite.
That afternoon, Callum called.
“I found something in my mother’s office.”
Marin sat upright.
“You went there?”
“She left for a board meeting.”
“What did you find?”
“A receipt.”
“For what?”
“A private investigative firm.”
Marin went cold.
“Whose name?”
“The invoice doesn’t say.”
Callum hesitated.
“But the date is the week after Elise was born.”
Marin stared at her sleeping daughter.
A four-month campaign had started almost immediately after the birth.
May you like
The dock had not been an explosion.
It had been an escalation.
