Richard sat in his armchair, the magazine open on his lap, his eyes moving across the pages without seeing them. The house was quiet. Susan had taken Chloe to a doctor's appointment. Tyler was at a friend's house. The three of them—the ones who weren't supposed to be here—were upstairs, behind the closed door at the end of the hall, where they spent most of their time when they weren't at school.
He turned a page. An advertisement for a car he couldn't afford. He turned another. An article about investment strategies for families with growing children. He stared at the words—529 plans, college savings, future security—and felt something tighten in his chest.
He didn't have a future to save for. Not for them. He had a present to survive, a house to maintain, a wife who deserved better than a man whose past kept showing up at his door with garbage bags full of clothes and eyes that asked for things he couldn't give.
The magazine slipped from his hands. He let it fall.
---
He thought about the phone bill. The way the numbers had glared at him from the page, red and accusing, a seventy-three-dollar reminder that nothing in this house was his anymore. Not the quiet, not the privacy, not the life he'd built with Susan before the state had called and told him he was a father again.
He'd enjoyed it. He could admit that to himself, in the privacy of his own mind. The way Malcolm's face had gone white when he'd held up the bill. The way his voice had cracked when he'd said he'd pay for it. The way he'd sat at the table with his hands in his lap and taken it, because what else could he do?
You're not your mother's child. You're mine.
He'd meant it as a claim. A reminder. A chain. But even as he'd said it, he'd known it wasn't true. Malcolm wasn't his. None of them were. They were Diane's—the woman who'd chosen drugs over her own children, who'd died and left him to clean up the mess.
He picked up the magazine again. The pages were slick, expensive, the kind of publication that went with the house on Kenwood Avenue, the neighborhood where people knew his name and didn't ask where he'd come from. He'd worked for this. He'd earned this. And now he was paying for three extra mouths, three extra bodies, three extra reasons to wake up in the morning and wonder if any of it was worth it.
---
You want to know what I think? I think you're just scared to feel again.
The words came to him unbidden, from some song Tyler played too loud in his room. He pushed them away. He wasn't scared. He was practical. He was a man who understood the cost of things, who knew that love was a luxury he couldn't afford to waste on children who weren't his.
He thought about Maya. The youngest one. The one who still called out for her mother in her sleep, who followed Malcolm around like a shadow, who had looked at him once—just once—with eyes that weren't afraid.
He'd almost felt something then. A flicker. A warmth. The way people smiled at little kids in grocery stores, the way they cooed over them like they were something precious. Maya had that quality. She was small, helpless, the kind of child who made people want to protect her.
But she wasn't his. And the cost of protecting her was more than he was willing to pay.
He turned another page. An article about taxes, deductions, the things you could write off when you had dependents. He'd already asked his accountant about that. Three dependents. Three exemptions. Three reasons why the government thought he was a father, when all he'd ever wanted was to be left alone.
---
He thought about Tiana. The middle one. The one Susan was always looking at.
He'd noticed it, of course. He wasn't blind. The way Susan's voice softened when she said her name. The way she bought her things—clothes, books, a sketchbook once, though he couldn't remember when. He'd wondered, for a moment, if Susan was trying to make up for something. Or maybe she just saw something in the girl that he didn't.
It didn't matter. Susan could do what she wanted. She'd been good to him, better than he deserved, and if she wanted to spend money on a child that wasn't hers, that was her choice.
He thought about Tyler. His son. The boy who had his mother's temper, his own stubbornness, a mouth that got him into trouble and a heart that was still too soft for the world. Tyler had asked him once, after the phone bill, why he didn't just send them back.
"They don't have anywhere to go," Richard had said. And it was true. It was also the only answer he had.
He thought about Chloe. His daughter. Quiet, careful, watching everything with eyes that missed nothing. She was the one who worried him. Not because she was trouble—she never was—but because she was too much like him. The way she held things close. The way she smiled when she didn't mean it. The way she looked at Malcolm sometimes, like she was seeing something no one else could.
He didn't know what that meant. He didn't want to know.
---
I've been looking for a way out. But I don't know where to go.
The words came again, sharper this time, and he set the magazine aside. He didn't need a song to tell him what he already knew. He was trapped. Trapped in a house that was too small, a life that was too crowded, a marriage that was being stretched thin by children who had no claim to any of it.
He thought about the money. The seventy-three dollars for the phone calls. The clothes, the food, the school fees that appeared every month like a bill he hadn't asked for. He'd calculated it once—the cost of keeping them—and he'd stopped halfway through because the number was too large, too final, too much like a future he hadn't chosen.
He got up from the chair. The magazine fell to the floor. He left it there.
---
He walked through the house, his footsteps quiet on the hardwood. The kitchen was clean, the way Susan left it. The living room was empty, the television dark. The stairs creaked under his weight, the way they always did, and he paused at the top, looking down the hall toward the closed door at the end.
Behind it, he knew, they were there. The three of them, huddled together in a room that wasn't big enough for all of them, living a life he hadn't asked to provide. He could hear Maya's voice, high and thin, asking for something. He could hear Malcolm's response, low and steady, the voice of a boy who had learned to be a man too young.
He didn't go to the door. He turned away, toward the balcony at the back of the house, and stepped out into the cold.
---
The air was sharp, the sky dark, the street below quiet. He leaned against the railing and looked out at the neighborhood he'd worked for, the house he'd bought, the life he'd built. Somewhere in the dark, there were people who didn't know his name, who didn't know about the three children upstairs, who saw him as a man with a good job and a nice house and a wife who smiled at parties.
He pulled a flask from his coat pocket. Whiskey, the good kind, the kind he didn't share. He took a long swallow and let the heat settle in his chest.
He thought about the future. Not the one the magazine had promised—college funds, savings accounts, the slow accumulation of a life well-lived. He thought about the day when Malcolm would be eighteen, when the state would stop calling, when the door at the end of the hall would close for the last time and he wouldn't have to open it again.
He took another swallow. The whiskey burned. He let it.
He thought about the money. The cost of keeping them, the cost of feeding them, the cost of the silence that filled the house when they were there and the silence that filled the house when they weren't. He thought about the phone bill, the seventy-three dollars, the way Malcolm had sat at the table with his hands in his lap and taken the blame for something that wasn't his fault.
He didn't feel guilty. He felt justified. He felt the cold satisfaction of a man who had asserted control over something that had been slipping away from him. The children were his, whether he wanted them or not. They owed him. They owed him for the roof over their heads, the food on their plates, the clothes on their backs. And he would collect, one way or another, until the day they were gone.
He took another swallow. The flask was half-empty now, the heat spreading through his chest, his thoughts loosening into something he didn't have to hold onto.
He thought about Susan. Her hands in his, her voice in the dark, the way she'd stood beside him at the table while he'd torn Malcolm apart. She hadn't said anything. She never did. That was one of the things he loved about her. She knew when to speak and when to stay silent, when to hold and when to let go.
He thought about Tyler. His son. The boy who had asked him why he didn't send the others away. He'd wanted to tell him the truth—that he couldn't, that the law wouldn't let him, that he was trapped in a life he hadn't chosen. But he'd said something else instead. Something about responsibility, about doing the right thing, about a future that would be better when they were gone.
He didn't know if Tyler believed him. He didn't know if he believed himself.
---
He finished the flask. The whiskey was gone, the cold pressing in around him, the house dark behind him. He looked out at the street, at the lights blinking off in the houses across the way, at the sky that was starting to lighten at the edges.
He thought about the money. The mortgage, the car payments, the school fees that would come again next month. He thought about the three children upstairs, the ones who weren't his, the ones who cost him something every day he kept them.
He didn't have a plan. He didn't have a future. He had a house that was too small and a wife who deserved better and a son who was starting to ask questions he couldn't answer.
He turned from the balcony, stepped back into the house, and closed the door behind him. The darkness was heavy, the silence thick, the weight of everything he hadn't said pressing down on him like something he couldn't shake.
He walked down the hall, past the closed door at the end, and didn't look back. He went to his room, to his bed, to the wife who was waiting for him, and he didn't think about the children.
He didn't think about them at all.
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