The girl wasn't his.
That's what she said. Standing in their kitchen. Wednesday evening. Dishes in the sink. The smell of something burning an hour ago. The television muting itself in the living room because neither of them had remembered to turn it off.
She said it like she'd been holding it for years and finally needed to put it down.
"I'm sorry." Her hands were shaking. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know how to tell you. I kept waiting for the right time and there is no right time and—"
He sat down.
The kitchen chair was old. They'd bought it at a flea market when they first moved in together, back when everything was secondhand and everything was enough. The leg had always been slightly uneven. He'd never fixed it. He'd meant to, a hundred times, but he never did. Now he sat and the chair rocked once, twice, and settled.
"She's not yours."
He looked at his hands on the table. The knuckles. The veins. Forty-two years old and his hands looked older. He'd always thought they looked like his father's hands. His father had been dead for eleven years. Cancer. The kind that eats you slow. He'd held those hands in the hospital, watching the life drain out, and thought: *One day these will be my hands.* Now they were. And they were empty.
"She has your laugh," he said. "You always said she has your laugh."
"I lied."
"Every time she laughs I hear—"
"I lied. I lied about that. I lied about everything. She has *his* laugh. His eyes. His everything. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He didn't look up.
Behind her, through the kitchen window, the neighbor's kid was riding a bike in circles on the driveway. Around and around. Training wheels rattling. The kid was maybe six. Happy. Oblivious. His mother stood on the porch, watching, phone in hand, not really watching at all. Normal life. Happening right there. Twenty feet away.
He thought about the girl. Callie. Six years old. She called him Dad. She drew him pictures with crayon suns and stick figures with too many fingers. She left half-eaten apples on the coffee table. She was afraid of the dark but wouldn't admit it. She had a nightlight shaped like a whale.
None of it was his.
"How long?"
"Since before she was born."
"Who?"
"Does it matter?"
He thought about it. Decided she was right. It didn't matter. The man's name wouldn't change anything. The man's face wouldn't change anything. The man could be anyone, could be everyone, could be a ghost, and the fact would remain the same.
Six years.
Six years of bedtime stories. Six years of school plays and parent-teacher conferences and the time she fell off the swing and scraped her knee and he was the one who held her until she stopped crying. Six years of being Dad.
None of it was his.
"She doesn't know," his wife said. "She thinks you're ... she doesn't know any different. I never told her. I never told anyone. I just—I couldn't—"
"You couldn't what?"
"Keep lying. To you. To myself. I thought if I said it out loud it would become real and I didn't want it to be real and now it's been six years and I can't—"
"Stop."
She stopped.
He stood up.
The chair rocked behind him. Uneven leg. He'd meant to fix it. He never did.
"I'm going for a walk."
"It's dark out."
"I know."
He walked.
The front door closed behind him. The porch light was on. It was always on. She liked it on. *So I can see you coming home,* she used to say. Back when coming home meant something.
The street was quiet. Suburban quiet. The kind of quiet where you can hear your own footsteps and count them if you want to. He didn't want to. He walked.
Past the Johnsons' house. They had a dog. A golden retriever. It barked at everything. It didn't bark tonight. Maybe it knew. Maybe dogs could smell death on a man. He'd heard that somewhere.
Past the empty lot where the kids played during the day. A glove lay in the grass. Someone's left hand. Small. A child's. He thought of Callie's hands. Small. Sticky. Always reaching for something.
Past the convenience store on the corner. The lights were bright inside. A man stood at the counter, buying cigarettes. Normal life. Happening right there. Ten feet away.
He kept walking.
The streets became less familiar. The houses got older. The sidewalks cracked. He stepped over the cracks like he'd been doing it for fifteen years. You don't stop stepping over cracks just because everything else has changed.
He thought about the first time he met her.
Twenty-three years ago. A party. Someone's apartment. Too many people, too much noise, too little air. She was standing by the window, looking out at the city, and he'd walked up to her because she was the only person in the room who looked like she didn't want to be there.
"What are you looking at?" he'd asked.
"The lights," she'd said. "They look like stars from here. But they're not."
He'd loved her then. Right then. In that moment. Not because of what she said but because of how she said it. Like she'd already figured out that most beautiful things are lies.
They talked for hours that night. Walked until dawn. He kissed her as the sun came up and thought: *This is it. This is the one.*
Twenty-three years.
A wedding. A house. A child.
None of it was his.
He ended up on the bridge.
He didn't mean to. He wasn't heading anywhere. But his feet knew the way. His feet had walked this route a hundred times. To work. To the store. To nowhere. His feet knew this bridge.
It was the one over the river. The one everyone used to get from one side to the other. During the day, it was crowded. Cars, trucks, buses, people on bikes, people on foot. Everyone going somewhere. Everyone with a reason.
At night, it was empty.
He stood at the railing and looked down.
The water was black. Not dark. Black. Like it had swallowed all the light that ever touched it and asked for more. The river was deep here. Deep enough. Cold enough. Fast enough.
Cars passed behind him. Headlights swept across his back, his legs, the railing, then gone. Drivers unaware of the man standing at the edge. Why would they be? Men stand on bridges at night all the time. Looking at water. Thinking thoughts. Going home afterward.
He thought about Callie.
Her first word. *Da.* Not Dada. Da. Like she couldn't be bothered with the extra syllable. She'd looked right at him and said it and he'd cried. Actually cried. In front of everyone. His wife had laughed and hugged him and said
*she's your little girl.*
He thought about her first steps. Across the living room. Arms out. Wobbling. Falling into his arms. Laughing. Always laughing.
He thought about the nightlight. The whale. She'd picked it out herself. A blue whale with a sleepy face. It glowed soft and warm and she wouldn't sleep without it. He'd replaced the bulb six times. Six times he'd knelt beside her bed, in the dark, listening to her breathe, watching the whale glow, thinking:
*This is mine. This is my life. This is enough.*
None of it was his.
He thought about the story.
But he never finished it.
He never figured out how it ended.
He thought:
*At least that hero knew who he was.*
Fiction.
None of it was real.
He climbed the railing.
It wasn't hard. The railing was waist-high. Designed to keep people from falling, not from jumping. He swung one leg over, then the other. Stood on the narrow edge. Felt the wind on his face. Looked down.
The water was still black.
A car honked behind him. Someone yelled something. He didn't turn around. The words didn't matter. The people didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the black water and the cold wind and the empty space between where he stood and where he would be.
He thought about his wife.
Her face when she told him. The way her hands shook. The way her voice cracked. The way she looked at him like she expected him to hit her, to scream, to break something. He'd never hit her. He'd never screamed at her. He'd never broken anything. He'd just sat there. Like always. Just sat there and took it.
He thought about the man. The one whose name didn't matter. The one who'd given her something he couldn't. A child. A laugh. A reason to lie for six years.
He wondered if the man knew. If he watched from afar. If he saw Callie grow. If he felt proud. If he felt anything.
He thought about Callie.
Her room. Her bed. Her whale. Her crayon drawings on the refrigerator. Her half-eaten apples. Her sticky hands. Her laugh.
Her laugh that wasn't his.
He thought about the story.
* His Fiction.*
He stepped forward.
The fall took longer than he expected. Long enough to feel stupid. Long enough to think about the dishes in the sink. Long enough to wonder if anyone would feed the cat. They had a cat. A gray tabby named Mouse. Callie named her. Mouse slept on his side of the bed every night. He'd forgotten Mouse.
Long enough to think: *I should have fixed that chair leg.*
Then the water hit him.
Cold.
Colder than he imagined. Colder than anything. It punched the air from his lungs. It wrapped around him like hands. It pulled him down.
He didn't fight.
He opened his eyes underwater. It was dark. So dark. The black water was black. No light. No surface. No bottom. Just dark and cold and the sound of his own blood in his ears.
He thought: This is it.
He thought: I'm sorry, Callie.
He thought: I never finished the story.
Then nothing.