Chương 4
"That's not a bad thing."
She rubbed her hands together.
"It feels like it is."
"Why?"
"Because now every memory has a question attached to it."
She looked toward the house.
"The first ultrasound."
A pause.
"The night we heard the heartbeat."
Another pause.
"The way he cried when the doctor said everything looked good."
She swallowed.
"How do I know which parts were real?"
I wanted to give her an answer.
A mother wants to protect her child from pain.
We want to turn confusion into something simple.
But some wounds become worse when someone tries to cover them too quickly.
"I don't know," I said.
She nodded.
"I hate that you said that."
"I know."
"But I needed you to."
That was Lauren.
Even as a child, she had always hated being lied to more than she hated bad news.
When she was eight, she broke a lamp in the living room while playing with a ball.
I had known immediately because the pieces were still on the floor.
She stood there with tears in her eyes and waited for punishment.
Instead, I asked her what happened.
She told me the truth before I even finished the sentence.
Years later, she told me she remembered that because she was more afraid of disappointing me than being punished.
I had always believed honesty was the foundation of a family.
Now my daughter was sitting beside me wondering whether the person closest to her had taken that foundation away.
Around noon, Mark called.
Lauren stared at the screen for almost a full minute before answering.
She did not say hello.
She waited.
"Lauren."
His voice came through the speaker.
He sounded like he had not slept either.
"I found out who changed the cake order."
Her face tightened.
"Who?"
"Rachel."
I watched her expression carefully.
"How?"
"She admitted she went to the bakery."
Lauren looked away.
"Why?"
There was a long silence.
"She said she was trying to help me."
Lauren laughed quietly.
It was not amusement.
It was disbelief.
"Help you do what?"
"She thought you were hiding something."
"What?"
"I don't know."
The answer made Lauren close her eyes.
"Mark."
"I know."
"No."
Her voice became sharper.
"You don't know."
Mark went quiet.
"You keep saying that like you are confused."
She stood and walked across the yard.
"You made choices."
"I was scared."
"You were scared, so you let someone interfere with my pregnancy?"
"No."
"You let someone change medical information."
"I didn't know she would do that."
"But you went to her."
Another silence.
That was the problem.
Every explanation Mark gave seemed to reveal another decision he had made before the disaster.
"I asked her for advice," he finally said.
Lauren stopped walking.
"Why her?"
"I don't know."
"That's a lie."
Mark did not answer.
She looked at me.
I could see the hurt returning.
Not because she had learned something new.
Because she had learned there was still something he was not saying.
"Who is Rachel to you?"
"She is my coworker."
"That isn't what I asked."
He exhaled.
"She had feelings for me."
The sentence landed harder than I expected.
Lauren slowly sat back down.
"Did you know?"
"Yes."
"Did you encourage it?"
"No."
"Did you stop it?"
Mark hesitated.
That hesitation was enough.
Lauren looked away.
"Okay."
"Lauren, wait."
"No."
She wiped her face.
"I need you to understand something."
"What?"
"If you had made one mistake and told me the truth, we would still have a problem."
Her voice trembled.
"But we would be dealing with the problem together."
Mark did not speak.
"Instead, you built a second life where I was the only person who didn't know what was happening."
She ended the call.
For several minutes, she just sat there.
Then she looked at me.
"I don't even know if I want him to prove he didn't betray me."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know if I want to be right."
That was the hardest part of betrayal.
Sometimes the truth you search for is the same truth you fear finding.
Later that afternoon, Emily came back to the house.
She brought the original bakery records.
She had printed copies of every order change and payment receipt.
"I didn't want to leave you with only a video," she said.
She placed the papers on the table.
"I checked everything after I left yesterday."
Lauren looked through the documents.
The cake order had originally been marked with a blue filling.
The change to pink had been made the morning of the delivery.
Payment came from a card belonging to Rachel.
Lauren looked up.
"How did she have access to the order?"
Emily pointed to a line on the receipt.
"Someone gave her the order number."
"Who?"
Emily looked uncomfortable.
"I don't know."
Nobody said Mark's name.
Nobody needed to.
The possibility sat there anyway.
Emily tapped another page.
"There is something else."
"What?"
"The woman who came with Mark was not Rachel."
Lauren looked confused.
"What?"
Emily turned the page.
"She was someone else."
She showed us the bakery footage again.
The woman beside Mark was not the same person who paid for the cake change.
There had been two women involved.
Two different people.
Two different actions.
A larger plan than any of us had imagined.
I stared at the screen.
"Who was the second woman?"
Emily shook her head.
"I found her name because she signed the receipt."
She pointed to the bottom.
"She used the name Karen Walsh."
Lauren froze.
I noticed it immediately.
"What?"
She looked at the paper.
"Karen Walsh."
The color drained from her face.
"That name..."
"What?"
She stood suddenly.
"I know that name."
"From where?"
She walked toward the kitchen counter where her purse was sitting.
Her hands moved quickly through the contents.
Then she pulled out a folded piece of paper.
It was old.
The edges were worn.
May you like
She placed it on the table.
"I got this in the mail two months ago."
