Chapter 4 - The boy in the photograph
The boy was sixteen.
Maybe seventeen.
Dark hair.
Victor’s jaw.
Victor’s eyes.
I had seen that expression across breakfast tables for twenty-two years.
Helen said nothing until I did.
“His son.”
Maybe.
We refused certainty until evidence.
The photograph had been taken outside a private school in Cambridge.
Rita stood beside the boy.
Victor had one hand on his shoulder.
Not casually.
Possessively.
I enlarged the image.
The boy wore a school blazer.
Initials on the crest.
Helen searched publicly available school information.
His name surfaced in an awards announcement.
Lucas Bell.
Mother: Rita Bell.
Father not listed.
Age seventeen.
Seventeen years.
I had been married to Victor for twenty-two.
The room became very quiet.
“Do you want me to investigate paternity?”
“Yes.”
Then I corrected myself.
“Legally.”
Helen nodded.
No dramatic DNA theft.
No private tricks.
Records first.
At the hospital, Victor was scheduled for discharge in two days.
I wondered whether he knew the house had become a crime scene.
Of course he did.
He kept calling.
I stopped answering.
Then Dr. Salcedo contacted me.
Not about Victor.
About me.
My post-operative blood work showed something concerning.
The remaining kidney was functioning, but the oncology clinic had urgently requested follow-up.
“Sarah, you cannot delay this.”
“I won’t.”
Suddenly, my husband’s affair felt smaller.
Not painless.
Smaller.
At the clinic, imaging confirmed the mass remained suspicious.
Biopsy required.
I sat alone in the waiting room when Rita Bell walked in.
I recognized the red handbag first.
The same handbag seen entering my house before the fire.
My entire body stiffened.
She stopped six feet away.
“I didn’t start the fire.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You were inside.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked toward the nurses’ station.
“Victor told me to get a blue folder from his study.”
“What was inside?”
“I never found it.”
“Then why did the house burn?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked exhausted.
Not glamorous.
Not triumphant.
Nothing like the mistress I had imagined from Victor’s voice.
“Is Lucas his son?”
Rita flinched.
That was answer enough emotionally, but not legally.
She sat across from me.
“Victor told you about the house?”
“I heard him.”
Her eyes closed.
“He lied to both of us.”
I almost laughed.
“Did he promise you the house or not?”
“Yes.”
“Then what exactly did he lie about?”
She looked at me.
“He told me you were terminally ill.”
My breath stopped.
“He said you knew about me.”
“What?”
“He said the kidney donation was your last gift to him before you died.”
I stared.
May you like
Then Rita said something even worse.
“Sarah, Victor knew about your oncology tests before the transplant.”
