Chương 5
Mara was already lifting him from the bassinet.
“Give him to me,” Elise said.
“You need help sitting up.”
“I can sit.”
“Elise.”
“I said I can.”
She pushed herself upright too quickly. Pain flashed through her abdomen, hot enough to blur her vision.
Mara stood still with Noah in her arms.
Neither sister spoke.
Then Elise held out her hands.
Mara passed him over carefully.
“I’m not trying to replace you,” she said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Elise looked at Noah’s wrinkled face.
“No,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know much right now.”
Mara sat beside her.
At three in the morning, while Noah fed and the downstairs tenant coughed beneath them, Elise listened to a voicemail Daniel had left.
He sounded different without anyone watching him.
“I keep starting this over,” he said. “I don’t know which version is less insulting. I believed something that should have required proof, and I doubted the person who had earned my trust. That’s the cleanest way to say it, but it sounds clean, and what I did wasn’t.”
He paused.
A car passed outside on wet pavement.
“I left because I thought if I stayed, I would say something unforgivable. I didn’t understand that leaving was the unforgivable thing.”
Another pause.
“I went to the hotel. I drank. I called Elwood. I asked him whether I should remove my name from the birth certificate. I’m telling you because you should know exactly how bad it was.”
Elise’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“I came back the next afternoon,” Daniel continued. “You had been discharged. My mother said Mara took you. I wanted to call, but every explanation sounded like blame. Then the hospital said the independent test would be ready today.”
His breathing became audible.
“I saw him for nine hours before I decided he wasn’t mine. I don’t know how to live with that.”
The message ended.
Elise sat in the dark.
Noah’s hand rested against her breast.
She replayed one line.
I called Elwood.
At breakfast, Mara stood at the stove scrambling eggs while reading messages from the hospital on her work phone. Elise told her about the call.
“Why would Daniel ask the family attorney about a birth certificate before anyone confirmed the screenshot?” Mara said.
“He was panicking.”
“Or someone told him to.”
“Elwood advises him on everything.”
“That’s not normal.”
“In Daniel’s family it is.”
Mara divided the eggs between two plates, giving Elise the larger portion.
“What exactly did Elwood verify?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Ask Daniel.”
“I’m not ready to talk to him.”
“You don’t have to speak. Text.”
Elise moved the eggs around her plate.
Outside, the ceramic rabbits had collected rainwater in their ears.
She typed slowly.
Who verified the screenshot before you confronted me?
Daniel replied within a minute.
Elwood said his office confirmed the portal address and metadata. He received it from my mother.
Elise stared.
She typed again.
Did you personally see the email it came from?
No.
Did you call my doctor?
I tried once. The answering service said they couldn’t release anything without your consent.
You had my consent.
I know.
She stopped.
Three dots appeared, vanished, then returned.
Daniel wrote, I am asking Elwood for everything now.
Elise showed Mara.
“Tell him not to destroy anything,” Mara said.
“He isn’t a criminal.”
“Fine. Tell him not to misplace anything in an elegant leather folder.”
Elise typed, Preserve the original email, attachments, and any communication about them.
Daniel replied, I will.
A minute later another message appeared.
May I bring diapers or anything else you need?
Elise looked at the unopened diaper package on the table.
No, she wrote.
Then she added, Do not come here.
He answered, I won’t.
The obedience disturbed her almost as much as pressure would have.
By noon Daniel had sent a copy of the email chain.
The first message came from an address designed to resemble the hospital’s patient-services domain. One letter was different. The attached screenshot carried Elise’s name and the false result.
Vivian had forwarded it to Elwood with three words: Confirm this immediately.
Elwood’s associate replied forty-one minutes later: The domain appears consistent with St. Agnes communications. Embedded data indicates the image was generated from a patient portal environment. We recommend discreet verification before family action.
Vivian answered: There is no time for discretion.
Elwood then called Daniel.
Daniel called Vivian.
Vivian drove to the hospital.
No one contacted Elise’s obstetrician again.
No one contacted St. Agnes information security.
No one checked the medical record number.
The associate’s phrase appears consistent had become verified by the time Vivian entered the recovery room.
Mara read the chain twice.
“This is incompetence,” she said.
“It could still be a random person.”
“With access to your pregnancy information, your friendship with Owen, and Vivian’s email address.”
“Those aren’t impossible to find.”
“Your medical record number isn’t public.”
“It was fake.”
“The layout wasn’t.”
Elise pressed her fingertips against her temple.
She had not slept more than forty minutes at a time. Her breasts hurt. Her incision pulled when she stood. Noah had developed a preference for eating exactly when she tried to use the bathroom.
The problem felt both enormous and tedious.
Mara handed the phone back.
“You need counsel.”
“I need a shower.”
“Both can be true.”
Elise showered while Mara sat on the closed toilet holding Noah. Steam fogged the mirror. The water stung the adhesive strips over Elise’s incision, though she kept the spray away from them as instructed.
Her dusty-rose dress lay in a heap on the floor.
It was the only clothing she had brought from the Mercer house besides pajamas. Vivian had sent it to the hospital after Elise’s emergency surgery because she considered sweatpants inappropriate for discharge photographs.
Elise picked it up afterward and put it in a trash bag.
Mara noticed.
“You liked that dress.”
“No, I didn’t.”
May you like
“You wore it a lot.”
“Because Vivian said the color suited me.”
