Chương 6
Luke took the phone again. “Where is Brittany?”
“At her friend’s.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“She isn’t answering.”
“Good.”
Harrison opened his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“You let Mother announce this in front of the family?”
“I did not know she was going to.”
“But when she did, you said nothing.”
“I had just seen the photograph.”
“What photograph?”
Harrison told them.
Luke listened without interruption. When Harrison finished, Luke rubbed his face. “And you assumed an affair.”
“I did not assume anything.”
“You asked who the man was.”
“Because I did not know.”
“You knew the pregnancy used a donor. There were not many possible categories.”
Clara muttered, “This family can turn arithmetic into Shakespeare.”
Emma looked at her. “That was almost funny.”
“It was not meant to be.”
Luke’s voice softened. “Tell the truth tonight.”
“Julia said not to send an impulsive statement.”
“Then do not make it impulsive. Make it true.”
“You are in another country.”
“That may be why I can see this clearly.”
Harrison looked across the nursery. One of Brittany’s paintbrushes sat in a glass jar, bristles stiff with dried green paint.
“What did Mother say to you?” he asked.
“That Brittany targeted you. That the man in the photograph is probably the father. That the child has no Vale blood.”
Emma leaned in. “She used the phrase ‘no claim on us.’”
The baby kicked against Brittany’s palm for the first time that day while she was sitting at Nora Bennett’s kitchen table, watching tea cool in a chipped mug.
She pressed her hand to the movement and waited for another.
Nothing came.
Nora stood at the counter cutting an apple into slices too thin to eat without breaking. She had been Brittany’s roommate before Harrison, before the townhouse, before pearl earrings became ordinary enough to forget she was wearing them. Nora taught fourth grade in Somerville and still bought the same tea they had kept in their first apartment because it was cheap and came in a box of a hundred.
“You need to eat,” Nora said.
“I ate at the clinic.”
“You had half a strawberry.”
“There was champagne.”
“You did not drink champagne.”
“I smelled it.”
“That is not food.”
Brittany took one apple slice. The first bite tasted metallic.
Nora set the knife down. “Do you want me to hate him now, or later?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can schedule it.”
Brittany almost smiled. The effort hurt.
Her phone buzzed across the table. Harrison’s name appeared for the fourth time.
Nora looked at it. “He is persistent.”
“He is used to doors opening.”
“Mine sticks in winter.”
The phone stopped. A message appeared.
Please let me know you and the baby are safe.
Brittany turned the phone over.
Nora sat across from her. “Is the baby safe?”
“We don’t know.”
She explained Gabriel’s sister, the cardiac condition, the ignored update, the ultrasound marker. She had told the story twice already—once to Dr. Roth before the family arrived and once to herself in the back of Patricia’s car—but saying it in Nora’s kitchen made it real in a different way.
Nora listened with her elbows on the table.
When Brittany finished, she said, “And Harrison knew none of this?”
“He knew I wanted updated donor records. He kept saying the clinic would handle it.”
“Did he know you found the donor?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he would have stopped me.”
“Could he?”
Brittany looked at her.
Nora shrugged. “You talk about him like he controls airport weather.”
“He controls many things.”
“That was not the question.”
Brittany broke the apple slice into two pieces. “I was afraid he would make it harder.”
“So you hid it.”
“Yes.”
“And now you are angry he hid something.”
“He did not hide the donor conception from me.”
“He hid it from everyone else and let you stand there looking guilty.”
“That is different.”
“It is worse. Different and worse can coexist.”
Brittany nodded.
Nora reached across the table but stopped before touching her hand. “Do you love him?”
“I did this morning.”
“That was not what I asked.”
“I don’t know how to answer questions that used to be simple.”
The phone buzzed again. This time it was an unknown number.
Brittany almost ignored it, then thought of the clinic.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice said, “Ms. Mercer, this is Dana Cho from the Boston Chronicle. I’m calling regarding today’s medical consultation involving the Vale family.”
Brittany ended the call.
Nora’s face tightened. “How did they get your number?”
“I have no idea.”
The phone rang again immediately.
Nora took it and switched it off.
“Now you know how doors work,” she said.
Brittany covered her face with both hands.
Nora moved to the other side of the table and held her while she cried. It was not graceful. Brittany’s nose ran. Her pearl earring caught in Nora’s sweater. At one point Nora tried to free it and accidentally pulled Brittany’s hair, and Brittany laughed against her shoulder in a startled, ugly burst.
The laugh became another sob.
Outside, a garbage truck stopped beneath the kitchen window. Its hydraulic lift shrieked. Someone in the apartment upstairs dropped something heavy and swore.
Ordinary life continued with offensive confidence.
At seven-thirty, Julia arrived at Harrison’s townhouse carrying a laptop, two legal pads, and the expression of someone who had eaten dinner from a vending machine.
Martin let her in.
Harrison was in the kitchen with an untouched bowl of soup. The genetic report remained on the counter beside the ultrasound photograph. He had placed the photograph of Brittany and Gabriel facedown.
Julia removed her coat. “The story is moving.”
“How far?”
“A gossip site has the paternity allegation. No names yet, but the description is obvious to anyone in Boston real estate.”
“Can we stop publication?”
“On what basis?”
May you like
“Medical privacy.”
“If the leak came from someone who was not legally obligated to preserve it, the answer is complicated. If your mother or one of her guests disclosed details, we may have contractual claims. That will not return the information to secrecy.”
