THE RADIOLOGY OF BLOOD
Robert crouched, a visible effort for a man of seventy-eight, until he was eye-level with my son. He looked at Noah’s eyes—the deep, soulful brown he had inherited from Ethan—and then he looked at the silver tray resting against the boy’s knees.
“What is your name, son?” Robert asked, his voice unexpectedly gentle.
Noah looked at me, then back at the old man. “Noah Carter.”
Robert’s brow furrowed. “Carter?”
“He’s Ethan’s son,” I said, standing tall beside them. “We never got the paperwork finished before the accident. To Diane, that makes him a stranger.”
Robert straightened up slowly, his eyes shifting to Diane. The silence in the room was no longer polite; it was expectant. It was a vacuum waiting for a storm.
“I wrote to you, Robert,” I said, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “Twice. I asked for Noah to know his grandfather. I asked for help when the Whitmore lawyers tried to contest Ethan’s life insurance.”
Robert’s gaze turned to ice as it landed on Diane. “I never received a single letter.”
Diane’s face didn’t just pale; it seemed to dissolve. “Robert, surely you aren’t going to believe—”
“I don’t need to ‘believe,’” Robert interrupted. He reached into his pocket and produced a pair of glasses. I realized then that I wasn’t the only one who had come prepared. I pulled the envelope from my purse—the DNA results and the letter Ethan had written three months before his death, fearing exactly this kind of erasure.
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