Chapter 12: The Question He Couldn't Answer

"The night clerk let me in," Chantal said. "I told him I was family."

I stood at the bottom of the stairs with my hand on the rail.

My hair was still damp at the neck, and I could feel exactly where Killian's hands had been.

She had to know that.

She looked at my hair, and at the buttons of my coat, and smiled.

"Don't worry, Mireille. I'm not here to shame you. You are, after all, still his wife."

"You are not allowed near me."

"Killian's rules." She waved a hand. "He made a promise, not me."

She crossed her ankles the other way.

In the lobby light her face was not tearful or soft.

It was calm and tired and very pretty, and nothing in it was sorry.

"Sit," she said. "It won't take long."

"I'll stand."

"As you like."

She held out the envelope.

I did not take it.

"It's a copy," she said. "The lab sent three. This is the one for the wife."

I took it.

There were three sheets inside.

The first was a laboratory report, and the line at the bottom said the probability of paternity was 99.99 percent.

The name beside it was Killian Hayes, and the name of the child was Samuel Lowell.

The second sheet was a petition to the family court.

It asked for formal acknowledgment of the boy and a shared custody order.

The third sheet had a single paragraph.

I, Mireille Hayes, wife of Killian Hayes, acknowledge Samuel Lowell as my husband's son and welcome him into our family.

There was a line for my name.

"No," I said.

"You haven't finished reading."

"I don't need to."

"The Hayes family trust requires a spouse's consent before it admits a new heir."

"Constance's husband wrote it that way fifty years ago. I need your signature."

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