Chapter 5: The Question Leo Came to Ask
I didn't sleep.
I sat in the study until four in the morning with the Hargrove & Sloane documents spread across the desk, reading every page twice.
The DNA report.
The petition.
The supporting affidavits.
The timeline of events that Elena's lawyers had assembled with the kind of quiet, methodical precision that made it clear this had not been done in a hurry.
Eight months of preparation.
For one night.
At some point Victoria knocked on the study door, opened it without waiting, looked at the papers on the desk, and closed it again without a word.
I heard her footsteps down the hall.
The bedroom door.
The lock.
In the morning I called Hargrove & Sloane directly.
The receptionist put me through to a junior associate named Clara Voss, who had clearly been briefed on my call.
"Mr.
Mercer," she said.
"We were expecting to hear from your legal team."
"You're hearing from me directly.
I want to meet with Leo Holloway.
Not through lawyers.
Not in a conference room.
I want to sit down with him and talk."
A pause.
"That request would need to go through Ms.
Holloway."
"Then put it to her.
Tell her I'm not contesting the petition.
Tell her I want to meet Leo on his terms, wherever he's comfortable, whenever he's ready." I paused.
"And tell her I said thank you.
For the thirty days.
I won't need them."
Another pause, longer this time.
"I'll pass that along," Clara said.
The call came back four hours later.
Not from Clara.
From Elena herself.
"Leo will meet you," she said.
"Saturday.
There's a diner on Clement Street called Patsy's.
He'll be there at eleven."
"I'll be there."
"Julian." She stopped.
"He's going to ask you things that are going to be hard to answer honestly."
"I know."
"And I need you to understand something before you walk in there." Her voice was steady but I could hear what was underneath it — thirteen years of protecting something precious from someone who had already proven he would drop it.
"If you hurt him, or if you make him a promise you don't intend to keep, you will never see either of them again.
I will make certain of it."
"I understand."
"Good." A beat.
"Patsy's.
Saturday.
Eleven."
She hung up.
Saturday arrived gray and cold.
I got to Patsy's at ten forty-five and took a corner booth.
The diner was the kind of place that had been exactly the same for thirty years — laminate tables, coffee in thick ceramic mugs, a pie case by the register with three kinds of pie and a handwritten sign that said the coconut cream was finished until Thursday.
Leo walked in at eleven exactly.
He was alone.
He'd left his medal at home.
He was wearing a plain navy sweater and carrying nothing except his phone, which he placed face-down on the table when he sat.
He looked at me for a moment without speaking.
"You came alone," I said.
"You came alone," he replied.
"Mom said you would.
She said if you brought a lawyer you weren't serious."
"No lawyer."
He nodded once.
He picked up the menu, looked at it, set it down.
"I already know what I want," he said.
"I always order the same thing."
The waitress came.
Leo ordered eggs, wheat toast, black coffee.
I ordered the same without thinking about it.
When she left, Leo folded his hands on the table.
He had Elena's hands.
Long fingers, very still.
"I've been thinking about what to say to you for eight months," he said.
"Since I found your name."
"Take whatever time you need."
"I don't need time." He looked at me directly.
"I have one question.
Mom said you knew that."
"She told me."
He was quiet for a moment.
The coffee arrived.
He wrapped both hands around the mug.
"Why did you leave?" he asked.
"Not the story.
Not the version you tell people.
The real reason.
Why did you choose to walk away from a woman who was pregnant with your children and never look back?"
The diner noise continued around us — plates, voices, the bell above the door.
I had prepared for this question.
I had rehearsed answers in the car on the way over, in the shower that morning, in the study at four in the morning.
Every version I had prepared sounded, in the rehearsal, like something a man says when he is trying to sound better than he was.
So I didn't use any of them.
"Because I was a coward," I said.
"And because Victoria had money and your mother didn't, and I told myself the story that I was making a practical decision.
But the truth is I was afraid of what it would cost me to stay, and I chose the easier life." I held his gaze.
"There is no version of that which makes me look acceptable.
I know that."
Leo didn't look away.
"Did you know she was pregnant when you left?"
The question landed like a flat stone on still water.
"Yes," I said.
The word sat between us.
Leo picked up his coffee.
Set it down.
His face didn't collapse, didn't harden.
He just absorbed it the way someone absorbs something they already suspected but needed to hear confirmed.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Leo—"
"I'm not done." He held up one hand, just slightly.
"I have one more thing to say.
And then I want to eat breakfast, because I'm actually hungry and I've been nervous since Wednesday and I haven't eaten properly."
Despite everything, something in my chest moved at that.
"Go ahead," I said.
He looked at me with those dark, calm eyes — Elena's eyes — and said:
"I didn't come here to forgive you.
I'm not there yet and I don't know if I'll get there.
I came here because Ethan and I deserve to know where we come from.
And because I needed to know if you were the kind of man who could tell the truth when it cost him something."
He picked up his coffee again.
"You are," he said.
"That's something.
It's not everything.
But it's something."
The eggs arrived.
We ate.
We talked — carefully, slowly, the way two people talk when they are building something fragile and both know it.
He told me about the tournament, about the problem that had taken him four hours to solve, about the moment he and Ethan had looked at each other across the auditorium and known they had it.
He told me Ethan was quieter than him, more like their mother, that Ethan had been the one to say *let's find him* and then immediately said *but you do the talking.*
I listened to every word.
When we were done, Leo put on his jacket and picked up his phone.
"I'll talk to Ethan," he said.
"About meeting you."
"I'd like that."
He nodded.
Started to leave.
Stopped at the edge of the table.
"One more thing," he said.
"Victoria.
Her son.
Preston."
"Yes."
"Does he know about us?"
"He does now."
Leo considered that.
"Is he going to be a problem?"
I thought about Preston in the corridor.
The crack in his voice.
*Don't call them that.*
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
Leo nodded slowly, as if that answer was more useful than a reassuring one.
"Okay," he said.
And he walked out.
I sat in the booth for a long time after.
The waitress refilled my coffee without being asked.
The coconut cream sign still said Thursday.
My phone buzzed on the table.
A text from Victoria's personal attorney.
*Mr.
Mercer.
Mrs.
Mercer has retained our firm in connection with a potential dissolution proceeding.
Please have your counsel contact us at your earliest convenience.*
I read it twice.
Set the phone face-down on the table.
May you like
Outside, through the diner window, I watched Leo cross the street.
He didn't look back.
