Chapter 3 - RICHARD’S OTHER LIFE
At first, Ethan told himself he was only helping because somebody had to be logical.
Ava was emotional, pregnant, and carrying a lifetime of anger toward a father who had given her just enough intermittent attention to create hope and just enough control to poison it. Ethan, meanwhile, was still trying to fit the existence of a secret half-sister into a brain that had grown up believing Richard’s worst quality was being overbearing, not duplicity on the scale of two families.
So he told himself he was being practical.
He drove Ava to a prenatal appointment when her car battery died.
He picked up groceries once when she texted that she couldn’t carry anything because her ankles were too swollen.
He read the papers Richard wanted her to sign.
That was the day practicality turned into alarm.
They sat in Ava’s tiny one-bedroom rental on the far side of Elkridge, the place Dana Bell had barely kept ahead of eviction before cancer finally overtook her. Boxes still lined one wall because Ava had never fully unpacked after her mother died. A thrift-store bassinet stood half assembled in the corner. A pink towel covered a cracked kitchen chair because the vinyl seat was split.
Richard had hired a “family consultant,” according to the cover page.
Not a lawyer, not exactly.
Not a social worker either.
A consultant.
The documents described a “temporary custodial transfer” for six months “to ensure maternal stabilization and infant opportunity.”
Ethan read the pages twice.
“It’s an adoption,” he said.
Ava hugged her belly and looked away. “He says it isn’t.”
“It absolutely is.”
“He said wealthy friends of his can keep the baby safe until I’m ‘on my feet.’”
Ethan lifted one of the pages. “Ava, this says you waive future contest except in extreme circumstances.”
She started crying then—not loudly, just the defeated kind of crying that came from too many months of pressure without enough sleep.
“He told me if I loved her, I’d give her a better life than this.”
Ethan looked around the apartment.
The peeling paint.
The stacked bills.
The bassinet missing a mattress.
Then he looked at Ava again and thought, with a sudden violence of feeling, that poverty was not the same as unworthiness, and that Richard had probably spent years relying on people not knowing the difference.
“When did he first bring these?” Ethan asked.
“After my last appointment. He drove me to lunch and said he had ‘a solution.’”
“Did you sign anything?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Ava wiped her face.
“He’s getting meaner.”
Ethan looked up.
“What do you mean?”
Ava hesitated, then reached for her phone and played a voicemail.
Richard’s voice filled the room.
Calm.
Controlled.
The same voice he used at home when Laura was “overreacting” and Ethan was “being dramatic.”
You need to stop behaving like this baby belongs only to you, Ava. You are not equipped. I have already done more for you than anyone else ever did. If you force this to become ugly, don’t expect me to keep paying that rent.
Ethan felt his whole body go cold.
He knew that tone.
The weaponized reasonableness.
The way threat hid inside logistics.
“How many times has he said things like that?”
Ava gave a tired laugh. “Since always.”
Then she looked at him, really looked at him, and Ethan understood that she had spent nineteen years studying the same man from another angle.
“He’s different with you, isn’t he?” she asked.
Ethan thought of dinners where Richard corrected Laura’s spending.
Thought of the way he controlled the temperature in every conversation.
The passwords.
The demands.
The criticism disguised as guidance.
“Not different enough,” he said.
Ava leaned back and closed her eyes.
“I didn’t want to ruin your life.”
“Too late.”
The words came out harsher than he intended.
Ava flinched.
He regretted it instantly.
“I mean—” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know what I mean.”
She nodded without opening her eyes.
“That makes two of us.”
He stayed another hour.
As he was leaving, Ava called after him.
“Ethan?”
He turned.
“If something happens…”
The rest of the sentence hung there.
“What?”
She swallowed.
“If he starts pushing harder before I’m ready—if he shows up with those people again—can I call you?”
Ethan looked at her.
At the bassinet.
At the unsigned papers on the coffee table.
At the cheap blinds drawn half closed against a parking lot full of strangers.
“Yeah,” he said. “Call me.”
That night Richard came home late.
He found Ethan in the kitchen and said, too casually, “You’ve been out a lot.”
Ethan looked up from the sink.
“Do I need clearance?”
Richard gave him a long, unreadable look.
“No,” he said. “Just wondering who you’ve been spending time with.”
Ethan’s heart kicked once hard enough to hurt.
But he kept his face still and answered, “Friends.”
Richard smiled.
It was a small smile, easy to miss, but Ethan would think about it later.
Because it wasn’t a father’s smile.
It was the smile of a man who already knew the answer and was measuring how much somebody else would admit.
The next morning Ava texted him a single photo.
A black SUV parked outside her apartment.
Richard’s.
May you like
Under it she wrote:
He’s here with a woman in heels and a leather folder.
