Chương 6
“That's why consent exists, Claire.”
She flinched.
He hated that he sounded like an attorney.
He hated more that he was right.
“You decided your desperation mattered more than my right to decide.”
“Yes.”
The answer stopped him.
Claire's eyes filled.
“Yes,” she repeated. “I did.”
Nathan had prepared himself for another defense.
Instead, she sat with the ugliness of it.
“I've spent six years finding better words for what I did. Grief. Desperation. Hope. Panic. None of them change it.”
Nathan looked toward the refrigerator.
Lily's drawing of their family was held there by a magnet from Coney Island.
Three people.
Nathan had purple hair because Lily had run out of brown.
“What did you think would happen if I found out?”
“I thought you'd leave.”
“And now?”
“I think you might.”
He said nothing.
Claire wiped beneath one eye with the heel of her hand.
“I also thought you might stop loving Lily.”
Nathan looked at her sharply.
“I know that was unfair.”
“Unfair?”
“I was afraid.”
“You used my love for my daughter as an argument for keeping me ignorant.”
Claire nodded.
“Yes.”
Nathan walked away before he said something he couldn't take back.
The first real clue came from Eleanor Vale.
Claire's mother arrived at their apartment five days after the auction without calling.
She was seventy-two, thin, impeccably dressed, and visibly furious.
Lily opened the door.
“Grandma!”
Eleanor's expression changed immediately.
She bent and hugged her granddaughter.
Nathan watched from the kitchen.
People were rarely one thing.
That complicated hatred.
After Lily went to her room, Eleanor placed her handbag on the table.
“You had no right to call me about Benjamin.”
Claire stared at her.
“He was my brother.”
“He was my son.”
“What happened to him?”
Eleanor looked at Nathan.
“This is family.”
Nathan almost laughed.
Claire did not.
“He is my family.”
The statement hung between them.
Nathan looked at her.
Eleanor sat.
For several seconds she examined her hands.
Then she said, “Your father told me Benjamin died.”
Claire's face changed.
“Told you?”
“I never saw him afterward.”
“You knew that already.”
“I knew what I allowed myself to know.”
Nathan recognized the sentence.
It sounded like Claire.
Or perhaps Claire sounded like her mother.
Eleanor continued.
“Benjamin was born with a heart defect. Robert said he needed surgery immediately. I had hemorrhaged. They sedated me. When I woke, Robert told me the baby had died during transfer.”
“Transfer where?”
“He never said.”
“Didn't you ask?”
“Of course I asked.”
“And?”
“He had a death certificate.”
Nathan leaned forward.
“You saw it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
“What happened to it?”
Eleanor's mouth tightened.
“I burned it.”
Claire stared.
“Why?”
“Because twenty years later I learned it was false.”
The room went silent.
Eleanor looked toward the hallway before continuing.
“Your father was dying. Pancreatic cancer. One evening he asked me to bring a box from his office safe.”
“What was in it?”
“Insurance documents. Trust papers. And a hospital bill.”
“For Benjamin?”
“Yes.”
“Dated when?”
“December 2002.”
Claire covered her mouth.
“A month after he supposedly died.”
Eleanor nodded.
“What hospital?”
“Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.”
Nathan asked, “Did you confront Robert?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Eleanor's composure cracked.
“He told me Benjamin survived.”
Claire stood.
Her chair scraped the floor.
“You knew?”
“For four years.”
“You knew my brother was alive?”
“I knew he had survived the surgery. I didn't know what happened after.”
“What did Dad tell you?”
Eleanor looked at her daughter.
“That Benjamin had been adopted.”
Claire stared.
“Adopted?”
“Robert said the prognosis was uncertain. He said the medical costs could become enormous. He said we had you to think about.”
Claire's voice rose.
“So he gave away your baby?”
Eleanor's eyes flashed.
“Do you imagine I agreed?”
“I don't know what you agreed to. Apparently nobody in this family tells anybody anything.”
Nathan looked at Claire.
She heard it too.
Eleanor opened her handbag.
“I found this after Robert died.”
She placed an envelope on the table.
Inside was a photocopy of a check.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Payable to Daniel Mercer.
Dated three days before Lily's birth.
Nathan looked at the memo line.
Consulting.
Claire sat slowly.
“That was the money.”
Eleanor nodded.
“I assumed so.”
Nathan turned the check over.
There was a bank stamp.
And beneath it, handwritten in Robert Vale's unmistakable block letters:
Briarwood matter resolved.
Nathan looked at Eleanor.
“Your husband knew about the clinic.”
“Yes.”
“And Daniel discovered it.”
“I believe so.”
Claire whispered, “Benjamin.”
Nathan looked at her.
She was staring at the locket.
“Briarwood had Benjamin's genetic material.”
Nobody spoke.
The possibility was grotesque enough that Nathan resisted it.
Then Eleanor said, “They would have.”
“Why?”
“Robert had samples stored after Benjamin's surgery. He was obsessed with finding out whether the heart defect was hereditary.”
Nathan felt sick.
Claire whispered, “What if the embryo—”
“No,” Nathan said.
She looked at him.
“Don't finish that sentence until we know.”
It took nineteen days.
Not two.
Not three.
Nineteen.
During that time, Lily went to school, lost a tooth, refused broccoli twice, and became briefly obsessed with learning to snap her fingers.
Nathan went to work.
Claire went to work.
They spoke politely about groceries, schedules, and Lily.
They did not share a bed.
On the ninth night, Nathan found Claire asleep on the couch with her laptop open and an untouched cup of tea beside her.
He covered her with a blanket.
In the morning, neither mentioned it.
On the twelfth day, Lily asked why Daddy was sleeping in the guest room.
Nathan said he was snoring.
Claire looked at him across the breakfast table.
“That is true,” she said.
“I don't snore.”
“You absolutely snore.”
Lily nodded.
“Like a sad tractor.”
Nathan looked at her.
“What experience do you have with sad tractors?”
“I have ears.”
Claire laughed.
Nathan did too.
May you like
For five seconds, they were themselves.
Then Claire looked at him and the laughter disappeared.
