Page 44 of The Other Mother
Eva isn't mine. She's Mara’s. So, where is mine?
And somewhere, Mara's been living with the knowledge that her baby was taken from her, given to another woman, while everyone around her insisted she was delusional or unstable.
My phone buzzes against the coffee table, the sound sharp and intrusive in the heavy silence.
A text from Adam:Where are you? We need to talk.
The words send ice through my veins. Does he know what I've discovered? Has someone alerted him that I've been digging into files I wasn't supposed to access?
I unplug the USB drive with shaking hands, shoving it deep into my purse like evidence of a crime. "I need to get out of here."
Lex says nothing, just watches me gather my things with wide, stunned eyes. I can see them processing what we've just witnessed, trying to make sense of surveillance footage that reveals a conspiracy so massive it's hard to believe it's real.
"Claire," they say as I reach the door. "Be careful. If this is real, if they really did what it looks like they did ... people don't go to these lengths without having serious reasons. And serious resources."
I nod without turning around, because I can't bear to see the concern in their face. I've already dragged them too far into this nightmare.
In my car,parked outside Lex's building, I open my laptop and play the stills again. This time I zoom in on details I missed before: the nurse's face, her uniform, anything that might help me identify who was involved in whatever happened that night.
Her face is mostly obscured by the camera angle and poor lighting, but I can make out the outline of a stethoscope around her neck and something that makes my breath catch. She has bright red fingernails, perfectly manicured, visible as she adjusts the baby's blanket.
I've seen those nails before. Recently.
The memory surfaces slowly, like something rising from deep water. A woman in scrubs leaning over my hospital bed in the recovery room, checking my IV, asking how I was feeling. She’s professional, efficient, and forgettable in the way that medical staff often are when you're doped up on pain medication.
Except for those red nails. They'd seemed out of place somehow, too glamorous for a hospital setting.
"I've seen those nails before," I murmur to the empty car. "She was in my room."
The implications crash over me like a wave. This wasn't some random mix-up, some tragic accident that happened in the chaos of a busy maternity ward. This was planned. Orchestrated. The nurse with the red nails was part of it, maybe even central to it.
But why? What possible reason could there be for switching two newborn babies? What did Adam gain from this? What did any of them gain?
I stare at the frozen image on my laptop screen, Mara’s face twisted in anguish, her empty arms pressed against her chest, being wheeled away from the baby she'd just given birth to.
Who let this happen?
24
THIS IS MY BLANKET
The morning starts with Adam bringing me coffee in bed. He sits on the edge of the mattress, still wearing yesterday's golf shirt, and watches me take the first sip. The coffee is perfect. Two sugars, splash of cream, just the way I like it. He hasn’t brought up taking Eva to his mom’s again and, for that, I’m grateful. As far as he’s concerned, everything is fine, or as fine as it can be.
"You were up late again," he says, not accusingly, just stating a fact.
I was. I'd been sitting in the nursery until three in the morning, watching Eva sleep, trying to memorize the curve of her ear, the way her tiny fist curls near her cheek. The things a mother should know by heart.
"I couldn't sleep."
He nods, runs his hand through his hair. There are new lines around his eyes, stress lines that weren't theretwo months ago. "Claire, I've been thinking. Maybe we should take a weekend trip. Just the three of us. Get out of the desert for a while.”
The offer surprises me. Adam hasn’t suggested anything like that since we moved here. He’s been swallowed by the Rancho Vista commission, a net-zero “desert refuge” for a VC couple fleeing LA; rammed-earth walls, a graywater loop, glass that tints when the sun hits. He calls it a sanctuary. I call it a hideout. The irony isn’t lost on me that he builds escape hatches for strangers while I feel trapped in this life.
"Where would we go?"
"The coast. Maybe Carmel. Remember our anniversary trip there, before ... " He gestures vaguely toward the nursery. Before Eva. Before everything changed.
I do remember. We'd stayed at that tiny bed and breakfast with the garden full of succulents and morning glory vines. I'd dragged him to three different bookstores, and he'd insisted on buying me that leather journal I'd been eyeing. The one I still haven't written in.
