Page 128 of The Homemaker

“He must have been really young. How old was he when Chris died?”

Her eyes narrow into tiny slits. “He wasn’t born yet. I was pregnant when Chris died, but I didn’t know it yet.”

“He died. A month later, I rented a lovely little house for two weeks in Minneapolis.”

“Alice,” I whisper, slowly shaking my head, trying to make sense of everything, “how do you know he’s Chris’s son?”

Her bobbing leg stills, spine straightens. “B-because he is.”

“But how do you know?”

She shakes her head a half dozen times. “Because he has dark hair like Chris and … and …” She ghosts the pads of her fingers along her cheeks. “He has freckles like Chris had when he was a young boy.”

I blink. It’s all I can do because the rest of my body feels immovable.

“Alice?”

Her wide-eyed gaze shoots to mine.

“I have brown hair.”

“But—”

“And I had freckles when I was younger.”

Her eyes redden and she quickly blots the corners while clearing her throat. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispers. “I wasn’t well, Murphy.”

“Itdoesn’t matter?” My jaw drops.

Alice shakes her head, averting her gaze.

“Alice, that boy could be mine, and your reaction isit doesn’t matter? Well, it sure as hell matters to me!”

She winces. “Don’t do this,” she whispers. “You don’t know what I went through.”

“Do what? Care that I might have a child out there who doesn’t know I exist? How can you not know? Didn’t they do an ultrasound?”

She looks at me, and I feel the pain in her eyes, but it does nothing to temper my anger. “They did, but not until it was later, which made it harder to pinpoint the date of conception. But I just knew.”

“You knew it had to be his? Were you having sex every fucking day like we were?” I hate how harsh and insensitive my words sound, but I haven’t had time to process this like she has.

“We weren’t real,” she mumbles.

“Alice,” I drag a hand through my hair and grunt a laugh, “either you’re better or you need to go back into treatment. We were real, and you damn well know it. Stop bullshitting me. That boy you follow, the one for whom you want to move to Edina? He could be my child. That’s pretty fucking real. So don’t act like it can matter to you, but it’s not supposed to matter to me.” I start to say more. Lord knowsthere issomuch to say, but I bite my tongue and leave before I say something I can’t take back.

She’s right. I don’t know what she went through. I wasn’t there. And I hate no one in particular for the awful fucking truth.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Alice

It sucks being someone’s first choice,

but not their only one.

I knew.

At least, I knew until I saw Cameron Beckett with his freckled face. I spent years wondering if he was Chris’s son or Murphy’s. Iknewhe could be either man’s son. But I wanted him to be Chris’s because the alternative felt like a betrayal to so many people.