Ninety-Two Days Before the Ice

Zero Percent

The front door slammed into the wall hard enough to leave a dent.

Rhys strode into the house, and the past came to meet him.

Everything was as he remembered. The artificial flowers Britt, Lexi's mother, arranged on the entry table. The staircase runner sitting slightly crooked, because Michael, Lexi's father, had installed it himself and refused to let anyone fix it. And beneath it all, the sweetness of Lexi's perfume, a scent that had, year by suffocating year, overwritten the smell of the home his parents built.

His parents' home. The house where he had been born.

He looked at the crooked runner and felt nothing at all. That was the strangest part.

Michael marched out of the living room wearing the grave expression he always put on before issuing orders disguised as advice.

"There you are. Lexi called me about the scene at the bank. What the hell were you thinking? You're going to call her and Henry right now and apologize!"

Rhys walked past him toward the stairs.

"I'm talking to you." Michael stepped into his path. "And you will sign that mortgage agreement again. Otherwise I'll tell Lexi to file for divorce."

In his first life, that word had worked every time. It used to stop Rhys cold. He would retreat, apologize, do whatever kept the peace, because he had believed the marriage was worth saving.

Now the threat was almost funny.

Michael mistook his silence for fear. He grabbed Rhys's shoulder and raised his right hand. "How dare you walk away while I'm talking to you!"

Rhys caught the wrist before the slap could land. In one smooth motion he twisted the arm down, stepped behind him, and drove it up between his shoulder blades. Michael's chest hit the dining table, and his cheek pressed flat against the polished wood.

"Put your hands on me again," Rhys said, so quietly that Michael heard every word, "and it won't end this easily."

At that moment Britt came out of the hallway with Chris in her arms. She took in the scene and let out a string of hysterical shrieks. The boy burst into loud, wailing tears.

Rhys let Michael go and turned toward the child.

This was exactly who he had come to see.

Once, this boy had been the center of his world. Now, as Rhys studied the small, tear-streaked face, that love had curdled into something cold and sharp. Chris had Lexi's dark hair and pale skin. He had a watchful, calculating look Rhys had once mistaken for intelligence. Not one feature belonged to him, and in eight years he had never questioned it. He had simply assumed Lexi's genes were dominant.

He wiped a tear from Chris's cheek. "Open your mouth for me. I need to check something."

Britt yanked the boy closer. "What are you doing?"

"Checking for a mouth ulcer. Do you have cotton swabs, Britt?"

Still rattled, she pointed numbly at the kitchen cabinet.

The swabbing took thirty seconds. Chris submitted with the bored tolerance of a child who found adults tedious, then turned back to Britt to whine about dinner.

Rhys sealed the swab, slid it into his pocket, and walked out.

The private DNA clinic on Millfield Road offered same-day results for an obscene premium. Rhys paid it without a second thought.

He spent the afternoon in the waiting room with a paper cup of water and nothing to do but think. Think about the ravine. Think about the laughing. Think about a boy waving goodbye at the gate of New Goshen, and how that wave might have belonged to someone else's son all along.

At seven that evening, his phone vibrated. One email. One attachment.

He skipped to the conclusion.

Based on the genetic markers examined, the probability that Rhys Darby is the biological father of Chris Darby is... 0.00%.

He read it once. Then again.

There was no explosion of grief. No urge to smash his fists through the dashboard. Only a sharp, terrible clarity, like frost forming on glass. Somewhere inside him, the last piece of the man he used to be quietly died.

His phone rang. Lexi.

"Michael said you attacked him!" No greeting. "I don't know what's wrong with you today, but this behavior is completely..."

"I have the DNA results."

"What?"

"Chris isn't mine," Rhys said, his voice stripped of everything. "I know he's Curry's son."

Silence on the line. Then, a thin whisper: "Rhys..."

"It doesn't matter anymore. Meet me at the county clerk's office tomorrow at eight. You're going to cooperate with the divorce, completely and without questions."

"Rhys, you're not thinking clearly..."

"If you don't," he cut in smoothly, "I'll send this report to everyone in your life. Your mother's book club. Your father's golf partners. Henry's investors. Every friend and cousin you've ever bragged to. I'll make sure no one in this city looks at your family without remembering what you did."

For several seconds he heard only her breathing.

Then her voice changed. The panic drained out of it, and what remained was cold, practical, and awake.

"Fine."

The line went dead.

Rhys lowered the phone and frowned. For a woman who had just lost her husband, her cover story, and her unpaid servant in a single afternoon, she had given in far too quickly.

Lexi had already started calculating.