Page 18 of The Other Mother
I stop to think. Hospitals print multiples at birth, but they’re supposed to match. Different numbers mean either a re-band after a room switch, or something worse. Not knowing where else to go from here, I continue with the list.
Blanket discrepancy: striped vs. plain pink with brown trim (“G. Matthews”)
Car seat: uses white, but neighbor mentioned gray
I write and write, documenting every discrepancy I can remember, every moment that felt off. The pen scratches against the paper, the only sound in the room besides Eva's soft breathing and the hum of the baby monitor.
The monitor suddenly lights up red, Eva's cry piercing the afternoon quiet. But I don't get up. I can't move. I'm frozen in place, staring at the list I've created, at the evidence that something is very, very wrong.
The numbers smear as Eva’s cries climb. I press harder, forcing the pen to scratch the paper. If I leave it in my head, I might forget everything.
9
THE NOVEL
The red numbers on the digital clock beside our bed read 12:24 AM when I give up on sleep entirely. Adam lies next to me, one arm flung across his eyes, mouth slightly open in that way that usually makes me smile but tonight just makes me feel more alone. He got back from his client trip to Phoenix just before dinner, still smelling faintly of sunscreen and that other expensive cologne he only wears when he's trying to impress potential accounts. Two days of golf meetings, he'd explained, showing me photos on his phone of manicured greens and clubhouse lunches. The tan lines around his eyes from his golf hat are already fading, but his breathing is deep and even, the sleep of someone whose world still makes sense.
Eva finally settled down an hour ago after another round of crying that seemed to echo off every wall in the house. The baby monitor sits on my nightstand, its greenlight pulsing softly in the darkness like a tiny lighthouse. I can hear the faint white noise from her room, the mechanical hum that's supposed to mimic the womb but sounds more like an old refrigerator to me.
I slip out of bed carefully, my feet finding the cool hardwood floor. The laptop sits on the dresser where I left it weeks ago, buried under a stack of thank-you cards I still need to write for baby gifts. I haven't touched it since my third trimester, when sitting upright for more than twenty minutes made my back scream in protest.
I settle into the reading chair by our bedroom window, the same overstuffed armchair where I used to curl up with coffee and write for hours before Eva came. Before everything changed. The laptop takes forever to boot up, its fan whirring to life like it's annoyed at being awakened.
I don't want to return to my research tonight. I can't handle diving back into hospital protocols or baby identification procedures. After days of Adam being gone and me alone with my growing list of discrepancies, I need to escape into something familiar, something that belongs entirely to me. I'm not ready to tell him what I found yet. The mismatched bracelets, the unexplained blanket, the growing certainty that something isn't right. How do you tell your husband that you think there might be something wrong with your baby? How do you say those words out loud without sounding like you're losing your mind?
My novel.
The document appears on screen: “Borrowed Time – Draft v3.” I haven’t looked at it since I made those discoveries about Eva’s hospital bracelets, afraid of what else I might find that doesn’t make sense. But tonight, with Adam sleeping peacefully beside me and my mind spinning in circles, I need something else to focus on.
I scroll to the beginning and start reading. At first, it feels like discovering someone else’s work. The words are mine, but they feel foreign, dreamlike, as if I’m reading them through frosted glass. I don’t remember writing most of it, which isn’t entirely surprising. Those last months of pregnancy were a blur of swollen feet and heartburn and the constant pressure of a tiny person pressing against my ribs.
The story follows a woman named Lena who moves to a quiet neighborhood after a loss she refuses to name. She keeps a small notebook where she records ordinary things that don’t quite feel ordinary: a porch light that burns at noon, a Welcome Home balloon that never deflates, a lullaby drifting from the wrong window. At first, she isn’t stalking anyone. She’s cataloging.
From her kitchen sink, Lena watches the woman across the street and the new baby she carries through the day like a fragile appointment. Lena tells herself it’s research, a study in domestic routine. Still, things get strange.
I keep reading. Lena shadows her doubts more than any person. She times the neighborhood’s walks, notes the days the stroller doesn’t appear, the afternoons whenthe wind chimes stop ringing even though the wind keeps blowing. The details loop until they start to look like evidence, and she can’t tell whether she’s building a case or going crazy.
My chest tightens, even though none of it is literal. No hospitals, no paperwork. Just the ache of someone trying to name what won’t stand still.
I click the revision history. The file shows it was created on February 11. Last modified on April 9. Months before Eva was born. Before any of this. I stare at the dates until the numbers blur. I remember complaining to Adam that my fingers were too swollen to type.
I scroll further. The narrative frays as it goes on, but the voice sharpens. Lena starts walking a loop that isn’t hers: past the schoolyard at dawn, around the small park by the river, along the block where the houses all look the same until they don’t. She writes down things that feel wrong because she doesn’t know what else to do with them. The notebook becomes a ledger of tiny misalignments.
I pause, palm pressed to my sternum. It’s not my life. But it feels like I’m looking in a distorted mirror.
I should close the laptop, but I don’t. Instead, I open a new scene in Chapter 7. The cursor blinks. My fingers move before I even know what I’m going to say.
Lena waits on a bench near the river when the fog is still clinging low, the grass slick and cold through her jeans. Runners pass in pairs. A dog shakes water onto her shoes and trots away. Across the path, under the bare branches of asycamore, two adults sit at a picnic table. They don’t touch. They don’t smile. A small object changes hands. It’s something that glints once in the weak light, small enough to disappear into a pocket. The woman glances toward the playground and tucks the object into a diaper bag patterned with tiny half-moons. The man leaves first, walking like someone who wants to be anywhere else. The wind chimes on the park restrooms rattle and then go quiet.
I stop. The words look like they wrote themselves while I watched. Not a prophecy. Not proof. Just specificity that feels borrowed from my own life.
Eva’s cry crackles through the monitor, sharp and urgent. The green light pulses. I should get up. My legs don’t move.
I scroll back up, skimming what I’ve just written. None of it names anything I’m afraid to name. No matching numbers. No pink anything. Just a woman who keeps a record because it’s the only control she has left.
I look up at our ceiling, at the water stain Adam keeps promising to fix. Then back to the line in Lena’s margin I can’t stop seeing: The Wrong Room.
This isn’t just a book.
