Chương 15
“What was?”
“There was another document folded around it.”
Mara waited.
“A hospital transfer form.”
Noah said, “Transfer where?”
“St. Agnes.”
“That’s across town.”
“Yes.”
“For the baby?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The night after he was born.”
Mara looked at the photograph again.
“But you were told he died at your hospital.”
Elaine nodded.
“Richard said the transfer had been considered but canceled.”
“Did the form say canceled?”
“No.”
“Did it have a receiving signature?”
Elaine looked at her.
“Yes.”
Noah cursed.
“Whose?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“It was twenty-three years ago, Noah.”
“You remembered his ear.”
Elaine recoiled.
Mara said his name.
He ignored her.
“You remember a fold in a newborn’s ear from 1990, but not the name on the document that could prove where he went?”
“I remember the signature started with an M.”
“Fantastic.”
“Noah.”
This time Mara’s voice stopped him.
A chair scraped on his end.
Then Thomas spoke close to the phone.
“There’s a Dr. Martin in Levin’s notes.”
Everyone in the kitchen became still.
Mara picked up the phone.
“What notes?”
“The handwritten pages in the box.”
“You said they didn’t mean anything.”
“They didn’t until now.”
Thomas’s voice was calmer than Noah’s, but only barely.
“There are initials and dates all over them.”
“What initials?”
“Mostly patient references, I think.”
“Don’t think.”
“Fine.”
Paper rustled.
“One page has April twenty-second, 1990, then ‘M. accepted transfer.’”
Elaine stood so quickly her chair struck the wall.
“Merritt.”
Thomas went silent.
Mara stared at her mother.
“Who is Merritt?”
Elaine looked as though she regretted speaking.
Noah said, “Mom.”
“Dr. Charles Merritt.”
“How do you know that name?”
Elaine sat again.
“Because Richard knew him.”
Mara felt Daniel’s hand settle on the table beside hers.
“How?”
“They were friends.”
Noah said, “Dad was friends with a doctor at the hospital where his supposedly dead son was secretly transferred?”
Elaine’s face hardened.
“Do you think I don’t hear how it sounds?”
“I think you’ve had thirty-six years to hear how it sounds.”
“That’s enough,” Mara said.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Noah.”
“I have spent my entire life being one year younger than I actually am.”
His voice shook harder now.
“My driver’s license, school records, passport, every birthday, everything.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“You keep saying that because you want it to stop being true.”
Mara opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
He was right enough to hurt.
Daniel pulled the old photograph closer.
“Thomas, does Levin mention Merritt anywhere else?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
A pause.
“I’m looking.”
They heard pages turning.
Elaine stared at the specimen tube.
Mara watched her.
“Where did you just go?”
Elaine frowned.
“When you disappeared.”
“My house.”
“You were already at your house this morning.”
“I went somewhere else first.”
Mara’s patience snapped.
“Can you answer one question without making me drag the next question out of you?”
Elaine’s eyes flashed.
“I went to the bank.”
“The bank?”
“A safe-deposit box.”
Mara looked at the cardboard box.
“This wasn’t at the house?”
“No.”
“What else is in the box?”
Elaine did not answer.
Noah said, “Of course.”
Mara leaned across the table.
“What else?”
Elaine looked at her daughter for a long moment.
Then she reached into her coat pocket.
She removed a small brass key.
“I didn’t bring everything.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
Elaine’s gaze moved to the phone.
“Of finding out that Richard lied.”
Noah’s voice came quietly.
“You already know he lied.”
“No.”
Elaine shook her head.
“I know he lied about the test.”
Her fingers closed around the key.
“I don’t know why.”
Thomas suddenly interrupted.
“I found Merritt.”
Mara turned toward the phone.
“What?”
“Another note.”
“What does it say?”
Thomas read slowly.
“C.M. insists arrangement was necessary after E. rejected infant.”
Elaine went completely white.
Noah said, “What arrangement?”
Thomas did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “There’s another line.”
Mara could hear paper shaking in his hand.
“Read it.”
“R.E. agreed no disclosure until mother stable.”
Elaine whispered, “Richard.”
Mara felt the room contract around them.
Thomas continued.
“Then underneath that, in different ink, it says, ‘Stable became permanent.’”
Noah said nothing.
Elaine stared at the table.
Mara looked at her mother and finally understood why Richard’s death had not made the house feel empty.
He had left too many things inside it.
Mara looked at the brass key in Elaine’s hand.
“Then we open the box.”
Elaine’s fingers closed around it.
“Not tonight.”
Noah laughed through the phone.
“Mom, you don’t get to say that anymore.”
Elaine flinched but did not argue.
Daniel pulled his chair out and sat down.
“What bank?”
“First Federal.”
“What time does the branch close?”
“Four.”
Mara checked her phone.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Elaine looked toward Richard’s empty chair as if expecting him to object.
Then she put the key on the table.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Thomas cleared his throat over the speaker.
“There’s something else.”
Nobody reacted with surprise anymore.
Mara said, “Go ahead.”
“The notes stop in 2003.”
“After the test?”
“I think so.”
“Anything about the account?”
“No.”
Daniel leaned toward the phone.
“Photograph every page before you touch anything else.”
“I already did.”
“Back them up somewhere separate.”
“Doing that now.”
Noah said, “You sound like a public defender.”
“Civil litigation.”
“Right.”
“Less exciting, better dental.”
Noah made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
It vanished almost immediately.
Elaine looked at the phone.
“Noah.”
“What?”
“I did not reject you.”
The kitchen went silent.
Mara closed her eyes.
Noah answered after several seconds.
“You don’t know that I’m him.”
“No.”
“But you think I am.”
Elaine’s voice became very small.
“Yes.”
“And Levin wrote that you rejected me.”
“I told them the child they brought me wasn’t mine.”
“That sounds a lot like rejection if you’re the baby.”
Elaine pressed both palms against the table.
“I held the first baby for maybe ten minutes.”
She swallowed.
“I held the second one longer.”
May you like
Noah did not speak.
“He kept opening his mouth before he cried,” she continued.
