Chương 4
Yet something in the baby’s furrowed brow struck him with humiliating force.
Lily leaned over the bassinet. She looked at the baby, then at Nathan through the glass.
“He makes the same worried face as you.”
No one laughed.
Nathan entered the treatment room and approached the bassinet. The nurse watched him closely.
He held out one finger.
The infant’s hand opened, wandered, and closed around it.
The grip was weak. Nathan felt it everywhere.
Mara allowed the children to remain in the same pediatric room while emergency placement options were reviewed. She did not allow Nathan to take either child home. The decision angered him until she explained it without apology.
“You are a stranger named in documents connected to a potentially unlawful reproductive procedure. The infant may be biologically related to you, but we don’t know that yet. The girl arrived at your home under circumstances no one can explain. Your wealth does not make the situation safer. It only gives you more ways to influence it.”
William objected.
Nathan did not.
“What happens tonight?” he asked.
“The baby stays here for observation. Lily can stay in an adjoining room under protective supervision. Tomorrow we seek temporary orders.”
“They stay together?”
“They stay near each other. That is what I can promise.”
Lily, listening from the bed, said, “That’s too many words.”
Mara glanced at Nathan.
He almost smiled. “It means yes for tonight.”
Lily considered this. “Okay.”
Police found blood on the stone behind the east wall shortly before noon.
Not much. A smear along the old service path, diluted by rain, and a torn piece of dark green fabric caught on the ironwork. The security cameras had not recorded the area because a storm-damaged branch had shifted one camera three weeks earlier. The repair request had been logged and postponed until Monday.
Nathan’s chief of security explained this over the phone with the careful misery of a man who expected to be fired.
“Was the gate forced?” Nathan asked.
“No. It was opened with a valid code.”
“Whose?”
A pause.
“Mrs. Carter’s household code.”
Margaret again.
The code had been used at 5:51 that morning. At 6:04, an outgoing call from a blocked number near the estate had reached the child welfare emergency line. At 6:12, the front door camera showed Lily emerging from the side garden with the infant in her arms.
There was no sign of Elena Bell.
Nathan called his mother.
She answered on the fifth ring.
“Nathan.”
Her voice sounded thinner than it had on Thursday, though perhaps he heard what William had told him.
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“William said New York.”
“William has always confused information with loyalty.”
“Did you send two children to my house?”
Silence.
In the hospital room, Lily was asleep sitting upright, one hand resting through the side of the bassinet. Evelyn sat near her reading a gardening magazine she had not turned a page of in twenty minutes.
Margaret said, “Is the baby alive?”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“And the girl?”
“Yes.”
“Then some part of the plan worked.”
“What plan?”
“Not on the telephone.”
“You used your gate code. Your handwriting is on the envelope. Claire’s medical records were taped to a newborn.”
“I said not on the telephone.”
“Where is Elena Bell?”
A faint breath reached him through the line.
“I don’t know.”
“Who is she?”
“I will come to the hospital.”
“No.”
“Nathan.”
“Police are on their way to you.”
“You sent police to my home?”
“You sent a child to mine.”
He ended the call before she could answer.
Margaret arrived at the hospital anyway.
She came in a black wool coat with a silk scarf at her throat and a cane Nathan had never seen. William walked beside her, one hand hovering near her elbow without touching it. Her face, always narrow, had become severe with weight loss. The sight of her illness reached Nathan before his anger could defend him from it.
She looked through the glass at the newborn.
Her mouth opened slightly.
“That’s him,” she said.
Detective Delgado stepped between her and the treatment-room door. “Mrs. Carter, I need to speak with you privately.”
Margaret did not look away from the baby. “He has Claire’s forehead.”
“You don’t know that,” Nathan said.
She turned toward him. “You always needed a laboratory to tell you what was in front of your face.”
“And you always preferred what you wanted to be true.”
The old reflex between them arrived intact. Her chin rose. His shoulders locked. He was forty-four, she was seventy-two, and for an instant they were back in the dining room of his childhood home, where she corrected his posture and he discovered silence could be sharpened into a weapon.
Lily woke.
Margaret saw her.
Something like surprise moved across the older woman’s face. “She wasn’t supposed to bring the girl.”
Lily slid off the bed and positioned herself between Margaret and the bassinet.
“Bring her where?” Nathan asked.
Margaret’s gaze remained on Lily. “Elena was supposed to leave the infant with the documents and go.”
“You expected a woman to abandon a newborn behind my wall in a storm?”
“She was to ring the bell.”
“She brought her daughter.”
“I can see that.”
“You knew she had a daughter?”
Margaret’s grip tightened around the cane. “Of course.”
Lily spoke without looking at her. “My mom said you lied.”
William moved toward Margaret. “This conversation needs to stop.”
Nathan faced him. “How much did you know?”
“Nathan, there are criminal implications.”
“For her or for you?”
“For everyone.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only responsible answer until counsel is present.”
“You are counsel.”
“Not for this.”
The newborn began to fuss. Lily reached through the bassinet bars, murmuring, “It’s okay, Blue. It’s okay.”
Margaret’s eyes flickered. “Blue?”
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“He didn’t have a name,” Lily said. “His blanket did.”
Margaret seemed offended by the temporary name, then ashamed of the offense. The two expressions passed so quickly that Nathan might have imagined them.
