Chapter 3 - The Other Baby
I sat beside Oliver on the stairs because my legs no longer trusted me.
"What picture?"
He twisted the sleeve of his pajamas around his fingers.
"The one behind Mom's old frame."
He still called Rachel Mom. Vanessa had never managed to change that.
Oliver told us that three months earlier, while looking for a school photo, he had opened a storage box from my old apartment. Inside was a framed picture of Rachel holding him in the hospital.
The cardboard backing had come loose.
Behind it was a smaller photograph.
Rachel lay in a hospital bed holding two swaddled newborns.
On the back, in Rachel's handwriting, were four words.
"Why didn't you show me?" I asked.
"I tried."
The night I remembered him crying beside the sink, he had hidden the picture inside his math notebook and waited for me to come home.
"She said it was fake," Oliver whispered. "Then she asked where I got it. I wouldn't tell her."
"What did she do?"
He looked down at his bruised hands.
"She made me clean the kitchen. She kept saying I'd remember where the rest was if I stayed awake long enough."
That night I had walked in after midnight, seen the mess, seen my exhausted son, and accepted Vanessa's explanation that he had thrown a tantrum.
I had told him to listen to her.
I had helped her silence him.
"I'm sorry," I said.
Oliver leaned into me but did not say it was okay.
Mara asked where the photograph was now.
Oliver pointed toward the kitchen tablet.
"I took a picture of it before she ripped it. The tablet camera still worked."
The technician searched the recovered files.
A minute later, the photo appeared.
Rachel was smiling weakly at the camera.
One baby rested against each arm.
I knew Oliver's newborn face instantly.
The other infant looked almost identical.
Mara zoomed in on the wristbands.
BABY B - MERCER.
Then the front security chime rang.
May you like
A black SUV had stopped outside our gate.
Beside her stood Grant Vale - the attorney whose name appeared on the altered death certificate.
