Chapter 10 - The Test Named the Father
The results came back eleven days later.
Preston was there.
So was Lucinda.
My attorney slid the report across the conference table without ceremony.
Probability of paternity: 99.98%.
I was the biological father of Lucinda’s unborn child.
Even though I had prepared for it, the words hit me like a physical blow.
Lucinda closed her eyes.
Preston did not look at her.
He looked at me first, oddly enough, as if confirming that I was taking the same hit he was.
Then he stood up.
The engagement ring he had taken back from her the day after the wedding lay in a sealed evidence bag on the table.
“I’m done,” he said flatly.
Lucinda rose too. “Preston, please—”
“No.”
There was no shouting.
No dramatic sweep of the arm.
Just finality.
“I could have survived humiliation,” he said. “I could have survived you loving someone else. I might even have survived a mistake. But I will not survive being deliberately used.”
That word landed harder than almost anything else.
Used.
Because by then, it was obvious that was what had happened to both of us—just in different ways.
Me through that hotel night.
Preston through the wedding itself.
And Elisa through Lucinda’s slap.
Lucinda began to cry then, real tears this time. Not because her lie had failed. Because its cost had become irreversible.
I finally asked the question that had been waiting at the center of every part of this mess.
“Did you know it was mine before the wedding?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Then, barely above a whisper, she said, “Yes.”
The room went completely still.
“How long?” I asked.
“Since the first doctor’s appointment.”
So she had known.
Known when she bought the dress.
Known when she smiled through tastings and fittings.
Known while hiding the envelope in the vase.
Known when she slapped my little girl to stop the truth from reaching my hand.
That was the moment pity left me for good.
Not because she was pregnant.
May you like
Because she had looked at the truth, understood exactly what it meant, and chosen deceit anyway.
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