Chapter 4 - SEVEN MONTHS
The paramedics arrived before Dennis called again.
They took Sophie downstairs where the air was cooler.
One of them wrapped her in a light cotton sheet after removing her damp shirt and checking her temperature.
She clung to the rabbit.
She would not let anyone take it from her.
I sat beside her on the living room floor while Rosa spoke quietly with a police officer in the kitchen.
“What happened upstairs?” the paramedic asked.
Sophie looked at me.
I wanted to answer for her.
I wanted to spare her from having to repeat it.
But I remembered how often adults had answered for Claire.
How often Dennis had explained everyone else’s feelings.
So I said nothing.
Sophie rubbed one rabbit ear between her fingers.
“Daddy said I ask too many questions.”
“What questions?”
“About Uncle Michael.”
My heart stopped.
The paramedic glanced at me.
I kept my face still.
“What did you ask about Michael?”
Sophie pointed toward the hallway.
“There’s a picture.”
I knew the photograph.
It had been taken at Cannon Beach the summer before Michael died.
Dennis and Michael standing together, wind flattening their shirts against their bodies.
Michael laughing.
Dennis squinting at the sun.
Claire behind the camera.
“What about the picture?”
“Mommy used to say I smile like him.”
I looked away.
Seven months.
Michael had been dead seven months when Sophie was born.
Dennis told everyone she had arrived six weeks early.
I visited the hospital once.
Sophie was tiny, but she was not in an incubator.
She did not have oxygen tubes.
She had gone home two days later.
At the time, I asked nothing.
Grief had made me stupid.
Or maybe cowardly.
The officer approached.
“Mr. Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have somewhere else the child can stay tonight?”
“She can stay with me.”
“We’ll have to coordinate that with child welfare.”
“Of course.”
I stood.
My knees hurt.
Everything hurt.
“What about my son?”
“We’re trying to locate him.”
“He said he was in Seattle.”
The officer looked at me carefully.
“His phone currently appears to be local.”
Of course it did.
Dennis had lied about Seattle.
Another small lie inside a much larger one.
My phone rang.
I expected him.
Instead, the name on my screen was ANNIE ROTH.
Annette Roth had been my family’s attorney for twenty-six years.
She had helped Ruth establish the Mercer Family Trust after we sold our construction supply company.
I had not spoken to her in months.
I answered.
“Elmer?”
“Annie.”
“Dennis just called my office.”
I looked toward Sophie.
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to know whether a beneficiary designation could be challenged after distribution.”
I stopped moving.
Annette heard the silence.
“Elmer?”
“I found a paternity test.”
Another silence.
“Whose?”
“Sophie and Dennis.”
Annette spoke more slowly.
“And?”
“He’s excluded.”
She inhaled.
“Elmer, where are you?”
“At Dennis’s house.”
“Do not confront him alone.”
“I already did.”
“No. I mean not about the trust.”
I felt cold despite the heat.
“What does Sophie’s paternity have to do with the trust?”
Annette was quiet long enough that I knew the answer was bad.
“When Ruth created the trust, each son received an equal beneficial share.”
“I know.”
“If either son died before full distribution, his share passed to his biological descendants.”
I closed my eyes.
Michael had died before receiving most of his share.
Dennis told me Michael had no children.
Annette continued.
“When Michael died, Dennis submitted an affidavit stating that Michael left no biological descendants.”
My eyes moved to Sophie.
“And then?”
“Under the trust terms, Michael’s remaining share shifted to the surviving branch.”
Dennis.
“How much?”
“Elmer…”
“How much money?”
“By the time everything was distributed, approximately one-point-eight million dollars.”
I stopped hearing the room.
A police radio crackled somewhere behind me.
The paramedic said something to Sophie.
Rosa was crying again.
One-point-eight million dollars.
Dennis had not merely lied about being Sophie’s father.
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If Sophie was Michael’s child, he had erased her from her father’s estate.
And collected the price of pretending she belonged to him.
