Part 2
“Yes. All three.”
Grant’s fingers moved toward the photograph and stopped. Naomi did not soften what came next. “I found out I was pregnant five days after I left. At seven weeks, the first ultrasound showed three.”
He looked up slowly. “And you knew where I was.”
“Yes.”
“You knew for seven years.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the table. “I knew the test was due. I didn’t ask what it said.”
“No,” Naomi said. “You didn’t. That does not excuse what I chose afterward.”
Beyond the glass wall, an assistant crossed the hall with a tray of coffee. Grant waited until she passed. His restraint was not calm; Naomi could see the tendon moving in his jaw.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I told myself I would when they were old enough to ask. Then they asked, and I told myself I needed to prepare them. Then your notice arrived.”
“My notice.” He stood and walked to the window, stopping short of it. “You brought this into a meeting about a building.”
“The building brought your name into their classroom.”
He turned. “That does not answer me.”
“No. It doesn’t.” Naomi kept both hands on the table. “I should have called. I didn’t. I pictured your mother with a lawyer and a plan before I could get three babies home from the hospital.” She stopped and tried again. “I said it was for them. It wasn’t all for them.”
Grant looked as if he had prepared for denial and did not know where to put an admission. “So that was it? One afternoon, and you decided what I would be for the rest of my life?”
“It wasn’t one afternoon.”
“Seven years, Naomi.”
“I know.”
Grant gripped the back of the chair. “I want a DNA test.”
“So do I. A legal one, through a clinic we both approve.”
“And I want to see them.”
“After I tell them I spoke to you. At Second Bell, with Marcus nearby.”
“They’re seven.”
“Which means we make the decision. It does not mean I drag them into a room they are afraid to enter.”
Grant pressed his thumb against the pale scar there. Naomi remembered, suddenly, how he used to rub the edge of an eraser when he was trying not to say the first thing that came to him.
“Do they know about me?”
“Your name. That we were engaged. That you don’t know they exist.”
“Do they think I left them?”
“They don’t know what to think.”
He sat again. “Neither do I.”
The conference-room door opened before Naomi could answer. Lorraine Mercer entered with a tablet under one arm and reading glasses low on her nose. At sixty-four, she carried herself with the economy of someone who had learned that hesitation invited other people to occupy her space. Her silver hair was cropped close now. Naomi remembered it long, twisted at the nape of her neck while she arranged dinner plates no one had been allowed to move.
Lorraine saw Naomi, and one step of her stride went missing.
“I was told Second Bell’s director was here,” she said.
“She is,” Grant answered.
Lorraine’s gaze dropped to the photograph. She took in the three children, Grant’s hand beside them, and Naomi across the table. Nothing in her face gave Naomi the relief of certainty.
“The finance team is waiting,” Lorraine said.
“They can keep waiting.”
Lorraine’s grip tightened around her tablet. Naomi had never seen Grant make his mother wait in front of staff.
Lorraine set her tablet down. “Is there a reason?”
“A private one. I’ll speak to you when I’m ready.”
For a second, Naomi thought Lorraine might insist. Instead she picked up Naomi’s land-trust letter and read the first page.
“This property has a failed section of roof, obsolete electrical service, and no accessible route to the second floor,” she said. “The seller rejected two repair plans because neither had funding. If you ask us to delay, bring more than sentiment.”
“We have the beginning of an alternative,” Naomi said.
“Beginnings don’t keep rain out.”
It was cruelly close to something Marcus had said, which made it harder to dismiss. Lorraine had taken over Mercer Urban when her husband’s stroke coincided with the worst year in the company’s history. She had kept eighty-three employees on payroll by selling land intended for the family home. Naomi knew this because Grant had once told the story with pride. Lorraine had earned the habit of counting what could be lost. She had also turned that habit on people.
Grant moved the photograph into his folder. “Give us the room.”
Lorraine’s brows rose.
“Please,” he added, but did not retreat.
She set the letter down and left.
Grant waited for the door to close. “The building and the children stay separate.”
“Yes.”
“If the DNA confirms I’m their father, you will not make access depend on what happens to Second Bell.”
“No. And if you assign the purchase option, it will not buy access. I should have told you before I walked into this office. I am sorry I did it this way.”
He studied her face, perhaps looking for the woman who used to know when he was bluffing about an exam. “I don’t know whether I believe you.”
“You don’t have to today.”
He took out his phone and called his attorney, then asked for the name of a clinic that handled court-admissible paternity testing. While he wrote the number on the back of a business card, the finance team began gathering beyond the glass wall. An acquisition packet lay open at Grant’s empty place.
Naomi saw the property description, purchase price, and checklist of due-diligence reports. At the bottom of the preliminary authorization was his signature, dated six weeks earlier.
“You approved it before the structural report was finished,” she said.
Grant followed her eyes. “I relied on the property summary and the team’s recommendation. I never entered the building.”
“Then you approved an empty school. Second Bell was never in the room.”
He did not defend it. “No.”
He pushed the business card toward her.
“Monday morning?” he asked.
“I’ll confirm after I talk to them.”
“Today.”
Naomi almost bristled at the order. Then she pictured three children waiting beside the ribbon scraps.
“Today,” she agreed.
Grant touched the closed folder. “May I keep the picture?”
She had brought a copy. “Yes.”
Grant looked down at the three faces. “What did you tell them about why I wasn’t there?”
“That you never knew about them.”
“And why I never knew?”
Naomi closed her folder. “I told them you didn’t know. I haven’t told them what you did—or what I did…”
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