Chương 3
Her hand shook as she reached into the carrier.
Noah’s fingers closed around one of hers.
Mara drove without speaking until they reached the main road. Then she turned down the radio, which had been playing an advertisement for patio furniture.
“Did the test confirm it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Did his mother apologize?”
Elise looked out at the passing houses.
“No.”
Mara nodded as though this matched her expectations so precisely that anger would be redundant.
“You can stay as long as you need,” she said.
“You have one bedroom.”
“I have a couch.”
“You work nights.”
“I’ve worked nights for eight years. It’s not contagious.”
“You hate babies.”
“I hate other people’s babies.”
Elise looked at her.
Mara kept her eyes on the road.
“This one has potential,” she said.
The laugh escaped Elise before she could stop it. It pulled at her incision, and she pressed a hand against her abdomen.
Mara glanced over. “Don’t do that.”
“Laugh?”
“Anything requiring abdominal muscles.”
“I’ll put it on the list.”
For three minutes they were sisters again, not a deserted wife and an emergency-room nurse driving away from a mansion with a newborn and nowhere else to go.
Then Elise’s milk began to leak through the front of her dusty-rose dress.
She looked down at the darkening fabric.
“Oh, come on.”
Mara reached into the center console and handed her a fast-food napkin.
It was the wrong solution and the only one available.
Elise pressed it against herself and began to cry.
Not loudly. No gasping, no collapse. Tears simply moved down her face while cars passed them in the other direction. A man in a plumbing van sang along with something on his radio. Two teenagers argued at a crosswalk. The world had no idea that Daniel Mercer was Noah’s father, or that he had needed a laboratory to tell him so.
Mara drove with both hands on the wheel.
After a while she said, “I can pull over.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I’m tired of stopping.”
Mara nodded.
They continued south.
Mara’s apartment occupied the second floor of a narrow house in Medford. The downstairs tenant kept ceramic rabbits in the yard and smoked beneath a NO SMOKING sign. Elise had visited a dozen times but never imagined living there. The stairs were too steep, the hallway too narrow, the bathroom sink too low. The radiator clanged like someone trapped inside it.
Mara carried Noah upstairs. Elise climbed behind her, one step at a time, resting after every third step while pretending she was checking the mailboxes.
The apartment smelled faintly of laundry detergent and the garlic noodles Mara had eaten before her shift.
A stack of unopened packages occupied one end of the couch. Clean scrubs hung over a dining chair. On the kitchen counter, next to a bowl containing three onions and a lime, stood the bottle warmer Elise had sent Mara a link to the night before.
“You bought it,” Elise said.
“It was twenty-nine dollars.”
“You said bottle warmers were a scam.”
“They are. This one had overnight delivery.”
Mara had also bought newborn diapers, wipes, two pacifiers, and a folding bassinet that leaned unopened against the wall.
Elise stared at the boxes.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Mara said. “Don’t make it emotional.”
Elise set her cracked phone on the counter.
The screen lit with missed calls.
Daniel had called eleven times.
Vivian had called once.
There were messages from Daniel’s sister, his office manager, and two numbers Elise did not recognize. One message came from the housekeeper, Rosa.
Mrs. Mercer, I am sorry. I hope you and baby safe.
Elise turned the phone facedown.
Mara watched but did not comment.
They placed the bassinet beside the couch after assembling it incorrectly twice. Mara swore at the instruction sheet. Elise sat at the kitchen table and tried to nurse Noah while reading the words SIDE RAIL MUST CLICK AUDIBLY.
Nothing clicked audibly.
Noah latched, released, grew angry, then latched again.
His frustration made Elise feel accused.
At the hospital, a lactation consultant had told her to relax her shoulders. This seemed like advice meant for a different species.
Mara finally secured the bassinet and pushed down on it with both hands.
“If this collapses,” she said, “I’m suing Germany.”
“It was made in Ohio.”
“Even worse.”
Noah began to swallow in small, regular pulls.
Elise stared at the top of his head.
His hair was dark and soft. Daniel’s hair had looked the same in the infant photograph Vivian displayed on the upstairs landing, though Elise hated herself for noticing the resemblance now. She did not want genetics to become evidence of innocence. Noah should not have to look like anyone in order to deserve belief.
Mara sat across from her.
“What happened before he left?” she asked.
Elise traced the edge of the blanket with one finger.
“Vivian showed him a screenshot.”
“Of what?”
“A note in my patient portal. It said prenatal testing indicated the baby’s blood type couldn’t be consistent with Daniel’s.”
“That’s not how paternity works.”
“I know.”
“Daniel knows.”
“He panicked.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Elise looked toward the window. The neighbor across the alley was shaking a rug over a fire escape. Dust floated in the afternoon light.
“The screenshot had a comment below the lab result,” Elise said. “It said the physician recommended confirming paternity before recording the father on official documents.”
Mara’s expression sharpened.
“Doctors do not write like that.”
“I know.”
“Did you see it yourself?”
“On Vivian’s phone. Daniel had a printout.”
“Where did she get it?”
“She said an anonymous person emailed it to the family office.”
“And she believed it?”
“She said she had it verified.”
“By whom?”
“Elwood.”
May you like
Mara sat back.
Graham Elwood was the Mercer family attorney. He had attended Daniel’s wedding, Daniel’s father’s funeral, and every Christmas Eve dinner Elise had survived at the Mercer house. He wore dark suits even at the beach and had once explained a prenuptial agreement to Elise while eating an oyster.
