“There’s no situation,” Drew explains. “Not with me.”
“But there clearly was with my husband?”
Drew shakes his head. “From what I know, it was a one-night thing the night you and Oliver had a massive argument after your graduation. You’d broken up. He was irate. She was there. It was never meant to be anything more than that.”
“So we were together seven years, had one fight, and he accidentally conceived a child?”
Drew frowns and shifts awkwardly on the seat. “It wasn’t your first fight, Evie.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have run straight into the arms of another man, would I?!”
He seems unwilling to answer the question. “Anyway, several years later Chloe turned up begging for Oliver’s help with Harriet.”
“He bloody well should have helped her! Raising a child on her own, and he had all that money.”
He rubs his forehead. “Harriet was sick. Chloe was searching for a familial donor. That’s the only reason she showed up on your doorstep.”
My doorstep.“Was I there?”
“Apparently it was your shining moment. You were very compassionate and forgiving.” He looks at me kindly as he says this. An impliedWell done, Evie. That must have been hard.
No wonder she’s so normal around me, and lovely.
“Much like I hope you’re about to be with me for keeping all of this from you,” Drew adds.
I can’t help it. I sort of swell with pride at the idea that I would have set aside what must have felt like a betrayal and handled a situation like this with maturity.
“Oliver wasn’t a match. So that’s when my father broke the news that there was another son.”
Oh!
“Things only deteriorated after that. The chances of an uncle, particularly one who’s a half sibling of the father, being a genetic match were incredibly low.”
I let out a long sigh. I know Harriet is still alive, of course, so there must have been a happy ending to this story. I glance at him nervously. “She’s okay now?”
“She’s wonderful,” Drew says proudly.
“And how did Oliver take it all—you being the donor?”
He winces. “Badly.”
I’m not sure how many more ways my husband can disappoint me but jealousy, when the brother who had nothing gave you everything you needed, tells me all I need to know.
“Evie, the thing is, you let your parents fall madly in love with that little girl. Harriet used to rave about your mum and dad. You saw it today, the way they are with her.”
It was everything I had as a little girl myself. Knowing I’d been able to take the higher ground over how she came into the world, and then seeing my family embrace her—it’s everything that makes me proud of us. It’s all so beautiful.
Drew’s still talking, though. “But then you snatched her away from us all.”
76
Drew
It’s all going to come out now. The way Oliver pulled Evie and Harriet, inch by inch, from the family until he ripped that last shred of connection they’d all been clinging to. It was never just one thing. It was microwounds, inflicted over several years, always on top of scars that hadn’t yet healed. Withdrawing Harriet from their world, like they did from mine until I reached out to Chloe, wasn’t the only reason that, when we landed on their doorstep, they said they couldn’t do this anymore. It was a big one, but after years and years of Oliver chipping away, digging at them, planting suspicion in Evie’s mind, and manipulating emotions in both directions, it had been the last straw. They just had nothing left. Winning Evie back—only to risk losing her, and potentially Harriet, all over again—would take more emotional energy than they had.
“Once Harriet was well, Chloe and Oliver came to an arrangement,” I explain. “You two had Harriet every other weekend.”
Evie’s eyes widen at the idea of having been a part-time parent. The reality is that she’d reveled in it. Even in high school, though she had no experience with babies, they’d featured in her long-term life plan.
