Chapter 14: Nothing to Sign For

Rex came to my door at seven that evening with his left hand wrapped to the wrist.

He had changed his shirt. He hadn't slept.

"Come in," I said.

He looked at the floor of my kitchen, where the blood was gone and the tile was clean, and then he didn't look at it again.

I had my arm in a sling and eight stitches under the gauze.

I sat him at the table and put a folder in front of him.

"I had a lawyer write this today," I said. "Read it before you say anything."

He read slowly. His lips moved on the long words.

It said that he acknowledged the child as his own, in writing, before a notary.

It said a trust would be set up for the baby, run by a trustee who was not a Thorpe, and that no part of it would ever go to Sabine.

It said that if she was found unfit, the child would live with him.

"No money for her," Rex said.

"None."

"She'll have nothing."

"She'll have her father's house for another week, and then she'll have what she had before she knew me."

"That's not a lot."

"She'll manage. She's had practice at being forgiven."

He put his good hand flat on the page.

"What do I have to do?" he said.

"Show up."

"That's it?"

"It's more than most men do. It's more than you've done so far."

He laughed, short and bitter.

"I'm a bodyguard who's been fired. I have four hundred thousand in debt to a man who breaks fingers. And you want me to be somebody's father."

"I want you to be told the truth," I said, "and to choose with your eyes open."

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