Chương 3
Vanessa smiled without warmth.
“That’s what this is really about.”
Claire almost answered.
Then the baby kicked.
Not hard. A strange rolling movement under her ribs.
She put her hand there automatically and felt Vanessa watching.
Something unreadable passed through Vanessa’s expression.
For a moment she looked not jealous or furious but tired.
Then it was gone.
Richard broke the seal on nothing.
Instead he turned the envelope over so Claire could see a handwritten signature across the flap.
“Grayson’s director signed it before delivering it to my counsel. My counsel signed beneath her. I signed when I received it. No one has opened it since it left the laboratory.”
Ruiz said, “Photograph it before opening.”
Richard used his phone.
Claire did too.
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“This is theater.”
“You shoved a pregnant woman into a table,” Claire said. “I think we passed theater.”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened.
Richard opened the envelope with a brass letter opener from the console.
Inside were four pages.
He read the first.
His shoulders dropped.
Claire watched his face.
“Well?”
Richard handed her the document.
She read the first line and understood almost nothing.
Accession numbers.
Specimen identifiers.
Short tandem repeat loci.
Comparison markers.
Probability ratios.
She hated scientific reports. Andrew used to tease her because she read appliance warranties from beginning to end but stopped functioning when confronted with a page containing more than three percentages.
Then she reached the summary.
The fetal DNA profile attributed to Vanessa Hale’s specimen was genetically identical across all tested markers to the fetal DNA profile previously attributed to Claire Bennett’s specimen.
Not sibling-level similarity.
Not shared paternal markers.
Identical.
Claire read it twice.
Then a third time.
Ruiz asked, “What does it say?”
Claire could not answer.
Richard took the page.
“The independent lab concludes that the fetal component in both retained blood samples originated from the same source.”
Vanessa said nothing.
Ruiz said, “Meaning?”
Richard’s lawyer voice returned.
“It does not mean both women are carrying the same fetus. It means the submitted specimens were not independent samples. One was contaminated, substituted, mislabeled, or otherwise manipulated.”
Claire stared at Vanessa.
Her first feeling was not triumph.
It was embarrassment.
She remembered how many nights she had lain awake picturing Andrew with Vanessa.
Andrew telling Vanessa he still loved her.
Andrew arranging fertility treatments behind Claire’s back.
Andrew touching Vanessa’s stomach.
Andrew lying beside Claire afterward.
Claire had hated him for things that might never have happened.
Then she hated Vanessa for making those things possible inside her mind.
Then, immediately and unfairly, she hated herself for needing him to be innocent now that he was dead and could not answer for anything else.
Vanessa folded her arms.
“This proves the laboratory made a mistake.”
Richard nodded once.
“It could.”
Vanessa blinked.
She had expected accusation, not agreement.
Richard continued.
“That’s why I ordered the audit logs.”
Claire looked at the flash drive again.
Ruiz said, “Mr. Cole, stop there. Do not open or access the drive. Preserve it.”
“I haven’t accessed it.”
Vanessa said, “This is absurd.”
Richard looked at her.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk to me as though I’m a defendant.”
Richard’s expression softened.
That made it worse.
“I’m trying very hard not to.”
Vanessa’s eyes shone suddenly, though she did not cry.
“You worked for my father.”
“I worked for your family.”
“You were at my wedding.”
“Yes.”
“You held my hand when I miscarried.”
Claire looked between them.
She had never heard that.
Richard’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
Vanessa touched her stomach.
“And now you’re standing here building a case against me.”
“No.”
“What would you call it?”
Richard looked at the white orchids on the table as if one of them might provide a better word.
“Trying to determine what happened.”
“Same thing.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“It always becomes the same thing.”
Claire watched Vanessa’s thumb move back and forth over the satin covering her stomach.
At Andrew’s memorial, Vanessa had said the pregnancy was the result of a frozen embryo created during her marriage to Andrew.
She had said the transfer occurred eight weeks before his death.
She had produced a clinic letter.
A consent form.
A paternity screening report.
She had also told Claire, in private, that Andrew had wanted the baby.
That had been the sentence Claire could not get around.
Andrew wanted this.
Not you.
This.
The child.
The old life.
Vanessa.
Maybe all of it.
Claire had asked Richard whether the consent form was real.
Richard had answered, “It appears authentic.”
That phrase had ruined three weeks of her life.
Appears authentic.
Now she looked at him.
“Did you know about this when I asked you?”
“No.”
“When did you know?”
“Suspect?”
“Know.”
“Today.”
“Suspect.”
Richard did not answer.
Claire’s hand tightened around the report.
“Richard.”
“Eleven days ago.”
She stared at him.
“You let me sit in your office eleven days ago and ask you if my husband had a child with his ex-wife.”
“I did not know the answer.”
“You knew something was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“You let me think he lied to me.”
“I was trying not to accuse Vanessa without evidence.”
“You had evidence.”
“I had an inconsistency.”
“You had two identical DNA profiles.”
“I had reports showing profiles that should not have been identical. I did not yet know whether one report was fake, both were unreliable, or the laboratory had made a clerical error.”
Claire stood too fast.
The room tilted.
She caught the sofa arm.
Richard moved toward her.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
She breathed through her nose until the dizziness passed.
Vanessa said, almost softly, “You see? He does this to everyone.”
Claire looked at her.
“Don’t try to make us friends.”
“I wouldn’t insult myself.”
“There you are.”
May you like
Vanessa’s mouth tightened.
For the first time since Claire had known her, she looked less like the woman in photographs and more like someone who could wake up with pillow marks on her face.
