Chapter 8: What My Father Did Next
Dad sat on the small chair by the window while I told him everything Raymond had said.
I kept my voice low so I didn't wake Noah.
He listened without interrupting — the way he always listened when something mattered, with his full stillness, the kind that cost something.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Have you spoken to a lawyer?"
"No."
"You will.
Tomorrow morning.
I have someone who handles family law — she's handled cases for military families for twenty years.
Her name is Patricia Sloane.
I'll call her at eight."
"Dad, I don't know if I'm ready to—"
"I'm not asking you to decide anything tonight," he said.
"I'm asking you to talk to someone who knows what your options are.
That's all.
You make your own choices after that."
I looked at my hands in my lap.
"He told Jess I didn't want Noah," I said.
"I heard."
"That's the part I keep coming back to."
"I know."
"Everything else — the money, the other woman — that's devastating.
But that one..." I stopped.
"I would have done anything for that baby.
I did do everything.
And he used him as a prop in a story he was telling someone else."
My father leaned forward in the chair.
"Camila.
Listen to me."
I looked up.
"Noah will know exactly who you are," he said.
"Not because you'll tell him.
Because children know.
They know who stayed.
They know whose hands held them and whose voice they fell asleep to.
No story Ethan told anyone changes what that boy already knows about his mother."
My throat tightened.
I didn't trust myself to speak.
Dad stood up and briefly put his hand on the top of my head, the way he had when I was small and something had gone wrong at school and there were no words that would fix it but the hand helped anyway.
"Try to sleep," he said.
"I'm going to be downstairs."
"You don't have to stay."
"I know."
He left the door open a crack.
In the morning, I came down to find Ethan in the kitchen.
He was sitting at the table with both hands wrapped around a mug, and he looked like a man who had not slept.
My father was not in the room — I heard him on the phone in the living room, his voice low and precise.
Ethan looked up when I came in.
"I want to fix this," he said.
I took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water.
"Camila—"
"Patricia Sloane," I said.
"That's my attorney's name.
If you want to communicate about Noah or finances, please go through her."
He stared at me.
"You already have a lawyer?"
"My father made some calls this morning." I picked up my glass.
"Ethan.
The forty thousand dollars.
Were you going to tell me about that, or was that also waiting for the right moment?"
The color left his face.
"How do you know about that?"
"People talk," I said.
May you like
"It turns out that when you hurt enough people, eventually someone decides you don't deserve to have your secrets kept."
I walked back upstairs to get Noah.
