Chương 5
Because part of him had selected the sentence precisely because he knew it would hurt.
He disliked that part of himself.
At home, he carried Lily upstairs.
She woke enough to complain that her dress was itchy.
“Pajamas,” she mumbled.
“Working on it.”
He found the yellow pajamas with tiny foxes. Claire had bought them after Lily announced that foxes were more trustworthy than unicorns because “foxes are real and unicorns are lying.”
Nathan helped her change.
She climbed under the blanket.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you still my daddy?”
The question stopped him.
Children heard more than adults intended.
He sat beside her.
“Yes.”
“But the picture—”
“Has nothing to do with that.”
“And the adult mistake?”
“Nothing changes who I am to you.”
She studied his face with unsettling concentration.
“Promise?”
Nathan took her small hand.
“Promise.”
She relaxed.
Then she yawned.
“Can I have waffles tomorrow?”
“That's a separate negotiation.”
She smiled with her eyes already closing.
Nathan remained beside the bed until her breathing deepened.
Claire was waiting in the hallway.
“Thank you.”
He walked past her.
“Nathan.”
He stopped.
She looked exhausted.
“I never lied about loving you.”
He turned.
“Don't use the true things to defend the lies.”
Claire's face tightened.
He went downstairs.
He slept in the guest room.
Or attempted to.
At 2:13 a.m., he searched Briarwood Reproductive Medicine.
The clinic no longer existed.
It had closed in 2021 after being acquired by a larger fertility network.
Dr. Peter Halden had retired.
Nathan found an old medical-board listing, several archived professional biographies, and an article about Briarwood's acquisition.
Nothing about misconduct.
At 3:06, he searched Robert Vale and Briarwood.
Nothing.
At 3:41, he searched Benjamin William Vale.
One result.
An old digitized death notice.
Benjamin William Vale, infant son of Robert and Eleanor Vale, died November 4, 2002.
Nathan stared at the screen.
No cause.
No hospital.
No explanation.
At 4:20, Claire appeared in the doorway wearing a robe.
“You're still awake.”
“So are you.”
She entered.
He didn't invite her to sit.
She sat anyway.
“I called my mother.”
Nathan looked at her.
“At four in the morning?”
“She was awake.”
“What did she say?”
“She hung up.”
That interested him.
“After you asked about Benjamin?”
“Yes.”
Nathan closed the laptop.
“What exactly did you ask?”
“I asked whether Benjamin was really dead.”
Nathan stared.
“And she hung up.”
“Yes.”
Neither spoke for a moment.
Then Nathan said, “Why would you ask that?”
Claire looked at the dark screen of his laptop.
“Because I remembered something.”
“What?”
“After Benjamin died, my mother never saw his body.”
Nathan waited.
“She had complications after delivery. She was sedated. My father handled everything.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Funeral?”
“There wasn't one.”
“Death certificate?”
“I was sixteen.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“I never saw one.”
Nathan opened the laptop again.
“You think Benjamin survived.”
“I don't know what I think.”
Nathan searched New York vital records procedures, then stopped.
A twenty-four-year-old record involving a minor wasn't going to materialize on Google because he wanted it.
“We need an attorney.”
Claire looked at him.
“For what?”
“To find out what happened without doing something stupid.”
“You already think I've done enough of that.”
“Yes.”
She looked away.
The cruelty felt satisfying for perhaps half a second.
Then it didn't.
Nathan rubbed his eyes.
“Go sleep.”
“Are you leaving me?”
He looked at her.
“I don't know.”
She nodded once.
It was the first answer he had given her that she seemed to trust.
By noon, Nathan was sitting across from Evelyn Shaw, a family attorney who had represented his company in an executive custody dispute three years earlier.
He told her enough to make her stop taking notes twice.
When he finished, Evelyn removed her glasses.
“First, do not contact the retired physician.”
“Why?”
“Because you don't know what happened, and you don't know what records still exist. If misconduct occurred, announcing that you're looking may encourage somebody to destroy what remains.”
“That's comforting.”
“Second, don't assume a crime occurred because the story is bizarre.”
“What would you call transferring an embryo without verified consent?”
“I would call it something I need facts about before I give it a legal name.”
Nathan nodded.
He appreciated her refusal to dramatize it.
“Third,” she said, “Lily needs to be protected from this.”
“She is.”
“I mean legally and emotionally. You are her legal father?”
“Birth certificate. Marriage. Everything.”
“Then nothing about today's discovery automatically changes that.”
Nathan looked at her.
“I didn't ask.”
“No. But you've been tapping your wedding ring against my desk for twelve minutes.”
He stopped.
Evelyn continued.
“If you're going to investigate parentage, understand that the answer may create obligations and risks you haven't considered.”
“I need to know.”
“Need and want aren't always different, but sometimes they are.”
Nathan leaned back.
“Wouldn't you?”
“That isn't relevant.”
“Convenient.”
“That's why you pay me.”
Despite himself, Nathan smiled.
It lasted only a moment.
Evelyn referred him to a medical-records attorney and advised that Claire request her own historical records first.
Briarwood's successor organization responded three days later.
No patient existed under Claire Carter.
Claire Vale appeared once.
Not as a patient.
As a specimen recipient.
The phrase made Nathan nauseous.
The record was incomplete.
Most files from the relevant period had been archived offline following the acquisition.
Retrieval could take weeks.
Claire sat at the kitchen island reading the email.
“Specimen recipient.”
Nathan poured coffee.
“You said the procedure wasn't entered normally.”
“I didn't know what that meant.”
“Apparently this.”
Claire put down the phone.
“Nathan, I know you don't believe me—”
“I believe you didn't know whose embryo it was.”
She looked surprised.
He drank his coffee.
“I also believe you chose not to know.”
Claire's eyes dropped.
That was harder for her to deny.
“I wanted Lily.”
“So did I.”
“I thought if I told you about Daniel and the clinic, you'd stop me.”
“I would have.”
May you like
“I know.”
Nathan set down the mug.
