Chapter 2 - TEN MINUTES TO DEFEND MYSELF
Felicia recovered quickly.
“This is obscene,” she said. “Your father’s coffin is ten feet away, and she has transformed his funeral into a paternity spectacle.”
“I did not stop us from reaching the grave,” I answered.
Garrett stared at the envelope. “Does that contain proof?”
“It does.”
“Then give it to me.”
“You can see it after your father is buried.”
His disbelief sharpened. “You arrive with five children I never knew existed and expect me to wait?”
“Ten years ago, I asked for five minutes. You decided I did not deserve them. Today, your father deserves the next thirty.”
The words struck him, but he did not argue.
We took our seats. Felicia tried to sit beside Garrett, but he moved to the chair on Theodore’s other side. For the first time since I arrived, distance appeared between them.
During the service, Gavin sat rigidly, as though grief required military posture. Mason kept checking the faces around us to see who was staring. Lucas studied the funeral program. Audrey silently cried while Clara held her hand.
Theodore’s minister spoke about the people whose lives he changed. My children had never met him, yet they knew the card he sent me by heart. To them, he was the grandfather who believed their mother when believing her offered him nothing.
At the end of the service, Clara placed a copy of Theodore’s card beside the flowers.
Garrett watched her.
After the burial, he asked us to join him in the Remington estate library. I agreed only after my children said they wanted answers. Felicia followed without being invited.
The library looked unchanged from my marriage: dark shelves, leather chairs, and a stone fireplace large enough to make ordinary conversations feel like formal negotiations. I placed the envelope on Theodore’s desk.
The parentage report came first.
Before our separation, Garrett and I had completed an assisted-fertility cycle at a Cincinnati clinic. The clinic retained an authorized sample under the consent documents we both signed. After the quintuplets were born, doctors needed accurate family information because premature infants can face inherited cardiac and clotting complications. A certified laboratory compared the children’s samples with Garrett’s preserved genetic profile.
The report established parentage with greater than 99.99 percent probability.
Garrett read every page.
“We thought the treatment failed,” he whispered.
“I learned it had worked eight days after you left.”
“And you never told me.”
“I called you.”
“I received no calls.”
“I left a voicemail the third time.”
His eyes moved toward Felicia.
She folded her arms. “Do not look at me. I did not manage your personal telephone.”
“You were my chief of staff,” Garrett said.
“I handled your office, not your private life.”
I placed the corrected hotel folio beside the report. It showed the reservation under my name but listed Felicia’s corporate email as the billing contact. The deposit had been paid using a Remington Foundation expense card assigned to her.
Felicia barely glanced at it.
“That proves I arranged a hotel room. We held donor meetings there constantly.”
“Under my name?”
“It could have been an administrative error.”
I added Marisol Vega’s notarized statement.
Marisol described Felicia entering the hotel with a woman whose hair, coat, and build resembled mine. She saw the woman meet an unidentified man near the elevator. Later, Felicia returned to the front desk and insisted that staff confirm “Mrs. Remington” had used the room if anyone asked.
Felicia’s composure began to fracture.
“This statement was created years afterward by an employee who wanted money.”
“She received nothing,” I said.
“You expect us to accept the memory of a hotel clerk over what Garrett saw?”
“Garrett never saw me. He saw a blurred photograph you placed in front of him.”
Garrett read the statement again. “Who was the woman?”
Felicia stood.
“I will not participate in an interrogation staged by someone who hid five children for a decade.”
She walked toward the door, but Garrett’s voice stopped her.
“If this evidence is false, stay and help me disprove it.”
Felicia turned. “You are allowing five familiar faces and your father’s death to overwhelm your judgment.”
“No. I am finally asking why you were afraid of an envelope you had supposedly never seen.”
She removed her engagement ring and placed it on the nearest shelf.
“When you remember who remained beside you for the last ten years, call me.”
After she left, no one spoke for several seconds.
Garrett looked at the children. “Do you know who I am?”
Gavin answered first. “Our biological father.”
The clinical phrase hurt him.
“Did your mother tell you why I wasn’t there?”
“She said you believed something about her that wasn’t true,” Lucas replied. “She also said she decided not to contact you again.”
Garrett looked at me. “At least you told them that part.”
“I did not make myself innocent by making you guilty.”
His anger softened into confusion.
“Why come now?”
“Theodore deserved to have his grandchildren beside him, even if he never knew who they were. The children deserved to decide whether they wanted to come.”
“And what do they want from me?”
Mason shrugged with painful honesty. “We don’t know you well enough to want anything yet.”
Garrett absorbed that answer.
“I want another test,” Gavin said. “One where you are there, so nobody can say Mom made it up.”
“That is fair,” Garrett answered.
He arranged an independent DNA appointment for the following morning. I insisted on a neutral laboratory, separate legal representation for the children, and no public announcement.
As we prepared to leave, Garrett asked me to remain behind.
“What happened to the voicemail?”
“I assumed you deleted it.”
“I never heard it.”
“You had already instructed your lawyer to keep me away.”
“That does not answer where it went.”
“No, Garrett. It does not.”
He looked toward Theodore’s desk, where the evidence of our destroyed marriage remained spread beneath the lamp.
May you like
“I am going to find it.”
For the first time in ten years, he sounded like a man searching for the truth rather than evidence supporting what he had already chosen to believe.
