Chapter 26
I touched the image on the screen.
A small shape. A beginning.
“Can you tell me who the father is?” I asked.
“Not from an ultrasound.”
“I know.”
“You can discuss testing with a genetic counselor once the timing is appropriate. But if you have no reason to suspect infidelity, paternity is generally presumed within a marriage.”
“I have reason to suspect my husband has lied about almost everything.”
Dr. Patel looked at me with professional compassion.
“Then we can arrange counseling. You don’t have to decide today.”
I thanked her.
Outside, Ethan rose as I approached.
“Everything is all right,” I said.
His shoulders eased.
“That’s good.”
“I saw the baby.”
A smile touched his face.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“That it looked like a tiny comma.”
He laughed softly.
The sound surprised me. It was the first time I had heard genuine amusement from him, and it changed the air between us.
We walked to the small café across the street.
Over breakfast, Ethan told me what his attorney had uncovered. The payment from the Blackwood Foundation had been authorized by his father, but the request had been submitted by Ryan using a private referral connected to Claire. Years later, after Claire’s death, Ryan had asked for the records to be sealed.
The missing land documents and the medical files had been stored in the same private archive company.
Locker 214 belonged to Ryan.
“My father’s foundation had paid for Claire’s treatment,” Ethan said. “Ryan accessed the records because he feared they would expose his medical history and his connection to her.”
“And the land documents?”
“Apparently, he used the same storage locker for both.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The answer came two days later.
Ryan had been diverting money from his consulting firm through a network of shell companies. The protected wetland records would have exposed the fraud. He had also used the medical files to pressure people who knew about Claire.
Not to harm them.
To keep them silent.
The anonymous letters had been written by a former administrator at Bellmere Women’s Health who had discovered the sealed records. She had seen my name in Ryan’s files and learned about my pregnancy through an office employee who had made an unauthorized call.
She had contacted Ethan because she knew Claire’s brother might be willing to pursue the truth.
She had hidden the flash drive in my suitcase through the hotel’s luggage service, believing I would return to Ryan’s house and find it there. But the suitcase had been packed by Ryan’s mother, who had apparently taken it from the storage room before the divorce papers were delivered.