Chapter 3
Tobin had been with me eighteen months.
His birth mother, Leah Morgan, had worked for one of my legitimate shipping companies.
Not Mafia.
Not family.
She died unexpectedly from an aneurysm.
No husband.
No relatives willing to take a toddler permanently.
I knew her because she once saved one of my warehouses from a catastrophic accounting mistake and insulted me while doing it.
I respected her.
After her death, Tobin entered temporary care.
I visited once.
Then again.
Then too often to keep pretending I was evaluating anything.
He called me Lucan for three months.
Then Dad by accident.
I went home afterward and sat in my car for twenty minutes.
By the time the adoption was complete, everyone around me knew one thing:
Tobin was mine because I had chosen him.
I thought Jessamine understood.
She met him six months later.
She brought books.
Sat on floors.
Learned which dinosaur was which.
Tobin loved her.
That fact made what came next uglier.
“When did this change?”
I asked.
Jessamine stared toward the library windows.
“It didn’t.”
“Then you were lying from the beginning.”
“No.”
She became angry.
“I tried.”
Interesting wording.
“Tried to what?”
“To believe what you believe.”
I waited.
“That choosing someone makes them the same as blood.”
There it was.
Not simple hatred.
A belief she had forced herself to perform.
“Why marry me if my son bothered you?”
“He didn’t at first.”
“Then?”
Her engagement to me moved from romance into public future.
People asked about children.
Ours.
Biological.
What would happen if we had a son?
Would Tobin still be treated first?
Would he inherit my attention?
My name?
Would guests treat her eventual children as equal to an adopted boy unrelated to either of us?
Questions arrived.
Not from me.
From other people.
Jessamine answered confidently.
Of course Tobin remained family.
Then went home and thought about it.
Again.
Again.
Until one question began eating everything else.
“What question?”
She looked at me.
“If blood doesn’t matter to you, why does it matter to everyone around you?”
I almost dismissed it.
Couldn’t.
Because tonight twenty-one adults had raised glasses.
Jessamine saw that as proof.
I saw it as failure.
But we were looking at the same room.
Then she said:
“I wanted you to see it.”
I became still.
“The guests.”
“Yes.”
“You humiliated Tobin to prove the family didn’t accept him.”
Her eyes filled.
“I needed you to stop pretending.”
There.
May you like
She had used my son as experiment.
Whatever truth she wanted to reveal no longer mattered enough to justify the method.
