Carson didn’t move. He stared at the lawyer. “That’s wrong. That’s — run it again. That’s obviously wrong, I’m his son, I’m—”
“Carson.” Priscilla’s voice came from the back of the room, cracked and ruined and thirty-eight years overdue. “Stop. Please. It’s not wrong.”
Every head turned to her.
And Priscilla Rutherford, who had kept her secret through a cruel marriage and a widowhood and her son’s entire life, finally set it down, because there was nowhere left to hide it.
“Your father couldn’t have children,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Reginald was sterile. He never knew — he’d have destroyed me. I was going to be thrown away for failing to give him an heir.” Tears ran down her face. “So I made a choice, a long time ago, so that you could exist, Carson. So that you could be born and be loved and have a name. You are my son. You have always been my son. But you were never…” She couldn’t finish it.
