He Broke the Heart That Saved Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Second Check

Dane sees Timmy's gray eyes and the mark on his thumb. His mother writes a second check and Hannah tears it up in front of the staff. Dane orders a paternity test, and his fiancee takes the vials.

Dane didn't call security.

He looked at the cameras, and the cameras looked back at him.

"My office," he said. "Both of you. Now."

"Dane," Demi said.

"Now, Demi."

She followed us to the elevator with her chin up and her heels clicking.

Bev carried Timmy. Timmy waved at a man holding a camera, and the man waved back.

Dane's office was on the top floor, with a glass wall and a view of the lake.

His secretary stood up behind her desk when we passed and sat down again very slowly.

Dane didn't speak until the door closed.

Then he stood by the window with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets.

I knew that posture.

It was how he stood when he was trying not to say the first thing.

Timmy wriggled out of Bev's arms and went straight to the desk.

"Is this a real office?" he asked.

"It's a real office," Dane said without turning.

"Can I draw on this?"

He held up a yellow legal pad.

"Yes."

Timmy climbed into the big leather chair, took a pen out of its holder, and bent over the pad with his tongue between his teeth.

Dane turned around.

I watched him see it.

Timmy's gray eyes, the way he pushed his dark hair back with the heel of his hand.

The little crescent birthmark at the base of his left thumb.

Dane had the same mark on the same thumb. He had once told me his father called it a thumbprint from God.

Dane's mouth opened.

"What are you drawing?" he asked Timmy. His voice came out rough.

"A dog."

"What kind?"

"A big one. Mom says we can't have one until my heart is fixed. So I'm getting ready."

Dane looked at me.

I looked back and said nothing.

"How old is he?" he asked.

"Five."

"His birthday?"

"May ninth."

Demi laughed, short and sharp. "Dane. Count backward and you'll find a dozen men she could have been with by then."

"I can count," Dane said quietly.

He crossed the room and stopped a foot from me.

"Is he mine?"

It was a plain question and he had earned a plain answer.

"I won't say yes and have you think I'm lying," I said.

"Take the test. Today."

"I stopped asking you to take my word six years ago."

"You stopped?" he said. "I never got the chance to give it."

The door opened without a knock.

Ingrid Rowland came in with a camel coat over her arm, her silver hair in its usual twist.

She saw Timmy behind the desk.

Her face lost all its color for a moment.

Then she put it back on.

"Hannah," she said. "I wondered how long it would take."

"Mother," Dane said.

She went to his secretary's desk, took a checkbook from her bag, and wrote in it with a gold pen.

She tore the check out and walked it across the room to me.

"Five hundred thousand," Ingrid said.

"For the boy's care, and a house back in Marietta. You'll keep away from my son."

I looked at the number.

It had a lot of zeroes.

Six years ago, in a hospital corridor, she had held out a smaller one and said the same words in the same voice.

I took the check with both hands.

Then I tore it in half.

I tore it again, and again, until the pieces would not tear.

I put them in her open palm.

"My son needs a surgeon," I said. "He doesn't need your money, and neither do I."

The secretary, at the glass door, had stopped pretending to type.

Ingrid closed her hand slowly on the paper.

"Mother," Dane said. "You told me she cashed the first one."

"I told you what I knew."

"What you knew?"

"Dane." She laid a hand on his sleeve. "You were dying. I was keeping you alive."

"I'm not dying now."

His voice was very flat.

He turned to the phone on his desk and pressed a button.

"Send up a phlebotomist," he said. "A private draw. And the paternity kit from legal."

"Dane," Demi said. "Not here."

"Here."

"If the press hears you took a test in this building, it's a story by dinner."

She came closer, soft and reasonable.

"Let me take it to a private lab myself. I'll keep your name off it."

Dane rubbed his face with one hand.

For a second he looked tired in a way I remembered.

"Fine," he said.

"Hannah?" He looked at me.

"Do it today," I said.

"Today."

The phlebotomist came, and Timmy held out his small arm and said, "I'm brave, I get a popsicle," and the woman laughed.

Then Dane sat in the chair and rolled up his sleeve.

I watched his blood fill three small tubes.

Demi took each one from the nurse's hand and put it in a padded case.

She held the case against her chest.

As she passed Ingrid, the two women looked at each other.

Ingrid gave her the smallest nod.

I saw it.

I didn't know yet what it meant.

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