Chapter 1
When James Grant sent the breakup text, Claire Sutton was sitting in a little pasta place by the back gate of campus with a three-dollar bowl of spaghetti in front of her and a middle-aged man in a sharp suit across the table.
A moment earlier, the man had said, "My name is Andrew Sutton. I'm your biological father."
Claire's fork stopped in midair and cut him off before he could finish.
"Hold on, mister. I'm a broke student with two dead parents. I don't have any money for you to take."
Andrew realized she had him pegged as a con artist.
He put out a hand, and the other man in a suit at the next table pulled a document out of his briefcase in a hurry.
Andrew took it and set it down in front of her.
Claire looked at the cover. It was a paternity test.
"Are scammers this thorough now?"
She put the fork down and paged through the file until she reached the last line.
[Results support a biological parent-child relationship between the submitted sample and Andrew Sutton.]
Claire didn't move for a long time.
She had always known she was a foundling. Her parents had taken her in when she was three or four, in the rain, running a fever.
"I've been looking for you for eighteen years. You were four. The nanny wasn't watching you, and you were taken," Andrew said.
Claire looked at him with nothing on her face.
Her lips moved, and no sound came out.
Her phone buzzed.
The screen lit up beside her, and she glanced down.
The contact was saved as James, and the message was three words.
James: [Let's break up.]
She counted them. Three words, no punctuation, no explanation.
Claire stared at the screen for three seconds, then five, until her eyes went dry and started to ache.
Then she picked up the phone, unlocked it, and typed one word.
[Okay.]
She hit send.
She turned the phone face down on the table.
Then she picked up her fork and went back to eating.
Andrew sat across from her and watched her twist the pasta onto the fork, put it in her mouth, chew, and swallow, exactly the way she had been doing when he walked in.
Except her lashes were shaking and her eyes had gone red.
"Claire."
"Mr. Sutton, my food is getting cold." Her voice was flat, with nothing moving under it.
Andrew watched her finish the whole bowl, one careful bite at a time.
"You—" he said, concern in his voice.
"I'm fine," she cut him off. "What's my mom's name?"
"Linda Shaw." Andrew dug a photograph out of his jacket pocket in a rush.
"I have a picture. You look like her."
Claire took the yellowed photo. A woman sat on a park bench holding a small child.
The woman was laughing with her eyes crinkled up, and she really did look like Claire.
"Why isn't she here?"
Andrew's fingers curled slightly against the table.
"She passed away. She died five years after you went missing."
Claire pushed the photo back across the table. "Mr. Sutton, I need to take this in. Don't rush me."
Andrew nodded, and something in his throat had closed up entirely.
Claire stood up.
"I have class this afternoon. I'm going back."
She put the phone in her pocket and pushed the paternity report into the canvas bag she used for her textbooks.
Two steps toward the door, she stopped, without turning around. "She was beautiful."
Claire left, and Andrew didn't stop her. He knew this wasn't a thing that could be hurried.
Outside the pasta place, the November air was cold. Half the sycamore leaves had gone yellow, and they crunched on the sidewalk under her feet.
She walked slowly. She didn't go back to her dorm. She went to the main hall on campus.
Display boards lined both sides of the corridor, some faded.
[Distinguished Alumni.]
She stopped in front of the third one.
In the photo, a man in a hard hat stood in front of a construction site, grinning, with an unfinished building rising behind him.
He was much younger than he had been today.
Underneath was the caption.
[Andrew Sutton, founder and chairman of Sutton Realty Group.]
She stood there and watched the face in the photo line up exactly with the face from the restaurant.
That poster had been hanging there since her first semester, and she had walked past it more than once.
The wind came down the corridor with a cold edge on it.
At eight that night, Claire got back to her dorm. She took the paternity report out and read it again, then slid it under her pillow, next to the two death certificates that were already there.
She lay down, woke her phone, opened the thread with James, and counted those three words one more time.
Then she opened his contact and deleted him.
Claire knew she wasn't taking it well. She had simply been waiting for this day since the first time his mother, Amanda Grant, came to find her.
Amanda Grant came in August, when the whole campus smelled like late summer.
Claire came out of the library, and there was a woman in expensive clothes waiting at the bottom of the steps.
"Claire?"
Claire stopped in her tracks.
The woman came closer, and Claire caught the scent of her perfume. It wasn't sharp, and it wasn't cheap.
"I'm James' mother."
Claire's fingers tightened on the books in her arms.
"Hello, Mrs. Grant."
Amanda gave her a smile with perfect manners and no heat behind it.
"Why don't we sit somewhere?" she suggested.