Page 24 of Tear Me Apart

She pushes Lauren inside, shuts the door, leans against it, and crosses her arms.

“Scream.”

“What?”

“Scream. Do it here, do it now. You can’t fall apart in front of her like that. She needs you to fight with her. Not to give up, not to give in.”

“The odds—”

“Fuck the odds. This kid is more than the odds. She always has been.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. You have no idea what it’s been like. What it’s like to lose your heart, your soul. If she dies—”

“She’s not yours.”

Lauren stops dead, mouth open in a small little O, a silent scream.

“What did you just say?”

Shit.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.”

“What in the name of God are you talking about?”

“The reason there isn’t a match. She’s not your child. Not only isn’t there a match for the stem cells, but there’s not a genetic match at all.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“That’s what I thought, too. I saw the file yesterday, and I thought they’d done something wrong, so I called the lab—I know the head of it—and had him redo the tests himself. She’s not your child. The hospital must have made a horrible mistake, and they switched her with another baby. I have no idea how that happened, but it was seventeen years ago. The security and standards have changed dramatically. I bet the other family has no idea, either.”

“Juliet Ryder, you are out of your mind.”

Lauren tries to push past her, heading for the door, but Juliet is taller and heavier, and simply stands in the way.

“I’m not. It’s science. It’s a terrible thing, but this is real, it’s happening, and you have to listen to me. We’re going to have to open an investigation, the CBI will handle it, and of course we’ll be discreet with it, but you know I can’t stay quiet about this. It’s going to get out.”

“An investigation?” Lauren manages to sound fearful and furious at the same time. “There will be no such thing. This is a mistake. If it were true, the doctors would have said something. You’ve dreamed up all this because you aren’t the center of attention, for once. You are welcome to leave. Leave, now, and don’t come back, and we’ll forget this entire conversation ever happened.”

“Lauren. You know I can’t do that. It’s not a mistake. Blood doesn’t lie.”

Lauren looks wild, completely out of control. She wrenches Juliet’s arm away from the door, throws it open and stalks off. Juliet lets her go. Denial. She is in denial. Understandable. It is too much to process. She shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. She handled it poorly. She doesn’t blame Lauren a bit for being pissed off.

But the truth is the truth, and sooner or later, they are all going to have to face it. Mindy is not a blood relation to them.

Who does she belong to?

12

Lauren’s heart is in her throat. This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening!

She wants to scream; she wants to run. She can’t face them, not like this, when she is torn apart, her heart in a million pieces.

She takes a lap around the hospital—the way she’s gotten the bulk of her exercise lately. She usually works out with Mindy; though she can’t keep up with everything her daughter does, Lauren can hold her own. Without the work, her muscles are atrophying, and she’s lost weight. She can feel her skin loose on her bones.

Damn Juliet, and her prying, meddling nature. Lauren hadn’t even thought to ask how her sister managed to see the records before anyone else. And to go straight to the lab—that means how many people know about this? The doctors, surely, the lab owner, plus Juliet. It is only a matter of time before someone talks, someone remarks on it, and then they will all be trotted out in front of the media. What a story. Olympic hopeful Mindy Wright in a scandal. Switched at birth. Not her mother’s daughter.

Lauren sits down hard on a bench in the first-floor atrium. The snow has stopped, the glass roof is covered. Tiny gleams of sun break through as the melt begins.