Page 111 of Ruthless Claim

I stop.

I know what the test is going to say. I’ve known since I turned the photograph face down in that coffee shop so I’d stop myself staring at it.

I’m not waiting for information.

I’m waiting for the courage to have the conversation.

I meet Claire again three days later at another coffee shop, this time in Midtown. This one is a little more upscale with homemade desserts in the case and baristas in beige aprons scurrying around, fulfilling orders.

Claire is already there, wearing a soft pink turtleneck sweater, her hair braided tightly back. It’s so weird seeing her with long hair, but then again I only knew a snapshot of her for six weeks nine years ago.

She has a folder on the table this time. She pushes it toward me when I sit down and I open it.

There’s a copy of Finn’s birth certificate. The father field is blank and something in my chest does something I put away immediately.

There’s a school photo underneath, the ones they take at the beginning of the school year, where kids wear slightly formal clothes and smile wooden expressions to the camera.

Finn’s lost a front tooth in this photo.

He looks more childlike in the photo with that missing tooth. His dark eyes are wide. I look at the gap where the tooth is missing and I wonder whether it came out clean or whether it was the long wobbling kind that takes weeks.

Does he believe in the Tooth Fairy? Did it hurt when it came out?

Does he cry easily or is he a tough child?

It bothers me more than it should that I know nothing about him.

I look at the rest of his face instead. The eyes are hers. The dark brown, the shape of them. The nose—I can’t tell. It’s hard to say with a kid this age. The jaw I thought was mine in the first photograph looks more rounded in this one, more like a kid’s jaw than I remembered. The ears, maybe. There’s something about the ears that I keep coming back to then second-guessing. The ears could be mine. Or they could just be ears. But they also look like my mom’s ears.

“He likes football,” Claire says. She’s watching me look at the photo. “Or as you call it, soccer. And he likes maps. Geography, too. He can name the capital of any country in the world.” She smiles fondly. “He’ll quiz you on it and get annoyed if you get one wrong.”

I put the photograph down, my heart hammering and a bead of sweat trickling down my back.

A kid who takes information seriously and gets irritated when other people don’t. Who needs to know the capital cities of every country, who wants answers to be precise and correct.

I know what kind of child that is. I was that kind of child. Connor found it useful. Brigid said I was insufferable and correcting adults was rude. I spent most of my childhood in rooms where nobody took anything seriously enough and it drove me nuts.

I look at the photograph again.

“He’s a really good kid,” Claire says, quietly. “Whatever you’re thinking right now—whatever you’re deciding…” She swallows nervously. “I want you to know that.”

“I’m not deciding anything,” I tell her coolly, looking up at her.

She bites her lips and nods. “Okay.”

I need to change the subject. “The test,” I say. “How do we arrange it?”

Claire looks relieved at the exchange of topic and rattles off the name of a clinic. Results in a few days. I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s clearly been planning this and I tell her this.

“Yes, for about a year.” She fiddles with a cheap looking ring on her right hand and I mark the movement. She’s nervous. “I almost called you three times before I actually did.” She looks at the table. “There was a career day at his school. Another kid’s father came in—talked about being a fireman. Showed them his gear, the whole thing.” She pauses, her throat bobbing. “Finn came home and asked me why his dad had never come to anything.”

I freeze.

“What did you tell him?” I breathe.

She gives me a pitiful smile. “That you didn’t know he existed. That if you’d known, you’d have been there.” Another pause. “I hope I wasn’t lying to him.”

I look at the photograph again.