Chapter 27: Four Candles

Imogen's POV

Rory turned four in a hotel garden room with a paper crown on his head and frosting on both elbows.

Ansel's mother had made the cake.

It leaned a little to the left, and Rory had named it "the tower."

Ansel was hanging a banner that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY RORY, and he had hung it upside down.

"It's fine," he said. "Four-year-olds can't read."

"I can read," Rory said.

"You can read your name."

"That's reading."

Ansel looked at me over the ladder.

"He's going to be a lawyer," he said.

At four o'clock exactly, the door opened.

Lachlan stood in it in a gray sweater, with no jacket and no tie.

He held a flat wooden box under his arm, and he looked like he'd been standing in the corridor for ten minutes.

I knew he had.

The room went quiet when a man walks in who is not sure he's allowed.

Rory stopped chewing.

He climbed down from his chair and walked straight across the carpet, and he stopped in front of Lachlan's knees.

He tipped his head all the way back.

"You're the man from the wall," he said.

"Which wall?" Lachlan asked, and his voice was not steady.

"Mama has a picture in her bag. She turns it around when I look."

I put my hand over my mouth.

Lachlan crouched until his eyes were level with Rory's.

"I was in that picture a long time ago," he said. "Your mother can turn it back whenever she wants."

"Are you my dad?"

The garden room had a ceiling fan, and I heard every turn of it.

"Yes," Lachlan said. "I am."

Rory thought about this.

"Okay," he said. "Did you bring me a present?"

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