Chương 8
Lily was not allowed into the ICU.
She sat in the waiting room wearing jeans and a yellow sweatshirt Sofia Ortega had bought her. The new sneakers on her feet were plain gray. Nathan had sent nothing.
“Is she dead?” Lily asked him.
“No.”
“People say stable when they mean maybe dead.”
“She’s very sick. The doctors are helping her.”
“Can she talk?”
“Not yet.”
“Did she ask for me?”
“She isn’t awake.”
Lily stared at the aquarium built into the waiting-room wall. A bright orange fish opened and closed its mouth beside a plastic castle.
“She hates fish,” Lily said.
“Your mother?”
“She says they’re always looking surprised about water.”
Nathan sat beside her.
After a while, Lily pointed at his suit. “Do you have other clothes?”
“Yes.”
“You always wear that.”
“I have several that look the same.”
“That’s dumb.”
“It saves time.”
“For what?”
He had no answer that would not sound dumb.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Is Blue yours?”
“The test says I’m his biological father.”
“What’s biological?”
“It means part of what made him came from me.”
“And his mom?”
Nathan looked through the ICU window. “Her name was Claire.”
“Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
Lily nodded as if adding a fact to a list no child should have needed. “So my mom made him, but she’s not his mom?”
“She carried him inside her body. That matters. The rest is complicated.”
“Adults say complicated when they did something bad.”
“Frequently.”
She looked at him then. “Did you do something bad?”
Nathan rubbed his thumb across the seam of his trousers.
“I signed papers years ago saying the embryos should be destroyed.”
“What are embryos?”
“Very early beginnings of babies.”
“You wanted Blue destroyed?”
The directness of it left no room for the language adults used to protect themselves.
“I didn’t know Blue. I didn’t know any baby would exist. Claire was dying, and we had been told we couldn’t have children the way we planned. Keeping the embryos felt like keeping her trapped in a decision she couldn’t change later.”
“That doesn’t answer.”
“No,” he said. “I signed the paper because I couldn’t bear to keep hoping.”
Lily watched the fish again. “That was selfish.”
“Yes.”
“Your mom was selfish too.”
“Yes.”
“Everybody was.”
“Yes.”
She nodded, apparently satisfied by the first answer that did not attempt to rescue anyone.
Elena woke the following morning.
Her first words were not about the baby, Dr. Voss, or Margaret Carter.
“Where’s Lily?”
Mara brought Lily to the ICU door. They were not allowed to touch because of infection precautions. Elena cried silently behind her oxygen mask. Lily did not cry at all. She pressed one palm to the glass, and Elena lifted her hand from the bed until it aligned on the other side.
Nathan stood around the corner where they could not see him.
He left before the visit ended.
The press learned about the children that afternoon.
At first the reports contained only fragments: an unidentified newborn found at the Greenwich estate of billionaire investor Nathan Carter; a seven-year-old girl taken into protective care; an elderly relative questioned; a former fertility specialist arrested near the state line.
By evening, reporters had identified Halcyon Reproductive Medicine and connected it to Claire Carter’s cancer treatment. Photographs of Nathan and Claire appeared everywhere. One showed them leaving a benefit dinner twelve years earlier, Claire laughing at something beyond the frame while Nathan looked at her instead of the cameras.
The next morning, a tabloid published Lily’s first name.
Nathan’s communications director, Priya Shah, placed a stack of printouts on the library table and waited while he read none of them.
“We need a holding statement,” she said.
“The hospital asked for privacy.”
“A statement can reinforce that.”
“Then say the children deserve privacy.”
“We also need to address the genetic reports.”
“Those are sealed.”
“Someone is leaking.”
“Find out who.”
“That is not a communications strategy.”
Nathan looked at her. Priya had worked for him for six years and had never raised her voice. She did not now.
“If we refuse to say anything,” she continued, “other people will define what happened. Your mother’s representatives are already suggesting she acted to preserve Claire’s wishes.”
Nathan’s mouth went dry. “Representatives?”
“Her new counsel hired a crisis firm.”
“She is in the middle of a criminal investigation.”
“She is also sick, elderly, and visually sympathetic. Those facts will matter to the public.”
“She arranged an illegal embryo transfer.”
“She will say she saved her dead daughter-in-law’s child from destruction.”
“Claire was not her daughter.”
“Publicly, that distinction will not help you.”
Nathan pushed the papers away.
Priya remained standing. “The company board meets tomorrow. Several directors believe you concealed exposure related to Halcyon.”
“I didn’t know.”
“They may believe you should have known.”
“That is a different accusation.”
“It is still one they can make.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Tell the truth before a cleaner lie replaces it.”
The sentence sounded simple until Nathan considered what truth meant. It meant Claire’s treatments. His decision to destroy the embryos. Margaret’s cancer. Elena’s poverty. Lily’s fear. A newborn who had spent his first week without a legal name. Truth in public was not one thing. It was a crowd tearing pieces from people who had not agreed to be seen.
“No statement about Lily or Elena without their lawyers’ approval,” he said.
“Agreed.”
“No photograph of the baby.”
“Agreed.”
“Nothing from Claire’s letter.”
Priya hesitated. “Have you read it?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you should stop calling it Claire’s letter.”
He dismissed her with a look.
She gathered the printouts but left one photograph on the table: Nathan and Claire leaving the benefit, her head turned toward him now in the frozen image.
May you like
He opened the letter that night.
Detective Delgado had finished documenting it and released a copy to his attorney. The original remained evidence. Nathan took the copy upstairs, entered the bedroom he had avoided for months at a time since Claire’s death, and sat on the floor against the bed.
