“There was no genetic testing at the time. But Thomas always maintained that he and Eleanor had never been intimate.”
I looked toward the photographs.
“And Julian?”
“He was raised knowing Thomas as the man who acknowledged him.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did Thomas ever learn the biological truth?”
Mr. Harrison reached into the box.
He handed me a modern laboratory report.
Dated three years earlier.
Both Thomas and Julian had consented to testing.
The result excluded Thomas as Julian's biological father.
I stared at the paper.
For the first time since opening the birth certificate, I felt an enormous weight shift inside me.
Not disappear.
Shift.
Thomas hadn't necessarily betrayed me through an affair.
But he had hidden another life.
For forty-six years.
He had kept an entire human being away from me.
He had allowed me to believe we were childless while he had accepted the responsibilities of fatherhood elsewhere.
