Chapter 7 - The Lie Before Our Marriage
Daniel pulled the car onto the shoulder when I showed him the blood types.
Rain struck the windshield.
“That record could be false,” he said.
“Was the baby born to me yours?”
“Yes.”
“You answered too slowly.”
“Emily, she is my daughter.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He stared through the windshield.
I understood before he spoke.
“You knew,” I whispered.
“I suspected.”
The betrayal felt deeper than the secret about Arden.
“How could you suspect my child wasn’t yours?”
“Because I was told I could never have children.”
I stared at him.
“Who told you?”
“My mother.”
“When?”
“When I was eighteen. Arden performed tests on several employees’ families. She said I carried a chromosomal abnormality that made me sterile.”
“But we had Noah.”
Daniel’s silence became unbearable.
I turned in my seat.
“What are you saying?”
“After Noah was born, I thought my mother had lied.”
“Did you test him?”
“No.”
“Did you ever doubt he was yours?”
“Never.”
“Then why doubt Sophie?”
“Because my mother sent me a copy of the laboratory report during your pregnancy. She said Noah’s birth had been an anomaly and the new baby could not biologically be mine.”
“And you believed her instead of asking me?”
“I didn’t believe you had cheated.”
“What did you believe?”
“That the records had been manipulated.”
“By whom?”
“Arden.”
The answer sounded impossible, yet every impossible thing Daniel had told me was slowly becoming real.
He continued.
“My mother claimed the institute had used our fertility clinic to alter embryos.”
“We never used a fertility clinic.”
“You received hormone injections before conceiving.”
“For endometriosis.”
“The physician who treated you was funded by Arden.”
My mind moved backward through the previous year.
Dr. Nathan Hall had recommended a new injectable medication after two miscarriages. He said it might improve my uterine lining. Three months later, I became pregnant.
“What was in those injections?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew this during my pregnancy and allowed me to continue taking them?”
“I learned later.”
“You should have told me immediately.”
“I was afraid the stress would hurt you and the baby.”
I laughed without humor.
“Every lie is protection when you tell it.”
Daniel lowered his head.
“You’re right.”
I opened the car door.
He caught my arm.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere you aren’t.”
“We are being watched.”
“Because of your family.”
“And leaving alone makes you vulnerable.”
I pulled free.
“You don’t get to use danger as a leash.”
A car appeared behind us.
Its headlights flashed twice.
Daniel looked in the mirror.
“We need to move.”
The black sedan from outside our house accelerated toward us.
Daniel started the engine.
The sedan struck our rear bumper before we reached the highway.
Noah woke screaming.
Daniel swerved around a delivery truck, then turned onto a narrow road leading into an industrial district.
The sedan followed.
The baby began crying.
I leaned over the back seat, trying to calm both children.
“Take the next left,” I said.
“It’s a dead end.”
“I know.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Trust me once.”
The words tasted bitter.
He turned.
The road ended at a construction site where my architecture firm had supervised renovations. I knew an unfinished access tunnel connected the site to a parking structure two blocks away.
Daniel drove between concrete barriers.
The sedan followed, but its wider body struck a steel post.
We entered the tunnel and emerged inside the dark parking structure.
Daniel shut off the headlights.
The sedan passed the entrance without seeing us.
For several minutes, none of us spoke.
Then Noah said, “The man in that car was at the hospital.”
“Which man?” Daniel asked.
“The one who told the lady she brought the wrong baby.”
“Did you see his face?”
“No. But I heard his voice.”
I thought of the man who had called after Dr. Shaw’s accident.
“What did he say at the hospital?”
Noah hugged Oliver.
“He said they needed the baby with the moon.”
I remembered the wooden moon Noah had painted for the nursery.
“Was he talking about the decoration?”
Noah shook his head.
“The baby had a moon on her.”
My breath stopped.
The red mark beneath Sophie’s collarbone had not been shapeless.
In the first photograph, it curved like a crescent.
Daniel looked at me.
“My mother once called it the lunar marker.”
“What is it?”
“A hereditary birthmark found in one family line.”
“Whose family?”
May you like
He hesitated.
“The Arden family.”
