Chương 4
Daniel put both hands against the counter.
“She had cancer?”
“Ovarian.”
“Did you know she was dying?”
“No.”
“When you got pregnant?”
“We thought she was stable.”
“And Victoria?”
“She knew Evelyn wanted a child. She didn’t know about me. Or the transfer.”
“Why?”
Rachel hesitated.
Daniel noticed.
“Here we go.”
“Victoria could be... controlling.”
“That’s a word people use when they don’t want to say the other words.”
“She loved Evelyn.”
“So?”
“She also believed that gave her a vote in every decision Evelyn made.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You lied to a grieving woman and told her her grandchild died.”
“Yes.”
He seemed surprised by the lack of defense.
Rachel sat.
“Evelyn asked me to.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Dead people don’t get to ask you to commit the next six years of fraud.”
“It wasn’t fraud.”
“I signed adoption paperwork.”
Rachel looked up.
Daniel’s face had gone pale.
“You told me there was no other parent with a claim.”
“There wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Evelyn was dead.”
“Her mother was alive.”
“Grandparents don’t automatically become parents.”
“I don’t care about automatically. I care about what you concealed from the lawyer.”
Rachel rubbed her hands over her face.
“I told the attorney Lily was conceived from donated genetic material and that I had carried her.”
“That is technically true, which I’m beginning to realize is your favorite kind of truth.”
“Daniel.”
“Did the attorney know the egg donor was someone you knew?”
“No.”
He walked toward the window.
Rain shone against the black glass.
“God.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You think I wasn’t scared when I adopted her?”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
Daniel turned.
Rachel saw anger there, but something else beneath it frightened her more.
Embarrassment.
He felt made foolish.
“I stood in front of a judge and talked about being her father.”
“You are her father.”
“Stop deciding which parts still count.”
Rachel’s mouth closed.
Daniel leaned against the windowsill.
“I need the entire story.”
So she gave it to him.
Not elegantly.
Not chronologically at first.
She started with Evelyn at twenty-nine, bald beneath a red knit cap, eating fries from Rachel’s plate after a chemotherapy appointment and announcing that surviving cancer had made her intolerant of postponement.
Then Rachel backed up.
They had met two years earlier at an architecture nonprofit where Rachel handled donor relations and Evelyn served on the board. Evelyn had been thirty-one, rich, impatient, funny in a dry way that made strangers uncertain whether she liked them.
Victoria had expected her daughter eventually to marry a man from the same narrow world of money and obligation she had always known.
Evelyn kept disappointing that expectation.
When she began seeing Rachel, she did not announce it.
Not because she was ashamed.
Because she knew her mother.
“She tried once,” Rachel said.
“The summer house?”
Rachel nodded.
“I wasn’t there. Evelyn told her she was in love with a woman.”
“And Victoria?”
“Said she was sick and emotionally dependent.”
Daniel grimaced.
“Charming.”
“It was more complicated than that.”
“Everything is.”
Evelyn had stopped telling Victoria important things.
When cancer returned, the distance between them briefly narrowed. Victoria became ferociously useful—specialists, transportation, meals, medication schedules, second opinions.
It made Evelyn love her mother again.
It also made Evelyn feel owned.
The embryo transfer happened during a period when her scans looked promising.
Rachel became pregnant.
Seven weeks later, Evelyn’s cancer had spread.
“She died when I was nineteen weeks.”
Daniel looked toward Lily’s bedroom.
Rachel’s voice thinned.
“She had enough warning to know.”
Evelyn had spent her final month organizing things.
Not dramatic things.
Passwords.
Insurance forms.
A list of friends who owed her books.
Instructions about which paintings Victoria should not be allowed to donate in her name because Evelyn had always hated them.
And a letter for Rachel.
“She asked you to tell Victoria the baby died?”
“Not exactly.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Rachel.”
“She asked me to protect Lily from her.”
“How?”
“She wrote that if Victoria learned there was a child, she would turn grief into ownership.”
Daniel said nothing.
“She said Victoria would convince herself she was rescuing Evelyn’s daughter. She was afraid I’d spend years fighting someone with more money and better lawyers.”
“So you lied.”
“Yes.”
“How did Victoria even know you were pregnant?”
“She saw me at the memorial service.”
Daniel stared.
“You went?”
“Of course I went.”
“At nineteen weeks pregnant with her daughter’s child.”
“I wore a loose coat.”
“Apparently not loose enough.”
Rachel almost smiled.
It died quickly.
“Two months later Victoria came to my office. She asked whether the pregnancy was Evelyn’s.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
Daniel looked surprised.
“I couldn’t deny that part.”
“And then?”
“I told her I’d miscarried.”
The word sat between them.
Daniel’s anger quieted.
“That must have been...”
He stopped.
Rachel looked at him.
He shook his head.
“No. I’m not comforting you yet.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“Fair.”
He sat again.
“Did you ever plan to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t a plan.”
“I know.”
They heard Lily call from the bedroom.
“Dad?”
Daniel stood immediately.
Rachel watched him go.
He returned five minutes later with the empty plate.
“She wants water.”
“There’s a cup by her bed.”
“She says it tastes old.”
“It has been there for forty minutes.”
“She has standards.”
The ordinary complaint gave them both somewhere to look.
Daniel filled a fresh cup.
Before leaving the kitchen again, he said, “Did Evelyn have anything in writing about Lily?”
Rachel did not answer.
Daniel stopped.
“What?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Rachel looked toward a cabinet above the refrigerator.
Daniel followed her gaze.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It isn’t in there.”
“Thank God for that.”
“It’s in a safe-deposit box.”
Daniel stared.
“You have a safe-deposit box.”
“Yes.”
“Of course you do.”
The next morning, Daniel did not go to work.
May you like
Neither did Rachel.
Lily went to school because Daniel insisted routine mattered.
