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He reaches for me, and I let him hold me in the hallway, my forehead against his chest and his hand cradling the back of my head. Then his phone buzzes again between us, and he steps away.

When I turn toward the stairs, Wells is sitting on the top step in his pajamas with his knees pulled up to his chest. I don't know how long he's been there or how much he heard. He looks from me to Ross and back again with the same steady, careful attention he gives a chessboard.

"Go back to bed, sweetheart," I tell him.

"Everything's fine."

He goes. But he looks back at Ross once before he disappears down the hall, and I know he doesn't believe me.

After the front door closes, I stand in the empty hallway and listen to Ross's car pull away. For six weeks, the secret belonged to the two of us. We decided who knew, and when, and how much. But just like that, a stranger with a camera decided for us, and the secret doesn't belong to either of us anymore.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ross

Iland at Heathrow in the middle of the afternoon and go straight to my mother's house without stopping at my own. I sent Sebastian one message from the plane, Bring Jane to Mom's at five. Please don't call, and for once in his life, my brother did what I asked without arguing.

The London house is quiet when I arrive. My mother's housekeeper takes my coat, glances at my face, and says nothing, which tells me she's seen the photographs too. I find the three of them in the drawing room overlooking the garden. Jane is on the sofa with one hand resting on the curve of her stomach. Sebastian is standing at the window with his arms folded. My mother sits in her usual chair near the fireplace, composed in the particular way that tells me she hasn't slept.

On the table beside her lies a printout of the Dolores Park photograph. My mother doesn't read gossip sites, which means someone printed it and brought it to her.

"Richard's office sent it over this morning," she says, following my gaze.

"Along with a note asking whether I'd like them to prepare a response on the family's behalf." She folds her hands in her lap.

"I told them I would wait to hear from my son."

"Thank you," I say.

"Don't thank me yet." Her voice is quiet, but it doesn't waver.

"Sit down, Ross, and tell me who those little boys are."

I don't sit. I rehearsed this conversation for eleven hours over the Atlantic, and none of the versions I prepared survived the sight of her face.

"Their names are Wells and Miles," I say.

"They're seven. They're mine, and Blaire is their mother."

No one speaks. Jane's hand goes still on her stomach. Sebastian turns away from the window. My mother looks at me for a long moment, then down at the photograph, and then she presses her fingers against her lips.

"Seven?" she says finally. "And Blaire's?"

"Yes," I tell her.

She picks up the photograph and holds it closer, and I watch her study Miles's face the way I studied it that first afternoon in San Francisco. When she looks up again, her eyes are wet.

"I have two grandsons," she says, "and I've missed all of it. I've missed every birthday. I've never held them. I don't even know what their voices sound like." Her voice breaks on the last word, and she stops to steady it.

"Do they know who we are?"

"Not yet," I tell her. "They don't know who I am either."

She looks at me sharply then, and I watch her put the pieces together.

"California," she says.

"All those weeks you told us you were working from the West Coast. You've been with them?"