Chương 12
Claire pressed both hands against the counter.
“Stop.”
They did.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
All three adults looked toward the ceiling.
Lucy appeared halfway down the staircase.
“Are you fighting about Grandma?”
Claire walked into the hall.
“I thought I asked you to stay upstairs.”
“You said for a little while.”
“It has been seven minutes.”
“That’s a little while.”
Daniel rubbed his face.
Nathan murmured, “She has a case.”
Claire shot him a look.
Lucy descended another step.
“Is this about my birth certificate?”
Nobody moved.
Lucy’s expression changed first.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
“You were listening.”
“You were yelling.”
“We were not yelling.”
“Mom, the neighbors could probably tell me what drawer it was in.”
Claire lowered her voice.
“Come down.”
Lucy did, slowly now.
She sat on the third step from the bottom and tucked her hands between her knees.
Claire remained standing because sitting beside her suddenly felt theatrical.
“Your birth certificate is missing.”
“Okay.”
“It may have been misplaced.”
“Okay.”
“And Grandma said some things before she died that we don’t understand yet.”
Lucy looked at Daniel.
“Is this why she asked about my name?”
“Maybe,” Claire said.
Lucy considered the answer.
“Am I adopted?”
Daniel’s head lifted.
“No.”
Claire said nothing.
Lucy looked at her.
“Mom?”
“I gave birth to you.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
The precision of it made Claire cold.
Daniel stepped closer.
“You are not adopted.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there.”
“At the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“When I was born?”
“Yes.”
Lucy frowned.
“Then why is everybody acting like there’s a murder podcast happening in our kitchen?”
Nathan looked away, hiding something dangerously close to a smile.
Claire sat on the bottom step.
“There are questions about things that happened before you were born.”
“What things?”
“We don’t know enough yet.”
“That answer is getting annoying.”
“I know.”
Lucy picked at a loose thread on her pajama cuff.
“Is the weird lady related to me?”
Claire hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
That finally frightened her daughter.
Lucy’s shoulders pulled inward.
Daniel crouched beside the stairs.
“Hey.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I look exactly like this all the time.”
“No, you don’t.”
Lucy stared at the floor.
“Can I sleep at Maya’s?”
Claire almost said no.
The refusal rose automatically, powered by the primitive conviction that safety meant keeping Lucy within arm’s reach.
Then Daniel said, “That might not be a bad idea.”
Claire looked at him.
“You cannot be serious.”
“Maya’s parents are home.”
“So are we.”
“And someone came here looking for her.”
Nathan nodded reluctantly.
“He has a point.”
Claire hated that two men agreeing could make a reasonable idea feel like an ambush.
Lucy stood.
“I don’t want to be here if you’re all going to whisper about whether I’m secretly somebody else.”
“You’re not somebody else.”
“Then figure it out.”
She went upstairs.
Her bedroom door closed with more care than a slam would have required.
Daniel stood.
“That came from you.”
“Not now.”
“Absolutely from you.”
Nathan checked the time.
“We need to leave.”
Claire looked toward the stairs.
The house had become impossible in less than an hour.
Every room contained something she had trusted that now seemed capable of changing meaning.
She picked up the bagged key.
“Call Maya’s parents yourself.”
Daniel nodded.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“Whatever you find tonight, don’t decide what it means before you bring it home.”
She slipped the key into her purse.
“You mean don’t become my mother.”
“I mean exactly what I said.”
Nathan was waiting by the door with Evelyn’s box.
Claire took her coat from the hook.
Before she could put it on, Lucy called from upstairs.
“Mom.”
Claire climbed the stairs.
Lucy stood outside her room holding a folded sheet of paper.
“I forgot about this.”
“What is it?”
“Grandma gave it to me.”
“When?”
“The last time she babysat.”
Claire did not take it yet.
“What did she say?”
“That I should keep it somewhere you wouldn’t clean.”
Despite herself, Claire glanced toward Lucy’s room.
“That gives her considerable options.”
Lucy almost smiled.
“I put it inside my old math workbook.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She said it was a surprise for later.”
Claire took the paper.
Her name was written on the outside in Evelyn’s unmistakable handwriting.
CLAIRE ONLY.
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Did Grandma tell you what was inside?”
Lucy shook her head.
Then she added, “She cried after she gave it to me.”
Claire looked down at the fold.
Her mother had been a private crier.
Bathroom crier.
Car crier.
Laundry-room-with-the-dryer-running crier.
Claire had inherited that too, along with Evelyn’s narrow feet and talent for remembering insults from 1998.
“Anything else?”
“She hugged me.”
“Grandma hugged you all the time.”
“Not like that.”
Claire looked at her daughter.
Lucy swallowed.
“She said she was sorry she made you carry something that belonged to her.”
Claire unfolded the paper.
The note was short.
Claire read it once.
Then again.
Nathan called from downstairs.
“We have to go.”
Claire did not answer.
Lucy touched her elbow.
“What does it say?”
Claire folded the note along its old crease.
Her fingers had started shaking.
“It says Margaret knows where I was born.”
Lucy frowned.
“But you know where you were born.”
Claire looked at the final line again.
She had spent forty-one years believing the answer was St. Gabriel’s Hospital.
Evelyn’s note said otherwise.
NO MATTER WHAT MARIANNE TELLS YOU, YOU WERE NEVER BORN AT ST. GABRIEL’S.
Claire came downstairs without putting on her coat.
Nathan saw her face.
“What?”
She handed him the note.
He read it beneath the hall light.
Daniel moved closer.
Nathan read the last line twice.
“That’s impossible.”
Claire picked up her purse.
May you like
“So was Marianne standing on my porch.”
St. Gabriel’s had stopped delivering babies eleven years ago, and the old maternity wing had been converted into outpatient rehabilitation offices with cheerful blue signs that made Claire resent everyone who had ever recovered from anything.
