Chapter 5
1180 Words
Across the city, Damian was in a meeting at Kingsley Holdings.
The people in the meeting were talking about a deal, and they were waiting for Damian to make a decision.
Normally, Damian was very confident in meetings.
Today, his mind was somewhere else.
His assistant leaned over to him.
"Mr. Kingsley?" he said.
Damian blinked.
"I am sorry... What was the question?" he said.
The people in the room looked at each other in surprise.
The chief financial officer smiled awkwardly.
"We were waiting for your approval," he said.
Damian looked at the papers in front of him without reading them.
"Approved," he said.
The people in the room nodded. Some of them thought something was unusual.
For the time in years, Damian Kingsley seemed distracted.
As soon as the meeting was over, Damian went to his office and stared out the window.
He was thinking about a child.
His child.
He imagined holding the child's hand.
He thought about a girl with Emily's smile.
He thought about a boy running in the garden of the lake house.
For the time, having a lot of money did not seem like the best thing in the world.
Being a father seemed important.
Emily went to see her doctor that afternoon.
The doctor said everything was fine.
"The baby is healthy," the doctor said with a smile.
Emily should have felt happy.
She felt scared instead.
The doctor gave her a picture of the baby.
Emily looked at it without saying anything.
It was a life.
It did not know about all the problems around it.
Emily put the picture in her bag. Left the doctor's office.
Damian was waiting for her outside.
"You should not have come," Emily said quietly.
"I wanted to know if you and the baby are okay," Damian said.
"We are fine," Emily said.
Damian smiled.
"Can I see the picture?" he asked.
Emily did not want to at first. Then she gave it to him.
Damian held the picture as if it were very valuable.
His eyes were filled with emotion.
"Our baby," he said.
Emily watched him carefully.
She did not see any fear on his face.
She only saw happiness.
She wished she could feel the way.
That night, Daniel went to his office after dinner.
He opened a drawer and took out a notebook.
He wrote down something he had seen.
Emily went to Riverside Women's Clinic at 2:15 p.m.
He had not followed her.
One of his workers happened to see her car outside the clinic.
It was a coincidence.
Maybe it was meant to happen.
Daniel looked at what he had written for a time.
Women's clinic.
He started thinking.
Was Emily sick?
Was she hiding something from him?
Had she not told him because she did not want him to worry?
He felt guilty anyway.
Maybe he was thinking there was a problem when there was not one.
He closed the notebook.
The day he would ask her about it.
Then he thought of something
If she wanted him to know...
Would she not have told him already?
Days turned into weeks.
Emily's pregnancy was getting more obvious.
She was sick in the morning. It was getting harder to hide.
She said it was because of the food.
She said it was because of headaches.
She said it was because of stress.
Daniel said okay to all of her excuses.
At least that is what Emily thought.
Really, Daniel had stopped saying okay.
He had started writing down all of her excuses.
Each time she said she was tired.
Each time, she was late.
Each time she got a phone call.
He was writing it all down.
Not because he wanted to prove Emily was doing something
Because he wanted to prove himself wrong.
One Saturday night, Damian asked Emily to come to the lake house.
The leaves on the trees were falling into the water as the sun went down.
For an hour, the world outside did not exist.
They made dinner together.
They laughed about the pasta.
They listened to music on an old record player.
It felt almost normal.
After dinner, Damian went upstairs. Came back with a small box.
"What is this?" Emily asked.
"Open it, " Damian said.
Inside the box were white baby shoes.
There was also a bracelet with the word "Hope" on it.
Emily covered her mouth as she started crying.
"You bought these?" she asked.
"They belonged to my brother," Damian said.
Emily looked surprised.
"I had a brother?" she asked.
Damian nodded slowly.
"He died when he was six months old," he said.
Emily took his hand.
"I did not know," she said.
"There are things I do not tell people, " Damian said.
He smiled sadly.
"My mother kept these shoes for her life," he said.
He picked up the shoes from the box.
"When she died, she asked me to keep them until I had a child of my own," he said.
Emily started crying
Damian got down on his knees beside her.
"I have been waiting my life without knowing it," he said.
He put the shoes back in the box.
"And now... That day has finally come," he said.
Emily put her arms around him.
For a minute, they did not say anything.
The future felt close enough to touch.
They did not know that someone else was already causing problems for their future.
That night, Daniel was alone in his study again.
The notebook was open in front of him.
He looked at a phone number.
Then, for the time, he picked up his phone.
He put the number in his contacts.
No name came up.
He looked at business lists.
Nothing.
He checked the media.
Nothing.
Finally, he leaned back in his chair.
"Who are you?" he whispered to himself.
Then his phone buzzed.
It was an email from his security manager.
The subject was "Vehicle GPS Report Requested".
Daniel looked at the screen for a time.
His finger was over the attachment.
Once he opened it...
He could not pretend anymore.
There would only be answers.
Slowly, he tapped the file.
A map came up on the screen.
He followed the routes Emily's car had taken over the month.
Most of them were where she said she was going.
The charity office.
The store.
The gym.
Then he saw something
The same place kept coming up.
A private road that went outside the city.
No stores.
No restaurants.
One house by a lake.
Daniel zoomed in.
The address came up.
He quietly wrote it in his notebook.
He did not know who owned the house.
He did not know why Emily kept going
For the first time since all this started...
He had something real.
Something that could not be explained away.
Daniel closed the notebook.
He looked out the window into the dark.
His face was calm.
Deep inside him, trust was starting to die.
When trust dies quietly...
It often leaves room for something much colder to take its place.
- Writer
