Chapter 13 - THE LAST OFFER
The new test confirmed Richard was Clara’s biological father.
By then, it changed almost nothing.
A father had sent away his child.
Learning they shared blood did not make the choice worse.
It only destroyed his favorite excuse.
He read the result in Naomi’s office.
Then he put his face in his hands.
Clara watched from across the table.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she told him.
“Nothing.”
But he looked at her as if forgiveness might still arrive if he suffered visibly enough.
“I loved you,” he said.
Clara stood.
“You loved me when it was easy to believe I belonged to you.”
He started to answer.
She left before he could.
Outside, she leaned against the car and took three slow breaths.
“Was that cruel?”
“No.”
“Ruth would tell me I can be angry without becoming mean.”
“You told the truth.”
She nodded, but her hands kept shaking.
That evening, Vivian contacted Naomi.
She wanted a settlement.
She would return a portion of the money.
She would sign a statement describing “errors in judgment.”
In exchange, we would stop cooperating with the investigation and keep the matter private.
Naomi read the offer aloud.
When she finished, Clara laughed once.
It wasn’t a happy sound.
“Errors in judgment.”
I thought of the shoe.
The lake.
The letter inside a sealed envelope.
“Decline it,” I said.
“There’s more,” Naomi told us.
Vivian claimed she had recorded conversations with Richard years ago.
She wanted us to understand that she could destroy him.
I looked at Clara.
Clara looked back.
“Good,” she said.
“Then she should hand them over.”
Naomi’s expression changed slightly.
Pride, perhaps.
Or relief.
Two days later, Vivian arrived at the house while Clara and I were sorting photographs.
Arthur refused to let her inside.
She stayed on the front steps and shouted my name.
I opened the upstairs window.
“Speak to my attorney.”
“You think she loves you?” Vivian shouted.
“She came here because she wanted something.”
Clara stepped beside me.
“Yes,” she said.
“I wanted the truth.”
Vivian looked up.
For a second, she seemed to see her niece properly.
Not a problem.
Not a witness.
A person.
Then the moment passed.
“You have no idea what your mother was like.”
Clara’s voice stayed steady.
“I’m getting to know her.”
A car stopped at the gate.
Then another.
The investigator stepped out of the first.
May you like
Vivian turned toward the sound.
For once, she had nowhere else to point.
