Chapter 6 - Mara
I met Mara the day after DNA confirmation.
Neutral office.
Her lawyer present.
Mine.
No Tamsin.
Mara walked in wearing a gray sweater and black trousers.
Hair shorter than I remembered.
Same eyes.
She stopped when she saw me.
Neither of us moved.
Then I said:
“Hello.”
She laughed bitterly.
“That’s what we have?”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know.”
Good start.
We sat.
Mara asked:
“Did you know?”
“No.”
She stared.
“I need more than that.”
“I did not know you were pregnant.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
“Not when she was born?”
“No.”
“Not after the letters?”
“I never saw them.”
She looked at her lawyer.
Caroline nodded slightly.
Evidence supported that so far.
Mara looked back.
“What did Lucasta tell you?”
“That you wanted no contact beyond the original message. Later she said you had left Maine and were living abroad part-time.”
“I have never lived abroad.”
“I know now.”
“Did you ask?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Through Lucasta.”
Mara closed her eyes.
There.
We had built a circle.
She asked:
“Why didn’t you hire someone to find me?”
“I had before.”
“The investigator in Maine.”
“Yes.”
“And I told him to leave.”
“Yes.”
“Because Lucasta had just told me you considered my pregnancy a manipulation.”
I stopped.
“What?”
Mara pulled out another document.
An email from Lucasta, six years earlier.
Mara,
Corvin is not in a position to respond emotionally to a pregnancy claim while the relationship itself remains unresolved. His view is that introducing a child into the conflict will be seen by his family as leverage.
My throat tightened.
“I never said that.”
“I know now.”
She continued:
“So when your investigator arrived, I thought you were gathering evidence.”
“Against you?”
“For custody later.”
There.
Old family reputation doing the rest.
Mara said:
“I told him to leave.”
“I respected it.”
“I thought your silence after that proved Lucasta was right.”
“And I thought your request proved she was right.”
We sat in the wreckage of reciprocal restraint.
Mara asked:
“When did you stop loving me?”
That question was worse.
“I don’t know that I did all at once.”
She looked down.
“I hated you for years.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
She looked at me again.
“I watched our daughter ask why her father never answered birthday letters.”
My chest hurt.
“What did you tell her?”
“At first that you were far away.”
“Then?”
“That adults sometimes make mistakes.”
“Then?”
Mara’s eyes filled.
“When she was five, she asked if you didn’t want girls.”
I looked away.
Caroline Beck said:
“We can stop.”
“No,” I said.
Mara answered:
“I told her I did not know.”
There are harms that do not need graphic description.
May you like
One child asking whether her sex explains paternal silence was enough.
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