Chapter 17: Paternity

Brooke's message came at ten the next morning.

Brunch at eleven. Rooftop at the Harbor Room. Come see what you did to me.

Benedict read it over my shoulder.

"You're not going," he said.

"I'm going to stand at the back and say nothing."

"That's worse."

"Yes," I said. "That's why I'm going."

He drove me himself and waited in the car, with the engine running and his phone in his hand.

The Harbor Room was a glass rooftop full of white tablecloths.

Brooke had taken the long table by the rail and covered it with pink balloons.

A cake stood in the middle with a sugar stork on top.

She wore a pale blue dress and a bright smile, and she was alone with a tray of mimosas.

Her chart had been public for twenty hours.

She hadn't stopped smiling since.

I stood in the doorway behind a potted palm.

The friend in the green jacket came in first, then the two others, then the tall one with his phone in his hand.

They did not sit.

"Where is everybody?" Brooke said. "You're late. I ordered for the whole table."

"We saw the chart," the tall one said.

"It's a lie. Someone hacked my doctor."

"Someone didn't," he said. "I opened it. It was on your laptop. You left the portal open at the lake house, and I posted it."

Brooke's smile stayed where it was.

"You."

"Me."

"After everything I did for you?"

"What did you do for me?"

"I got you into the room," she said. "I got you into every room that mattered. You'd be nobody."

"I'd be nobody who didn't laugh at a woman sitting in an airport for seven hours."

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