The night stretched on.
At 10:45, the last guests left. Emma’s feet throbbed, her back ached, and her uniform smelled faintly of coffee and lemon cleaner. She went downstairs with her heart in her throat.
Roman was sitting on the floor.
Emma stopped in the doorway.
He had removed his shoes and rolled his sleeves higher. Lily sat in front of him on the rug, banging a plastic measuring spoon against the side of her bottle with grave concentration. Roman watched her as if she were solving a legal dispute.
“She’s been arguing with that spoon for ten minutes,” he said.
Emma almost laughed.
“Who’s winning?”
“The spoon. But she has spirit.”
Lily looked up, saw Emma, and immediately lifted both arms.
“Mama,” Emma whispered, scooping her up.
It was not a word Lily could say yet, but it was the truth of everything.
Roman stood. His expression was composed, but Emma had seen enough now to notice what he was hiding. He had been peaceful again. Not happy exactly. Peaceful.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded once.
A silence settled.
Then he asked, “What was the father’s name?”
The question came so suddenly that Emma stiffened.
“Why?”
“Because when I said my brother’s name, you reacted.”
Emma’s first instinct was to deny it. Her second was to run. Her third, the one that came from exhaustion rather than wisdom, was to tell the truth.
“He said his name was Caleb Price.”
Roman did not move.
The office seemed to grow colder.
Emma held Lily tighter. “What?”
Roman’s voice was very soft. “Describe him.”
“No.”
“Emma—”
“No. You don’t get to ask like that unless you tell me why.”
Roman’s eyes shifted to Lily, then back to Emma.
“My brother’s name was Caleb Callahan. When he wanted distance from the family, he used Price. It was our mother’s maiden name.”
Emma felt the floor tilt.
“No.”
Roman said nothing.
“No,” she repeated, louder this time. Lily startled against her shoulder. Emma lowered her voice, shaking. “That is not possible.”
“What did he look like?”
Emma took one step back.
“Brown hair. Green eyes. Scar on his left hand from a burn. He had a tattoo here.” She touched the inside of her wrist. “A small blackbird.”
Roman closed his eyes.
For the first time since Emma had known him, Roman Callahan looked like he had been struck.
When he opened his eyes, the coldness was gone. Something worse had replaced it.
Grief.
“My brother had that tattoo,” he said.
Emma’s breath came too fast.
“No. Caleb was a mechanic. He lived in a cheap apartment above a laundromat. He ate ramen out of the pot and drove a truck that only started if you insulted it first.”
Roman gave a broken sound that might have been a laugh if it had not hurt so much.
“He always liked broken things.”
Emma shook her head.
“He left me.”
Roman’s face hardened, not at her, but at the sentence.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
The words landed like a hand around her throat.
For seventeen months, Emma had built a life on one cruel explanation: Caleb had chosen to leave. It had been painful, but it was solid. She had hated him. She had cursed him during midnight feedings and doctor bills and rent notices. She had imagined him alive somewhere, free of them, and used that anger to keep standing.
But if he had not left—
If he had been unable to return—
Emma sank into the chair.
Lily reached for Roman.
Neither adult moved.
Roman looked at the baby’s outstretched hand, then at Emma, asking without asking. Emma gave one stiff nod.
He stepped closer and offered Lily his finger. She gripped it.
Roman’s face twisted for half a second before he controlled it.
“She has his eyes,” Emma whispered.
“I know.”
That answer told her he had noticed already.
Fear flared. “Were you going to take her?”
Roman’s head snapped up.
“What?”
“If she’s Callahan blood, if she’s your brother’s child—”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do.” His voice sharpened, not with anger, but urgency. “And the answer is no. No one takes a child from her mother in my house.”
Emma stared at him.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “Not really. I know what people say about you.”
“Most of it is true.”
That honesty frightened her more than denial would have.
Roman released Lily’s hand and stepped back.
“But this is true too. If Lily is Caleb’s daughter, then she is my niece. That gives me responsibility. It gives me no rights over you.”
Emma wanted to believe him.
She did not know if she could.
“What happened to Caleb?” she asked.
Roman looked toward the dark window behind his desk.
“I thought he stole from me.”
“Did he?”
“No.” Roman’s voice turned hollow. “I don’t know anymore.”
The next morning, Emma woke to three missed calls from a number she did not recognize and one text from Elena telling her not to come in until noon.
At 9:15, someone knocked on her apartment door.
Emma froze.
Her apartment was a third-floor walk-up in Logan Square with thin walls, old pipes, and a radiator that hissed like it resented being alive. Lily sat on a blanket in the middle of the floor, trying to chew the ear off her stuffed rabbit.
Emma looked through the peephole.
Roman Callahan stood in the hallway, wearing a black coat dusted with snow. Beside him stood Elena with a grocery bag in one hand and an expression that said she had not enjoyed the ride over.
Emma opened the door only as far as the chain allowed.
Roman looked at the chain, then at her.
“Good,” he said.
Emma frowned. “Good?”
“You should not open doors easily.”
Elena lifted the bag. “Formula, diapers, coffee, and eggs. The coffee is for you. You look terrible.”
