Page 4 of The Other Mother

The room goes quiet again, but this time it feels different. Charged.

"Different how?" the redhead asks.

"Pink sleeper to a yellow onesie. With bumblebees." The words tumble out. "My husband said I must have changed her and forgotten, but I didn't. I know I didn't."

Jessica shifts in her chair. "Memory issues are very common postpartum. Your brain is flooded with hormones, you're sleep-deprived?—"

"I'm not crazy," I say, more sharply than I intended.

"Of course you're not crazy," Audrey says quickly. "We've all had moments like that. "

But have they? Or are they just being polite? I look around the circle at these tired women with their tired smiles and wonder if any of them have ever had the thought I can't shake. The thought that follows me from room to room, lurking at the edges of my consciousness like a shadow.

What if Eva isn't mine?

The thought is insane. I know it's insane. I was there when they cut her out of me, even if I wasn’t awake. She was covered in my blood. I felt her on my chest. I remember a nurse scanning our bands and saying “match,” but memory is slippery again, and the numbers in front of me don’t agree.

But knowing something and feeling it are different things.

"Time's almost up," Jessica announces. "Before we close, I want to remind everyone that questioning your connection to your baby doesn't make you a bad mother. It makes you human. These feelings will pass."

Will they? Or will I spend the next eighteen years looking at Eva and wondering if she's really mine? Will I search her face for traces of myself and Adam, or will I keep seeing a stranger's features in expressions that should be familiar?

The women start gathering their things. Business cards are exchanged, phone numbers shared. The blonde woman, Audrey, approaches me as I'm putting on my jacket.

"Hey, if you ever want to grab coffee or let the babies have a playdate, here's my number." She hands me a card that smells like expensive perfume.

"Thanks. That would be nice."

As Audrey walks away, another woman approaches. She's maybe forty, with kind eyes and laugh lines that suggest she smiled a lot before motherhood wore her down.

"First time?" she asks.

I nod.

"I'm Vanessa.”

“Is she ok?” I ask, looking at the pale woman still sitting in her chair like she has nowhere else to go.

“Don’t mind her. That’s Mara Vasquez,” Vanessa says. “She just started coming back a few weeks ago."

I give her an understanding nod.

Vanessa lowers her voice. "She lost a baby. She doesn't talk about it." She hefts her diaper bag higher on her shoulder. "She gives me the creeps sometimes, but I think she means well."

I look back at Mara. She's still staring at me.

"Anyway," Vanessa says quickly, "see you next week?"

But as she walks away, I wonder if her baby really does look like her, or if she's just better at pretending than I am.

I'm the last one to leave except for Mara, who seems to have no intention of moving. Jessica is stacking chairs and humming something that might be a lullaby.

"Claire? How did today feel for you?"

I consider telling her the truth. That listening to other women talk about their children made me feel more disconnected from Eva, not less. That their stories of eventual bonding sound like fairy tales I'll never be part of.

"It was helpful," I say instead.

"I'm glad. See you next week?"

I nod and walk out into the desert heat, leaving Mara behind in her chair like a ghost haunting the beige room.

The sun is already brutal at eleven AM, turning the asphalt into a shimmering lake of false promises. I'm fumbling for my keys when I hear footsteps behind me.

I turn around. Mara is standing maybe three feet away, too close for comfort. Up close I can see that her eyes are bloodshot, like she's been crying or hasn't slept in weeks.

"That baby," she says, her voice low and urgent. "That's not your baby."

My keys slip from my hand and clatter to the ground. "Excuse me?"

She doesn't step back. If anything, she moves closer. "You feel it, don't you? That something's wrong. That she's not yours."

I stare at her, my mouth opening and closing like a fish. How could she possibly know? How could this stranger see what I've been trying so hard to hide?

Before I can find words, Mara turns and walks away without another sound. She moves quickly, purposefully, like she's delivered the message she came to deliver.

I stand there in the parking lot holding my keys, watching her get into a beat-up Honda Civic that's seen better days. She doesn't look back as she drives away.

My hands are shaking as I buckle Eva into her car seat. She's still sleeping, her face peaceful and perfect and completely unaware that her mother is falling apart in the Desert Springs Wellness Center parking lot.

I study her features in the rearview mirror as we drive home. The dark hair that's getting thicker instead of falling out like the pediatrician said it would. The eyes that seem too knowing for a six-week-old. The way she sleeps so deeply, so still, like she's conserving energy for something.

What if it was just grief? Just projection from a woman who lost her own child and can't bear to see other mothers struggling?

And yet I can't shake the sound of Mara's voice. The certainty in her words.

"You feel it, don't you?"

I do feel it. I've felt it since the moment they placed Eva on my chest in that sterile delivery room. The wrongness. The disconnect. The sense that I'm caring for someone else's child.

At a red light, I whisper to Eva's reflection: "You're mine. Of course you're mine."

But the words come out like a question.