Chapter 3 - The Weight of Five Years
The suite at the Grand Geneva Resort was spacious, but it felt crowded with the ghosts of the past five years.
I had stripped the boys out of their suffocating velvet tuxedos, dressing them in comfortable cotton pajamas with dinosaur prints. They were currently sitting on the plush carpet, eating room-service grilled cheese sandwiches while an animated movie played softly on the television. To them, it had been a strange, dress-up adventure that ended with French fries in a fancy hotel room. They didn't understand that the tectonic plates beneath their entire existence had just shifted.
A soft, hesitant knock sounded at the door.
I took a deep breath, walked over, and unlocked it.
Garrett stood in the hallway. He had discarded his tuxedo entirely, now wearing dark jeans and a plain charcoal sweater that made him look younger, vulnerable, and completely exhausted. In his hand, he carried a manila folder.
“You came,” I said quietly, stepping aside to let him enter.
“I would have crawled through broken glass to get here,” he replied, his voice hoarse.
As soon as he stepped inside, the boys looked up from the floor. Leo immediately set his sandwich down, watching Garrett with guarded curiosity. Owen smiled shyly, wiping ketchup from the corner of his mouth, while Wyatt scrambled behind my legs, peeking out with wide eyes.
Garrett stopped in his tracks, terrified of crossing some invisible boundary. “Hey, guys,” he said softly.
“Are you our real dad?” Owen asked bluntly, with the unvarnished honesty only a five-year-old possessed.
Garrett looked at me, as if asking for permission. I gave a slight nod.
He slowly sank to his knees right there near the entryway, keeping a respectful distance. “Yes, Owen. I’m your dad.”
“Where were you?” Owen tilted his head. “Mom said you were far away working, but we never had your phone number.”
Garrett looked as though someone had driven a stake through his heart. He closed his eyes tightly for a second, swallowing back the fresh wave of tears threatening to choke him. “I was lost, buddy. I didn't know where you were. But I’m here now. If your mom lets me, I’m never going to be far away again.”
“Can you build Legos?” Leo asked, testing the waters.
“I can build the biggest Lego castle you’ve ever seen,” Garrett promised, his voice cracking.
After a few minutes of quiet interaction—Garrett answering simple questions about his favorite color (blue) and favorite dinosaur (T-Rex)—I gently ushered the boys into the bedroom, handing them their coloring books and setting a timer. “Thirty minutes, boys, then it's bedtime.”
I closed the bedroom door partway, leaving it cracked so I could hear them, and turned to Garrett in the living area.
He stood near the window, his shoulders hunched, staring at the floor.
“What’s in the folder?” I asked.
Garrett looked up, placing the manila envelope on the coffee table. “A chain of custody form. I stopped by the local hospital lab on the way here. I had them prepare three DNA test kits.”
A flash of anger sparked in my chest. “You think I lied?”
“No!” Garrett took an urgent step toward me, then stopped himself. “No, Elena, my god, look at them. They are carbon copies of me. I don’t doubt for a second that they’re mine. But my mother… the trust… the board of directors.”
His jaw hardened. “Vivian is already mobilizing. When I left the estate, she was on the phone with our corporate legal counsel. She’s going to claim you tampered with paternity to execute a corporate extortion scheme. She will try to freeze the boys out of the family legacy, claim they have no legal standing, and paint you as an opportunist who manufactured a scandal. I need certified, incontrovertible genetic proof from a court-admissible lab so I can destroy every legal argument she attempts before she even files it.”
I let out a slow, trembling breath. The anger drained away, replaced by the grim reality of the battle ahead. “Fine. Swab them before you leave.”
Garrett sat down on the edge of the sofa, burying his hands in his hair. “Elena... how did you survive? Triplets. Alone.”
I looked at him, remembering the sleepless nights, the terror when Leo caught RSV at six months, the mountain of medical bills that drained every penny of the small divorce settlement Vivian had allowed me to leave with.
“I survived because I had to,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “I took night shifts doing remote graphic design while they slept. I had Mrs. Higgins, my sixty-year-old neighbor, watch them when I had to meet clients. When they were in the NICU for three weeks after birth, I sat between three plastic boxes, pumping milk until my body felt like it was tearing apart, waiting for a phone call from you that never came.”
“I didn't know,” Garrett whispered, a single sob ripping from his throat. “Elena, I swear to God on my soul, I thought you hated me. When the divorce papers came back, Vivian told me you refused to speak to me, that you wanted a clean break. She took over my personal schedule, redirected my emails, had my numbers changed under the guise of an executive security protocol after a corporate threat. I was stupid. I was a weak, blind coward who let my mother dictate my boundaries because I was grieving the loss of you.”
I looked at him across the space between us. The anger that had fueled me for five years was beginning to warp into something far more complicated. Garrett hadn't abandoned us. He had been systemically blinded by a sociopathic mother who viewed human lives as chess pieces.
“You were a coward, Garrett,” I said honestly. “You let her stand between us during our marriage. That’s why I left. But I didn't think she was capable of this.”
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“She’s capable of worse,” Garrett said, his eyes darkening with a cold, terrifying resolve. “And she’s about to find out what happens when you take everything from a man who finally has something to fight for.”
***
