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“And the world does not care. The world does not care if you are innocent, if you are a child. It doesn’t matter. There is great evil in the world, and it does not ask if you are prepared to grapple with it. It will be the same for our children. And I will protect you. Both of you, I will never fail again. Not as I have failed before.”
“Do you really think that you failed? You didn’t have control over those people. You didn’t ask to have it happen to you. You never would have. They took you. They—”
“Enough. This is not a discussion. You are acting as if you’ve been abandoned, you have not been. I am taking care of you in the best way I ever could. That is my job. My task. It is not...distraction.”
“Are you so afraid to be loved? Or are you just afraid of what it would be like if you love someone else again.”
“I said it was enough. We do not need to have further discussion. You will remain on the island until after the birth of the children.”
“And will you be here for the birth of the children?”
“I’m not a doctor. Such a thing is not necessary.”
“And if it is for me?”
“You do not make the rules.”
“And you don’t care for me?”
“I did not say that.”
“Then be honest with me. Be honest with yourself.”
“We will speak again another time, Morgan. Perhaps I should’ve told you of my plans before I left. But I felt it would only result in unpleasantness.”
“By unpleasantness you mean my feelings?”
“Feelings are unnecessary. What is necessary is protection.”
He hung up the phone, and her heart felt scarred and bloodied. Bruised. She hadn’t expected this. Of all the things, she hadn’t expected this. She had been prepared. Prepared to love him with no certainty that he would love her back. Prepared to love him in spite of whether or not he loved her ever. But she had not been prepared to be abandoned. She had not been prepared to lose him.
She walked down the hall, and there was another member of staff, and then another. This place that had been theirs, the sanctuary, was now invaded with strangers, and she wanted to weep. It all felt wrong. Desperately, hideously wrong. She went into their room. His room, which had been theirs. And she lay down in the center of the bed and realized the linens had been changed and it didn’t even smell like him anymore. And she gave in to her misery, clutching her belly and crying. How would she overcome this? How would she... How would this ever be okay?
It just would be. Because it had to be. Because she had to be. Because she would not let this wither her and make her bitter. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, and she tried to tell herself that, as she wept like she would never stop.
“And where is your wife?”
“Safe,” Constantine said as he walked into the living room where his mother and father were already sitting. His mother would be upset. She would be devastated. But there was a reason he was doing this here. There was a reason he was doing it now.
“I’m here because I have to tell you something. Morgan’s children are not Alex’s. They are mine.”
It was a truth that had to be told. He could not live in the lie. In the shelter of fantasy and neither should they.
They were his. And maybe the truth was... He needed his mother to know because he needed the children to matter. As his.
“Constantine,” his father said, a warning tone that was almost funny on the old man who had never done an authoritative thing in his entire life.
“What are you saying?” his mother asked.
“I am saying that Morgan and I had an affair before Alex’s death. The children are not his, they’re mine.”
“How can you be certain?”
“She was a virgin when she came to me.”
“That makes no sense,” his mother said.
“It may not make sense, but it is the truth.”
