Chapter 7 - The Bloodline
The little girl looked up from her muffin, her dark eyes shifting from Marcus’s gaunt face to Clara’s soaked figure. Recognition flickered across her features, followed by a sudden, sharp wariness. She reached down, pulling her patent-leather shoes closer to her chest.
"That's the lady from the restaurant," she said, her voice carrying clearly in the vaulted, cavernous space of the concourse. "Uncle Marcus... why is she wet?"
Uncle Marcus.
The title struck Clara with the force of an iron bar across the shins. The girl did not even know he claimed to be her father. Elena had protected her from that truth, too.
"Lily, go stand by the newsstand for a minute," Marcus said, his voice shaking as he struggled to pull himself upright using the aluminum cane. His joints popped audibly in the damp air. "Go on, sweetheart. Pick out a comic book for the train."
The child hesitated, looking between the three adults, sensing the invisible wire stretched taut between them. But she obeyed, sliding off the bench and walking slowly toward the brightly lit kiosk thirty feet away, her socks silent on the cold tiles.
Once she was out of earshot, Marcus leaned his full weight onto the cane, his jaw clenched against what was clearly agonizing physical pain.
"You look like Thomas, Clara," Marcus rasped, a bitter shadow of a grin crossing his pale lips. "Always turning up when the bill is due."
"You stole my daughter, Marcus," Clara said, walking toward him until she was standing just beyond the reach of his cane. "You faked your death, you hid behind a nanny, and you let me spend five years thinking she was buried in a ditch somewhere along the highway."
"I took what was mine," Marcus hissed, his eyes flashing with the old, venomous arrogance of his youth. "Thomas couldn't have children. The doctors told him when he was twenty-two, but he was too proud to tell you, wasn't he? He let you spend three years crying into your pillow after every negative test until you finally came to New York."
"That was a mistake," Clara said, her voice dropping into an icy register. "A mistake born of grief and wine, and you knew it. You used it."
"And the result was Maya," Marcus countered, leaning forward until Clara could smell the copper and peppermint on his breath—the smell of advanced hepatic failure. "My blood. The only thing I created in fifty-six years that wasn't a contract, a debt, or a lie. Look at her, Clara! Look at her hands! She has our mother's fingers! She has my brow!"
"She has my heart," Clara said, stepping closer, refusing to blink. "And right now, your accounts in Zurich are frozen. Arthur Sterling is holding the line on my phone. If you try to board that train to Montreal, two federal marshals will meet you at the platform in Milwaukee. You won't make it to the border, Marcus. You'll die in an infirmary bed in a federal holding facility in Kenosha, and she will be placed in a state foster home before your lawyers can file a habeas petition."
Marcus flinched. The hand on his cane trembled violently, the rubber tip slipping half an inch on the polished terrazzo. He looked past Clara toward Elena, who stood with her head bowed, staring at the floor.
"You told her about the trust?" Marcus whispered to Elena, his voice cracking with utter defeat.
"I had to," Elena said, her voice barely audible. "Look at yourself, Marcus. You can't even carry her suitcase up the stairs. You have two months left—maybe three. What was your plan? To die in a rented flat in Quebec and leave an eight-year-old child alone with forged papers and no legal name?"
May you like
Marcus closed his eyes. A low, shuddering breath escaped his chest, rattling in his throat. When he opened them again, the anger was gone, replaced by the naked, terrifying vulnerability of an old animal that had reached the end of the territory.
"She doesn't know your name, Clara," Marcus whispered, his voice breaking. "She calls me Uncle Marcus. She thinks her mother died in a hospital when she was a baby. If you take her right now, you aren't bringing home your daughter. You are taking a stranger's child."
