Page 31 of The Other Mother

THE FILE

"You sure you're okay?" he asks, same question every week. His hand hovers near Eva's bassinet but doesn't touch her. I've noticed that lately. The hesitation.

"We're fine," I say, bouncing Eva gently. She's been fussy all morning, that high-pitched cry that makes my chest tight. "Have fun."

He pauses at the door. "Maybe we could talk when I get back. About ... everything."

“Yeah sure," I lie.

The garage door rumbles shut. The sound of his engine fades down the street.

Eva settles in my arms, finally quiet. Her tiny fist uncurls and wraps around my finger.

Such perfect little nails. I study her face in the morning light streaming through the blinds.

The slope of her nose. The way her eyebrows arch slightly when she dreams.

"You look like me," I whisper. "Don't you?"

But even as I say it, doubt creeps in. That nagging feeling that's been growing stronger since I saw the hospital footage. Since Mara died. Since everything started unraveling.

I remember when my mother was dying, how the hospice nurse told me that sometimes families see what they need to see. "Love creates resemblance," she'd said, smoothing my mother's blanket. "The heart makes its own truth."

Maybe that's what I've been doing. Making my own truth.

I carry Eva to her nursery and settle her in the crib. She yawns, stretches, then curls into herself like a flower closing for the night. I watch her chest rise and fall, memorizing the rhythm.

Then I walk to Adam's office.

Inside, everything is exactly as he left it. His laptop sits open on the desk, screen dark but still warm. Golf magazines stacked neatly beside a coffee mug that says "World's Greatest Dad" - a Father's Day gift from his sister before Eva was born.

I hover my hand over the laptop's trackpad. This feels like crossing a line I can't uncross. But Mara is dead, and that flash drive she sent me contained hospital records. I need to know if Adam knows anything.

The screen flickers to life. Password protected, of course. I try Eva's birthday. Nothing. Our anniversary. Nothing. Then, almost as an afterthought, I type: GRACIE.

It works.

My stomach drops. Gracie. The name from the pacifier. Here it is, Adam's laptop password, like it's been important to him all along.

The desktop loads. Work files, golf tournament brackets, photos of Eva that I don't remember him taking. I scan the folders quickly. Most are labeled with project names I don't recognize. But one catches my eye: "Liability."

I click it open.

Inside are dozens of files. PDF scans of legal documents. Email chains with subject lines like "Custodial Transfer Protocol" and "Emergency Assignment Review." My hands start shaking before I even open the first one.

The document that loads makes me sick.

Emergency Custodial Reassignment Form - Coachella Valley Medical Center

Patient: Claire Bernard Matthews

DOB: 03/22/1987

Assigned Infant: Female, DOB: 09/03/2024

And there, at the bottom, my signature. The same signature from the hospital footage Lex showed me. The one I signed while sobbing, while sedated, while begging them not to let my baby die.

But the metadata at the bottom of the page tells a different story:

Created by: A. Matthews

Date Created: 09/03/2024

Last Modified by: A. Matthews

I stare at the screen until the words blur. He created this form the day of Eva’s birth. Why?

I scroll through more files. Email threads between Adam and someone named J. Harper. Was this June Harper, the nurse, I spoke to?

There are screenshots of bank transfers with amounts that make my head spin. And then, buried in a folder labeled "Archive," I find something that stops my breath entirely.

A scanned photo of a death certificate.

"Evelyn Grace Matthews"

Born: 09/03/2024

Died: 09/03/2024

Cause: Respiratory failure

The baby from the grave. The one Mara visited. But according to this certificate, she was mine. My biological daughter who died the night she was born, the night I can barely remember through the fog of medication and grief.

I print everything. Page after page, the printer humming and clicking in the quiet house. Each sheet that slides into the tray feels like evidence of a crime I'm only beginning to understand.

My phone buzzes.

A text from Adam: Running late. Might grab lunch at the clubhouse. See you around 3.

Three hours. I have three hours to figure out what my husband did to me.

I keep digging. In another folder, I find a video file labeled "Insurance Review." I click play.

It's security footage from the hospital, but different angles than what Lex showed me.

This one shows Adam in the hallway outside the maternity ward, talking to a woman in scrubs.

They're too far from the camera for me to make out words, but their body language is clear.

He hands her something - an envelope. She nods and walks away.

The timestamp shows this happened six hours after I gave birth. Six hours after my daughter died.

I fast-forward through more footage. There's Adam again, this time at the nursing station. A clipboard in his hands. He's signing something, pointing at papers, nodding as a nurse explains something I can't hear.

And then, in the final clip, I see myself. Unconscious in a hospital bed, IVs snaking from my arms. Adam stands beside me, holding a baby I now know isn't mine. He's not looking at the child in his arms. He's looking at me, his face a mixture of grief and something else I can't quite name.

Calculation, maybe. Or resignation .

The video ends. I sit in the silence of his office, surrounded by the evidence of his betrayal, and try to make sense of what I've learned.

My biological daughter died. Adam arranged to give me another child - Mara's child - to spare me the grief. But that meant stealing from a mother, forging documents, bribing hospital staff. It meant building our family on someone else's forced loss.

I think about all the times he dismissed my concerns, called me paranoid, suggested I needed medication. All the times he made me doubt my own instincts when my instincts were exactly right.

"You decided she was mine," I whisper to the empty room.

Eva cries from her nursery, and I realize I've been sitting here for over an hour.

I gather the printed documents, stuff them into a manila folder, and hide it in my underwear drawer.

Then I go to my daughter. She is my daughter, isn't she?

I've fed her, changed her, sung to her, loved her for almost two months. Biology doesn't erase that.

But as I lift her from the crib, I can't stop thinking about Mara. How she must have felt waking up to empty arms, being told her baby was dead.

Eva stops crying the moment I pick her up. She looks at me with those dark eyes that don't quite look like mine, that never have, no matter how hard I've tried to convince myself otherwise .

"He chose us for each other," I tell her softly. "But that doesn't make it right.”

I carry her to the rocking chair by the window and settle us both down.

My nipples are still raw and tender from the last feeding, the cracked skin stinging as Eva latches on hungrily.

I wince but don't pull away—this pain feels like penance somehow, a small suffering for the enormous wrong I've unknowingly been part of.

The milk flows despite everything, my body responding to her need even as my mind reels with the truth Adam kept from us both.

I watch her tiny fist curl against my chest, so trusting, so innocent of the deception that brought her to me.

While Eva nurses, I reach for my phone with my free hand and call the number on one of the bank transfer receipts. It rings four times before a woman answers.

“June, this is Claire Matthews. We met a few days ago."

Silence. Then: "I told you everything I could tell you."

"Did my husband pay you to switch my baby?” I ask.

Another long pause. "Mrs. Matthews, I think you should speak to a lawyer."

"I'm speaking to you. Please. I just need to know if my husband was involved in taking Mara's child."

June's voice drops to barely above a whisper. "Your husband saved your life. The other baby, your biological daughter ... there were complications. She didn't make it. The trauma would have destroyed you."

"So you took someone else's child to fix me? "

"We gave you a chance to be a mother. And we gave that baby a loving home instead of the foster system. Mara Vasquez had no support, no family. She was alone."

"She wasn't alone. She had her daughter."

"Not anymore," June says, and hangs up.

I set down the phone and look at Eva, who's finished her bottle and is making those soft cooing sounds that usually melt my heart. Today they just make me sad.

Adam will be home in two hours. When he walks through that door, everything between us will change. There's no going back from what I know now, no pretending this marriage can survive this betrayal.

But as I look at Eva, I realize something that surprises me. I'm not even sure I want to give her back, if that's even possible now. She's been mine for two months. She knows my voice, my smell, my heartbeat.

And I know hers.

I carry her to the living room and settle into the rocking chair Adam bought when we first found out I was pregnant. The chair where I've spent countless hours feeding her, comforting her, falling in love with her despite everything.

"Your daddy made a terrible choice," I whisper against her soft hair. "But you're innocent in all this. We both are."

Eva yawns and closes her eyes, trusting me completely. It breaks my heart and strengthens my resolve at the same time.

I rock her until she falls asleep, then lay her gently in her bassinet. While she naps, I pack a bag. It’s not much, just enough clothes for a few days, diapers, and a manila folder full of evidence.

By the time Adam pulls into the driveway, I'm ready.