🏡 The House He Couldn’t Give Away

Chapter 16 - Neither Man

The DNA results came in stages, each one cruel in its own way.

First, Thomas Walsh was confirmed as Megan’s father. Then Ethan was confirmed as Thomas’s son. That made Megan and Ethan half-siblings, though neither had known it when they shattered Claire’s engagement and their own lives.

Ethan sat across from Claire in June’s office when the news was read.

He looked like the last piece of ground had opened beneath him.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Claire.

She nodded once.

Then he turned to Megan. “I’m sorry doesn’t touch this.”

“No,” Megan said. “It doesn’t.”

He left without asking anyone to stop him.

Afterward, Megan sat very still.

Claire expected tears.

Instead Megan said, “If the baby is Victor’s, I’m afraid.”

Claire looked out June’s office window, where sunlight flashed off passing cars.

“Then we get you unafraid.”

The next morning, Victor’s attorney filed a statement suggesting Claire and Megan had conspired to frame him to protect the house. Attached was a signed declaration from Linda Bennett accusing Claire of manipulating everyone from the beginning.

Robert read it at Claire’s kitchen table and aged with every line.

“She signed this after the fire?” he asked.

June nodded. “Yesterday afternoon.”

Megan’s voice was flat. “She chose Victor over us.”

Claire shook her head. “No. She chose her image over us. Victor is just the nearest mirror.”

Linda appeared in the doorway wearing a gray robe Claire remembered from childhood. Without pearls, she looked smaller.

“I want to explain.”

Robert stood. “Do you?”

“I was advised to protect myself.”

“You accused our daughter of manipulating a crime you confessed to.”

“I was scared.”

Megan said, “You always are.”

Linda’s eyes filled. “I am not the monster you need me to be.”

Claire looked at her mother for a long moment.

That was probably true. Monsters were simpler. Linda was a woman who had polished fear until it looked like motherhood.

“You’re not a monster,” Claire said. “But you are responsible.”

Linda’s face closed.

Robert turned to her. “I’m giving a statement correcting yours.”

“You’ll ruin me.”

“No,” he said. “I helped you avoid ruin until you confused it with innocence.”

That afternoon, Robert told the truth under oath.

Three days later, the baby’s paternity report arrived.

Megan asked Claire to sit with her on the porch swing when she opened it.

“If it’s Ethan’s,” Megan whispered, “I don’t know how to live with that.”

“If it’s Victor’s, we fight him.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Claire watched a car pass slowly down Magnolia Lane. “Because Celia wanted us to stand in this house as sisters. I am not promising forgiveness. But I will not let Victor turn this baby into another deed.”

Megan opened the envelope.

Her eyes moved down the page.

Then she whispered, “Neither.”

Claire frowned. “What?”

The report excluded both Ethan Harper and Victor Santos as biological father.

Claire read the line three times.

“Megan,” she said slowly, “who else could it be?”

Megan went white.

“No. That’s impossible.”

She grabbed her phone and called a number Claire had never seen.