Page 124 of Forever, Maybe
Her anger and the faint tang of cigarette smoke in the air were too much like the past—familiar, but in a way that made his stomach churn.
“Now, I admit, I’ve never been all that fond of my daughter-in-law,” Trish began, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “And when I found out about her infidelity, I had to go to confession every single morning for two weeks—two weeks, Daniel Christopher Francis Murray!—telling Father Reilly how much I disliked her and how sinful that was of me. But today…” Her voice cracked as she pointed a trembling finger at him. “Today, words fail me. They really do.”
What on earth? This couldn’t be about Nell turning up and spilling everything about the pregnancy. Trish would never—never—sympathise with her over that.
“You,” she hissed, jabbing her forefinger into his chest hard enough to bruise. “Fathered achild! With anotherwoman! When you’d only been married three years! And poor wee Nell has had to live with the shame and humiliation of what you’ve done!”
Daniel blinked. The sheer novelty of his mother defending Nell would have been astonishing enough on its own, but coming with this…
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he snapped.
Trish’s hand whipped across his cheek, the slap echoing in the still air. “How dare you use that language in front of me!” she spat. “This, this!” She thrust her phone at him, her hand shaking with fury.
Daniel pressed his knuckles against the heat radiating from his cheek, the sting spreading like fire. He glanced down at the screen, blinking at the Instagram photo she shoved in his face.
A boy. Young, maybe seventeen or so, with a face that looked… oddly familiar.
And then it hit him.
The lad who’d walked into the Hyndland shop back in the spring, asking, almost shyly, if he was Daniel Murray.
“Spitting image of you, that boy!” Trish barked, her voice rising. “Nell said she met his uncle. Ryan’s his name. According to the uncle, his older sister got pregnant in 1999 but never told anyone who the father was. And now—now—there’s this boy, my firstgrandchild, who’s been ignored, unacknowledged, unpaid for! And you,” she stabbed a finger in his direction again, trembling with rage, “you cheated on your wife first! For the life of me, I do not understand your generation, and I hope to God I never will!”
Daniel stared at the photo. Puzzle pieces began clicking into place with painful clarity. The kid in his shop. The hesitant job application. The way he’d lingered, watching Daniel like he was trying to figure something out.
And… that other thing. The massive, hulking elephant in the room that had lived with Daniel for nearly seventeen years, too big and shameful to face.
He looked at the boy on the screen. And for one heart-stopping moment, it felt as though the kid’s eyes met his.
Hello, you, a voice in his head whispered, unbidden.I’m your father.
Chapter fifty-one
April1999
Daniel cracked open one eye, squinting at the unfamiliar room as he struggled to orient himself.
The deep purple walls that loomed around him, and the single bulb dangled from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows, gave him no clues.
A toilet flushed. The door creaked open, and a young woman emerged. She was wearing a matching push-up pink bra and a thong, her slanted cheekbones flushed a blotchy red.
She was younger than him, he reckoned. Twenty, maybe? To his twenty-four. She ran a hand through her dark hair, eyeing him with a look he couldn’t quite read. Several unpleasant thoughts hit him in quick succession like an unkind drumroll.
First: his insides were staging a full-scale rebellion. If he didn’t use that ensuite bathroom in the next thirty seconds, there would be consequences. Dire ones.
Second: this was not the same hotel room he’d woken up in yesterday.
Third: unless Nell had magically changed her appearanceandturned up uninvited to his cousin’s stag do in Amsterdam, there was a strange woman in her underwear standing in front of him.
And—oh, great—beneath the scratchy nylon sheet and threadbare duvet, he was bollock naked.
This all pointed to one grim conclusion: he and this stranger had likely slept together last night.
Slowly, Daniel sat up, muscles clenched tight to keep his traitorous belly in check. “Uh…”
“You feeling alright?” she asked. Her teeth were distractingly straight and blindingly white—the first thing he’d noticed about her last night. Her Glaswegian accent, the second. A memory flickered: the group of women on a hen do, crashing the stag do.
“I need to…” he began, voice hoarse.
