Chapter 6 - The Third Folder
By the end of June, the heat had settled over Chicago like a heavy wool blanket. Inside the Lakeview house, the air conditioner hummed weakly, struggling to keep up with the humidity.
The house was no longer a sanctuary. It was a battlefield of nerves. The night nurse had been let go three weeks prior due to lack of funds, and Patricia was now responsible for the midnight feedings, her knees aching from the constant trips up and down the stairs.
Mara sat on the kitchen floor, surrounded by boxes of baby clothes that had arrived from an online discount store. Her relationship with Ethan had shifted from a forbidden romance into a gritty, domestic survival pact. He rarely looked at her; when he did, his eyes held a cold, analytical calculation that made her skin crawl.
"He's not gaining weight like he should," Mara said, her voice flat as she looked at Benjamin sleeping in his bassinet. "The doctor says he needs to see a specialist in pediatric gastroenterology. The consultation is eight hundred dollars out of pocket because the clinic doesn't accept our secondary insurance."
Ethan didn't look up from his legal bills. "We don't have eight hundred dollars, Mara. The bank rejected the restructuring proposal this morning. They're classifying the firm’s assets as high-risk due to the ongoing federal investigation."
"Well, sell something!" Mara cried, her voice cracking with the hysteria that had been building for months. "Sell the car! Sell your watches! You're a Bennett! Your mother keeps saying we're going to get through this, but every day it gets worse. Clare is living in a brownstone in Brooklyn while your son can't even get proper medical care!"
Patricia walked into the kitchen, her face gray with exhaustion. "Don't raise your voice at him, Mara. He's doing the best he can. This is all that woman's doing. If Clare had just been a proper wife—"
The front doorbell rang, interrupting her. It was a sharp, aggressive sound that usually signaled another process server.
Ethan stood up heavily, walking down the hall to open the blue front door. Standing on the porch was a man in a dark suit holding a certified legal delivery package.
"Ethan Bennett?" the man asked.
"Yes."
"Sign here."
Ethan signed the digital pad, took the heavy cardboard envelope, and walked back into the kitchen. He assumed it was the formal indictment paperwork from the regional tax attorney's office.
He tore the top off and pulled out a single sheet of paper from a certified medical laboratory in downtown Chicago, accompanied by a legal cover letter from Richard Vance’s office.
The letter read:
“Mr. Bennett, during the discovery phase of the asset valuation, certain medical reimbursement records from your corporate healthcare cache were cross-referenced with your personal calendar. Enclosed is the certified genetic analysis requested by our firm prior to the dissolution of the marital estate. The child, Benjamin Cole, shares 0.01% genetic compatibility with your profile. The statistical match points to Marcus Vance, former logistics manager at Bennett Logistics.”
Ethan’s hands began to shake so violently the paper rattled against the kitchen island.
"What is it?" Patricia asked, stepping forward, her eyes catching the official medical crest at the top of the sheet. "Is it the court date?"
Ethan didn't answer. He turned his eyes slowly toward Mara, who was still sitting on the floor by the boxes. Her face had gone from pale to an asphalt gray. She had recognized the name of the laboratory printed on the envelope.
"Ethan?" Mara whispered, her hand moving instinctively toward the bassinet. "What did she send?"
Ethan didn't scream. He didn't throw things. The sheer volume of the deception was too massive for anger; it was an anchor that pulled him straight down into the cold mud of his own arrogance.
"Marcus Vance," Ethan said, his voice a dead, hollow rattle. "The manager I fired last August because you told me he was harassment-prone. The one who threatened to sue the company."
Patricia snatched the paper from Ethan’s hand. She put on her reading glasses, her eyes scanning the percentages, the scientific language, the clear, undeniable conclusion.
"No," Patricia whispered, her knees literally giving out as she slid into a kitchen chair. "No, this is a mistake. This is Clare. She forged it. She bought a corrupt lab—"
"It’s an accredited federal testing facility, Mom," Ethan said, his voice rising slightly into a terrible, dry laugh. "Clare didn't forge it. She paid for it using the corporate medical audit allowance I signed off on during the separation. I paid for the test that proved my mistress was sleeping with my employee while I was destroying my marriage for her."
Mara burst into frantic, sobbing apologies, scrambling to her feet to touch his arm. "Ethan, please! It was only once! I was scared! You wouldn't leave Clare, you kept saying the timing wasn't right, and I felt so alone—"
Ethan brushed her hand off his arm with a detachment that was more frightening than violence. He looked at his mother, who was clutching her chest, looking older than her seventy-two years. He looked at the silver bracelet Brooke had bought for the baby, sitting on the counter—the one engraved with the Bennett initials.
"The support system," Ethan whispered, looking around the cluttered, stressful kitchen. "The Christian thing to do. Get out of my house, Mara."
May you like
"Ethan, please!"
"Get out," he said, turning his back on her. "Take the baby. Take your clothes. Get out before I call the police and have you removed for residential trespassing."
