Rachel clicked to another page.
“I don’t know yet. But I found something else.”
She showed me a scanned newspaper clipping from 1998.
FORMER FERTILITY CLINIC EMPLOYEE FILES SEALED SUIT AGAINST NASHVILLE PHYSICIAN
Below the headline was a grainy photograph of Vivian Cole.
The same woman.
Only younger.
My pulse thudded.
“She sued Dr. Grayson?” I asked.
“Yes. The case was sealed. But three months after it was filed, Dr. Grayson retired. A year later, Vivian bought property in cash.”
My mother stopped rocking the chair.
“Blackmail?”
Rachel leaned back.
“Possibly.”
“And now she works for my husband.”
Rachel’s eyes met mine.
“Not just works for him.”
She clicked again.
A photograph filled the screen.
Mark and Vivian standing outside a downtown hotel. His hand was on her elbow. Her head was tilted toward him. It could have been nothing.
Except I knew the date stamped in the corner.
March 12.
The same weekend the anonymous messages accused me of cheating.
My breath left slowly.
“He was with her,” I said.
Rachel’s voice softened.
“Yes.”
The room became very quiet.
I looked toward the living room, where Lily slept in my mother’s arms, her tiny face peaceful beneath the edge of her blanket.
For months, Mark had been suspicious of me.
For months, he had questioned my loyalty.
And all that time, he had been standing beside the very woman feeding him lies.
Or worse.
The DNA results came back the next afternoon.
Rachel asked if I wanted to open them alone.
I said no.
Mark deserved to hear the truth in the same kind of room where he had tried to bury me beneath suspicion.
So we met in Rachel’s office.
Mark arrived with David and Carol. He looked like he had not slept. His shirt was wrinkled. His eyes were bloodshot. He stared at Lily’s carrier beside my chair but did not ask to touch her.
That was the smartest thing he had done all week.
Rachel sat behind her desk and opened the envelope.
No one breathed.
She read silently first.
Then she looked at me.
“Lily is Mark’s biological child.”
Carol sobbed.
David lowered his head.
Mark closed his eyes like a condemned man hearing he had been pardoned too late.
Rachel continued.