Chương 2
A glance.
Nothing more.
But it passed between them too quickly and too clearly to ignore.
“What?” Rachel asked.
Neither woman answered.
Rachel felt the pulse in her bruised cheek.
“What does Ethan know?”
Margaret looked at Sarah instead.
“I want my attorney.”
“You can have one,” Sarah said.
Rachel pushed herself higher against the pillows.
Pain gathered beneath the gown, blunt and heavy.
“What does Ethan know?”
“Rachel,” Nicole said quietly, “don’t push yourself.”
Rachel looked at her.
It was almost funny.
Everyone had spent the last day telling her not to push herself.
The nurses.
The obstetrician.
A resident with kind eyes who had explained postpartum blood loss while Rachel stared at the wall.
Officer Mitchell after seeing the bruise.
Even the social worker who had arrived after Rachel told a nurse that Margaret had tried to leave the maternity floor with one of the babies before discharge.
Don’t push yourself.
Rest.
Breathe.
Drink water.
But nobody else had to live inside what Rachel did not know.
She looked back at Margaret.
“Where is Ethan?”
Margaret’s expression remained still.
Vanessa answered.
“He left.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Rachel stared at Vanessa.
“Left where?”
Vanessa swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said he left.”
“I meant—”
“Don’t,” Margaret said.
Nicole shifted between them.
“Vanessa, you should stop speaking until you have counsel.”
Vanessa’s chin trembled.
Rachel noticed that Vanessa had taken off her wedding ring.
There was a pale circle on her finger where one had been.
Rachel had not seen that before.
Maybe because she had never been close enough.
Maybe because, until yesterday, Vanessa Cole had been nobody important.
A woman Rachel had seen at Bennett Foundation events. A former executive assistant in one of Ethan’s companies. Somebody Margaret called “reliable.”
Rachel touched the edge of the folder.
“Ethan is the father of one baby,” she said.
Nobody answered.
“And the other?”
Vanessa looked toward the bassinets.
Margaret’s eyes opened.
“Don’t involve them in this.”
Rachel almost smiled.
“Them?”
“The children.”
“They’re already involved.”
Sarah moved Margaret toward the door again.
This time Margaret went.
“Rachel,” she said, “do not make decisions until you have spoken to Ethan.”
“You mean until he tells me which lies you want me to believe?”
“He can explain.”
“Then where is he?”
Margaret looked back one last time.
Rachel knew the answer before she heard it.
“I don’t know.”
The officers took Margaret and Vanessa into the hallway.
The door closed.
For several seconds, Rachel heard shoes moving over polished tile, the low murmur of Sarah’s voice, then nothing but hospital machinery and the distant newborn crying down the corridor.
Rachel stared at the empty doorway.
Her left hand had begun shaking.
She set the folder on her lap before she dropped it.
The nurse outside entered carefully.
Her name was Marisol. She had been on shift since before dawn and had brought Rachel apple juice at four in the morning because Rachel said orange juice tasted like toothpaste after delivery.
Marisol looked at the door.
Then at Rachel.
“I’m going to pretend I did not just watch a woman who gave birth yesterday slap a sixty-seven-year-old lady while two cops stood three feet away.”
Rachel rubbed her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t say I was judging.”
Despite everything, Rachel laughed.
It hurt.
She held her abdomen.
Marisol walked over immediately.
“Okay. That part I’m judging. Lie back.”
“I can’t.”
“You absolutely can.”
“My babies—”
“Are right there.”
Rachel looked.
The bassinets were five steps away.
Maybe six.
Marisol adjusted the bed, lowering Rachel with the remote.
“You’re bleeding more when you get upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
Marisol gave her a look.
Rachel closed her eyes.
“All right.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m devastated, furious, humiliated, terrified, and I might be married to a man who got another woman pregnant at the same time as me. But I’m not upset.”
“Much more medically precise.”
Rachel opened her eyes.
Marisol’s expression had softened.
“That folder stay with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Rachel looked down.
The report existed because Marisol had quietly told her, hours earlier, that hospitals did not simply perform paternity testing because a suspicious mother demanded one. There were consent issues. Lab procedures. Custody documentation. The hospital could facilitate independent testing, but the results would not magically appear in twenty minutes.
Rachel had demanded anyway.
Then she had remembered something.
Ethan’s genetic screening.
Three years earlier, after his sister had been diagnosed with an inherited cardiac condition, the Bennett family had participated in a private screening program. Ethan’s genetic profile had been stored with a laboratory connected to the family’s concierge medical practice.
Rachel had been listed as his spouse and emergency health proxy.
The lab could not simply hand over his DNA profile for paternity testing.
But Ethan himself had already signed a standing authorization allowing comparison testing for future children because the couple had been planning a family and his cardiologist wanted infant screening if necessary.
At the time, it had seemed responsible.
Boring.
Adult.
A form signed at a kitchen counter.
That authorization had allowed the independent lab to compare the newborn samples to Ethan’s stored markers.
One baby matched.
One did not.
Rachel had not asked the next question because she had been too afraid of the answer.
Who was the father of the other baby?
Marisol checked the IV.
“Your phone buzzed about six times while the officers were here.”
Rachel looked toward the tray table.
Her phone lay face down beside a plastic cup of melting ice.
She did not reach for it.
Marisol noticed.
“You don’t have to look.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You don’t.”
Rachel looked at her.
Marisol tucked a loose strand of hair beneath her scrub cap.
“People confuse needing answers with needing answers immediately. Your uterus does not care about family scandals.”
“My uterus has terrible timing.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all night.”
May you like
Rachel smiled, then picked up the phone.
Seven missed calls.
