Page 32 of The Other Mother

He walks through the door with his golf clubs and that satisfied smile he always wears after a good game. "Hey, babe. How was your morning?"

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, the printed documents spread out in front of me like tarot cards predicting our doom.

His smile dies when he sees them.

"Claire," he starts, but I hold up my hand.

"Sit down."

He does, slowly, his eyes never leaving the papers. I watch him recognize each document as his gaze moves across the table. The consent forms. The bank transfers. The death certificate.

"You forged my signature," I say quietly.

Adam doesn’t answer at first. His jaw flexes. He glances at the consent form like it's a gun on the table.

“I didn’t ... forge it myself,” he says finally. “I pushed it through. Legal already had a protocol—an emergency reassignment system for high-risk situations. You ticked every box, Claire. Depression history. Prior loss. No extended family.”

He hesitates, then meets my eyes.

“I gave them a nudge. I made it happen faster. I knew if we waited ... if you saw her ... if you knew she was gone?— ”

I stare at him, cold blooming through my chest.

“So you prepped a form in my name before I ever held her?”

“You didn’t lose just any baby, Claire. You lost our baby.

A daughter. She was born stillborn during the emergency c-section.

The doctors didn’t have any good answers.

Don’t you remember what happened before?

You stopped speaking for days. You forgot your own name.

I thought … I thought this time would be worse. ”

He opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. "She died, Claire. Our baby died, and you were breaking apart. I couldn't let you live through that again. Not after what happened with Marcus."

The mention of my ex-boyfriend, the pregnancy I lost years ago, hits me like a slap. "This has nothing to do with Marcus."

"Doesn't it? You were hospitalized after that miscarriage. Depression, they called it. Breakdown. I didn’t want to watch you go through that again, not when there was another option."

"Another option? You mean stealing someone else's child?"

"I mean giving you the chance to be the mother you always wanted to be. And giving Eva a loving home instead of whatever would have happened to her otherwise."

I stare at him across the table, this man I married, this man I thought I knew. "You don't get to make that choice for me. Or for Mara. Or for Eva. "

"Mara was alone. No family, no support system. She couldn't have provided for a child anyway."

"That wasn't your decision to make."

Adam leans forward, desperation creeping into his voice. "Look at her, Claire. Look at Eva. She's happy. She's healthy. She loves you. Isn't that worth something?"

I look toward the bassinet where Eva is asleep peacefully, unaware that her entire world is built on a lie. "She's not the point, Adam. The point is what you took from me. The right to choose. The right to grieve. The right to know the truth about my own life."

"I did it for you ."

"You did it to me."

The distinction hangs between us. Adam slumps in his chair, suddenly looking older than his thirty-six years.

"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? I am. But I'm not sorry Eva is ours. I'm not sorry you didn't have to suffer."

"But I did suffer," I tell him. "Every day, feeling like something was wrong, like I was losing my mind. Every night, wondering why she didn't feel like mine. You let me think I was crazy instead of telling me the truth."

"Because I was protecting you."

"You were protecting yourself ."

We sit in silence for a long moment. Eva stirs in her bassinet but doesn't wake. Outside, a neighbor's dog barks at something. The ice maker in our refrigerator rumbles to life .

Normal sounds in our abnormal life.

"What happens now?" Adam asks finally.

I stand up and gather the documents, sliding them back into the manila folder. "Now you have to live with what you've done. And I have to figure out how to live with what you took from me."

"Claire, please. We can work through this. We can get counseling, we can?—"

"We can't get back my daughter. The one who died. We can't undo what was done to Mara. And we can't pretend this marriage means anything when it's built on lies."

I pick up Eva's diaper bag and sling it over my shoulder. Adam notices and his face goes pale.

"Where are you going?"

"Away. I need to think."

"You can't take her. Claire, you can't just?—"

"Watch me."

I lift Eva from her bassinet. She wakes briefly, blinks at me with those dark eyes, then settles against my shoulder. She trusts me completely, this child who should have been someone else's but is mine now.

Adam stands up. "This is kidnapping. You know that, right? Legally, if you take her without permission?—"

"Whose permission? Yours? The hospital that falsified records? The state that doesn't even know she exists under a different name?"

I walk toward the door, Eva warm and solid in my arms. Adam follows but doesn't try to stop me .

"How long?" he asks.

I pause with my hand on the doorknob. "I don't know."

"Claire, I love you. I love both of you. Everything I did, I did because I love you."

I turn to look at him one last time. This man who promised to honor me, to protect me, to be honest with me. This man who decided that love meant taking away my choices.

"I know you do," I tell him. "But love without truth isn't love at all."

I buckle Eva into her car seat and drive away from the house, away from the life Adam built for us on someone else's grief. In the rearview mirror, I see him standing in the doorway, watching us disappear.

The desert highway stretches ahead, empty and vast. Eva sleeps in the backseat, unaware that we're running toward an uncertain future.

But as I drive, I realize something that should terrify me but doesn't. For the first time in months, I don't feel crazy. I don't feel lost.

I feel like I finally know exactly what I'm doing.