Chapter 7 - The Question No Child Should Ask
By the time I reached the school, Mia was sitting in the counselor's office with her arms wrapped around her knees.
Her teacher had done what she could. She'd taken a phone away from a student who was replaying the church video and moved Mia out of the room before the other children began asking questions. But Mia had heard enough.
“Ella said my dad yelled because I was bad,” she whispered.
I sat on the carpet beside her. “He yelled because he was upset with me. That was wrong. You did nothing bad.”
“Is Patrick still my Patrick?”
“Patrick is still someone who cares about you. The grown-ups have some difficult things to work out. You don't have to solve them.”
“Do I have to pick one?”
“No.”
The counselor, Ms. Brennan, suggested a few visits with a child therapist experienced in family transitions. She reminded me that Mia might repeat questions and that grown-up explanations should stay short and consistent. She also offered to help the school stop children from sharing the video. I accepted both suggestions.
Outside, Patrick was waiting beside his car. Celia had told him Mia was upset. When he saw her red eyes, his face collapsed.
“Hey, pumpkin,” he said.
She stayed by my leg. “Did my picture wreck the wedding?”
“No.” He crouched, leaving space between them. “Your picture was lovely. I should have told your mom the truth about some things. That's my responsibility.”
For the first time since the ceremony, he didn't ask her to make him feel better. Mia stepped forward and hugged him for a moment. Then she came back to me.
Marcello called as we drove home. I'd told him about the video. He offered to speak to the principal, pay for a private school, and arrange for a security professional outside her classroom. The flood of solutions made my chest tighten.
“She doesn't need to be moved again,” I said. “She needs the adults to stop making her life into a crisis.”
He went quiet. “Tell me what would help.”
“Ask whether she wants to talk this evening. Then, if she does, listen.”
He did. Mia asked him if he had ever been embarrassed at school. He told her about falling off a bicycle in front of an entire bus and getting up with his shorts caught on the handlebars. She laughed until she hiccupped. They talked for eight minutes. He didn't mention the church.
Two days later I saw Salvatore DeLuca in Lydia's conference room. He was seventy-three, leaner than I remembered, his hair almost white. He wore a gold signet ring bearing the same anchor crest as Rusk’s, a family emblem I could no longer look at without remembering the apartment door. Marcello sat beside me but kept his distance from his father.
Salvatore hadn't come to apologize. He said he had come to correct “errors in the record.”
“I didn't instruct Rusk to threaten a pregnant woman,” he began.
“You instructed him to stop me reaching your son,” I said.
“Yes.” He looked away. “I believed the relationship was unstable. Marcello was about to take over a company with thousands of employees. I thought you were both too young to understand what was at stake.”
“Did you know about Mia?”
“Not then. Not until the following year, when one of our investigators found a birth record.”
My hands curled under the table. “And you didn't tell him.”
“No.”
Marcello rose halfway from his chair, then sat again.
Salvatore continued. “I feared a fight over a child would become a public scandal. Rusk said she was safe with her mother. I chose not to interfere.”
“You were interfering the entire time,” Marcello said.
“I see that now.”
It wasn't enough. He hadn't even said Mia's name.
Lydia laid a copy of the forged letter in front of him. “Did you authorize the creation of this document?”
Salvatore studied it for a long time. “I knew a letter had been prepared. I did not compare the signature.”
“That's not the question,” Lydia said.
“Yes,” he answered. “I authorized it.”
“I'm leaving the company,” Marcello told him.
His father looked up. “Don't be dramatic.”
“I've already resigned as chief operating officer. I won't be part of a business that treats my family as a liability.”
“You think this will win her back?”
Marcello looked at me, then back at his father. “No. I think it might help me become someone my daughter can trust.”
Salvatore's face grew hard. “If you walk away, I won't pay for the legal fight.”
“Then I won't ask you to.”
We left him sitting beside the documents he'd chosen over us. In the parking lot Marcello leaned against his car and breathed like a man who'd been running.
“I'm not sure that was smart,” he said.
“Maybe it wasn't. But it was yours.”
He pulled the purple crayon from his pocket, now worn nearly to its paper wrapper.
“Anna,” he said, “what if she decides she doesn't want me?”
“Then you keep showing up in the ways that are good for her,” I said. “And you respect what she needs.”
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His phone buzzed with a message from the laboratory. The paternity report was ready.
Neither of us reached to open it.
