Chương 5
Not screaming.
Not throwing anything.
Her face simply crumpled for one second before she turned away.
“You always choose the institution.”
Richard flinched.
Vanessa picked up her heel and walked out carrying both shoes in one hand.
Claire watched her go.
Ruiz did not.
She was looking at Richard.
“What does that mean?”
Richard’s mouth tightened.
“Another story.”
“I’m collecting those.”
Claire went to the hospital.
The baby was fine.
Her shoulder was badly bruised, not broken.
She spent four hours under fluorescent lights while a fetal monitor printed long ribbons of paper and a nurse named Colleen complained about her ex-husband’s habit of sending their sixteen-year-old home with wet laundry.
At three in the morning, Claire’s sister Nora arrived carrying sweatpants, a toothbrush, and a bag of pretzels.
She looked at Claire’s bruised shoulder.
“I’m going to kill her.”
“You’re a kindergarten teacher.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Claire laughed, then started crying.
Nora sat beside her without touching her until Claire leaned over.
For several minutes they said nothing.
Claire eventually whispered, “He called Vanessa.”
Nora closed her eyes.
“Andrew?”
“Every few months.”
“Did she prove that?”
“No.”
“Then don’t let Vanessa live rent-free in your skull at three in the morning.”
“She already owns a condo there.”
“That family owns enough real estate.”
Claire laughed again through her nose.
A nurse glanced in and smiled.
Then the baby’s heartbeat filled the room—fast, regular, indifferent to inheritance.
Claire stared at the monitor.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to want.”
Nora peeled open the pretzels.
“For the baby to be okay.”
“Besides that.”
“To go home.”
“After that.”
“A shower.”
“Nora.”
“I’m serious. You don’t have to decide the meaning of your dead husband’s phone calls before breakfast.”
Claire looked at her.
Nora put one pretzel into her mouth.
“People become philosophers when they’re exhausted. It’s dangerous.”
Claire accepted a pretzel.
It tasted stale.
She ate another.
By sunrise, the worst of the storm had moved offshore.
By noon, the story had moved online.
Hale heiress questioned in estate dispute involving pregnant widow.
Nobody knew who had leaked it.
The first article contained no allegation about DNA manipulation. It did mention “a physical disagreement” at Hale House and quoted an unnamed source who described Claire as “emotionally overwhelmed since her husband’s death.”
Nora read that sentence aloud from Claire’s kitchen and said, “I would like to emotionally overwhelm their windshield.”
Claire took the phone away.
“Stop reading comments.”
“I’m not reading comments.”
“You’re scrolling.”
“I’m looking for the reporter’s home address.”
“Nora.”
“Metaphorically.”
Claire put the phone facedown on the counter.
Her apartment smelled faintly of the garlic noodles Nora had brought from a restaurant downstairs. Andrew used to complain that the place was too small for them and then refuse to consider moving because he liked being able to walk to coffee.
Three months after his death, one pair of his running shoes was still beside the door.
Claire had tried to move them twice.
Both times she put them back.
Now Nora tripped over one.
“For God’s sake.”
“Leave them.”
Nora froze.
Claire hated how sharp her voice sounded.
“I was just—”
“I know.”
Nora righted the shoe.
Claire looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s a shoe.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, it’s literally a shoe. You can yell at me about it. I’ll survive.”
Claire sat at the kitchen table.
Outside, traffic crawled along the wet street.
A delivery cyclist stopped under the awning and shook water from his sleeves.
Nora spooned noodles into two bowls.
“What did the detective say?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Good.”
“How is that good?”
“Useful detectives on television solve crimes in forty-three minutes. Real ones ruin your week by telling you lab records require paperwork.”
Claire smiled despite herself.
Ruiz had said almost exactly that.
She had also told Claire not to assume the duplicated DNA profile proved Vanessa personally manipulated anything.
A laboratory employee might have made an error.
A clinic might have submitted mislabeled material.
A third party might have falsified a report.
The retained samples themselves might have been compromised before arrival.
Claire had wanted certainty.
Ruiz gave her procedure.
The only immediate certainty came that afternoon.
Grayson Genomics confirmed, through counsel, that both retained blood tubes contained Claire’s DNA.
Not just the fetal component.
Claire’s maternal DNA too.
Vanessa’s supposed sample had never contained Vanessa at all.
Someone had submitted Claire’s blood under Vanessa’s name.
Ruiz called at four seventeen.
Claire stood beside her bedroom window while she listened.
“So Vanessa was never tested.”
“That’s what the evidence suggests.”
“Then her paternity report is fake.”
“The sample underlying it is not hers.”
“That is a very careful sentence.”
“Yes.”
“Did she submit it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“She used that report at probate.”
“I know.”
“She gave it to the trustees.”
“I know.”
“She told me Andrew fathered her child.”
“I know.”
Claire’s fingers went numb around the phone.
“What happens now?”
“Now we find out how your sample became hers.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s not nothing.”
“It feels like nothing.”
Ruiz let the silence sit.
Claire watched a man across the street drag a cardboard box away from a puddle.
Finally Ruiz said, “I understand why you want the answer to be attached to a person immediately. Evidence doesn’t care what day you’re having.”
Claire shut her eyes.
“That should be on a mug.”
“My daughter says I’m bad at comfort.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
“She’s right.”
“Usually.”
Claire lowered herself onto the bed.
Andrew’s side was still harder because he had insisted on rotating the mattress every month and then forgotten.
“What about the audit logs?”
“We’re working on access. The lab’s lawyers are cooperating, but the data involves multiple patients. They’re separating records and preserving the original system logs.”
“Richard saw something.”
“I know.”
“Ask him.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He lawyered up.”
Claire opened her eyes.
“What?”
“He gave us the case and the records, then invoked counsel regarding his own conduct.”
May you like
“His conduct?”
“That doesn’t mean he committed a crime.”
