Page 5 of The Other Mother

THE BLANKET

T he afternoon sun streams through our living room windows with the kind of relentless intensity that only exists in the desert. Everything it touches turns golden and harsh. I should close the blinds, but I can't seem to make myself care.

Eva sleeps in her bassinet beside the couch, her chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm that used to comfort me. Now I watch it like I'm waiting for something to go wrong. Like I'm expecting her to stop breathing or disappear or reveal herself to be someone else entirely.

Mara's words loop through my head on repeat. "That baby isn't yours." The way she said it, so certain, so matter-of-fact. Like she was telling me the sky is blue or water is wet. An undeniable truth I've been too blind to see.

I need to move. Need to do something with my hands before I lose what's left of my mind.

The laundry basket sits on the floor beside the couch, overflowing with tiny clothes that smell like sour milk and the lavender detergent I bought because it was supposed to be gentle on sensitive skin.

Everything in our life now revolves around being gentle.

Gentle soap, gentle music, gentle voices.

As if the world might shatter Eva like glass if we're not careful enough.

I dump the contents onto the coffee table and start folding. Onesies covered in cartoon animals I don't remember buying. Burp cloths stained with mysterious yellows and whites. Swaddles that promise to help babies sleep through the night but never seem to work for us.

At the bottom of the pile, I find a blanket I don't recognize.

My hands freeze around the soft cotton. It's pale pink with brown trim that looks like it's been through hundreds of washes. This isn’t my mother’s embroidered rosebud blanket.

The kind of delicate pattern you'd find in an old-fashioned baby shop, not the modern geometric prints that filled our registry.

I turn it over slowly, my fingers tracing the worn edges.

In one corner, there's a brownish stain about the size of a quarter. It's faded but persistent, the kind of mark that's been through the wash multiple times but refuses to disappear completely. Formula maybe. Or blood.

My heart starts hammering against my ribs.

I grab my phone with shaking fingers and scroll back through my photos. The hospital ones are buried under weeks of blurry shots of Eva sleeping, Eva crying, Eva staring at nothing with those dark, unreadable eyes. But finally I find them. The first pictures Adam took right after she was born.

There I am in the hospital bed, looking like I've been hit by a truck but trying to smile for the camera. My hair is plastered to my head with sweat, my face is puffy and pale, but I'm holding Eva against my chest like she's the most precious thing in the world.

She's wrapped in a striped blanket. Blue and white stripes with a hospital logo in the corner. Not this one.

I scroll through more photos. The ones Adam took when the nurses cleaned her up. The ones from our first night home. Different blankets in every shot, but none of them this pale pink flowered one that's now sitting in my lap like evidence of something I can't name.

I dig desperately through the rest of the laundry, looking for anything else that doesn't belong. But it's all familiar. All the clothes we bought or received as gifts. All the burp cloths and bibs and tiny socks that disappear in the dryer.

Just this one blanket that doesn't fit.

I hold it up to the afternoon light streaming through the windows. The fabric is soft and worn, loved in a way that suggests it belonged to someone for a long time. Along the edge, barely visible unless you're looking for it, is a small sewn-in laundry tag .

Written in faded black marker, in handwriting that definitely isn't mine, "G. Matthews."

I stare at the letters until they blur. G. Matthews. My last name, but not my initial. Not Eva's either, obviously. Her full name is Eva Rose Matthews, chosen because I loved the way it sounded when I was eight months pregnant and still believed I knew what I was doing.

Gia? Gabriella?

"This isn't hers," I whisper to the empty room. "This isn't mine."

Eva stirs in her bassinet but doesn't wake. She's been sleeping more lately, long stretches that would have thrilled me a few days ago but now feel ominous. Like she's conserving energy. Like she's waiting for something.

I hear Adam's key in the front door, followed by his voice.

He's on a work call, discussing permits and timelines and other details of his current project.

A custom home for some tech executive who moved here from Silicon Valley and wants sustainable luxury in the middle of the desert.

Adam loves these clients. They have money and taste and don't question his recommendations the way the younger couples do.

"No, the solar array has to go on the south face," he's saying as he walks into the living room. "I don't care what it looks like from the street. Function over form."

I wave him over, holding up the blanket. He holds up one finger, mouthing "one minute" while he finishes his call. Always one more minute. Always one more client who needs his attention more than I do.

Finally he hangs up and looks at me with that patient expression he's perfected over the past six weeks. The one that says he loves me but wishes I was a little less fragile, a little easier to handle.

"What's up?"

"Have you ever seen this before?" I hold up the blanket, my voice higher than I intended.

Adam shrugs and loosens his tie. He's dressed for success even in the desert heat, navy slacks and a crisp white button-down that somehow never wrinkles. "It's one of the ones from the hospital, right?"

"No." I grab my phone and show him the pictures. "This isn't the blanket she came home in. Look."

He glances at the screen, but I can tell he's not really looking. Not the way I am. Not with the desperate attention of someone who's trying to solve a puzzle that might destroy everything.

"This one has someone else's name in it." I show him the tag, pointing to the faded letters.

Adam takes the blanket and squints at the writing. His reading glasses are upstairs, but he's too vain to wear them unless he absolutely has to. Another vanity from our Orange County days, when image mattered more than comfort.

"G. Matthews. That's probably a laundry tag. Like for hospital use." He hands it back to me, already losing interest. "G for Girl? Or maybe someone else had it before us. It's a public hospital, Claire. They probably reuse stuff all the time."

His tone is gentle but dismissive. The same tone he uses when I mention that Eva's eyes seem darker, or that she feels heavier in my arms, or that sometimes I wake up convinced someone has been in her room while we were sleeping.

I want to scream. Want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he sees what I see, feels what I feel. But I've learned that my intensity scares him. Makes him retreat into work calls and golf games and late nights at the office.

"You're probably right," I say instead, folding the blanket and setting it aside.

But I'm not convinced. Not even close.

Adam kisses the top of my head, a distracted gesture that feels more like checking a box than showing affection. "I'm going to change clothes. Did you think about dinner?"

Food. Another thing I'm supposed to care about but can't seem to manage. "We could order something."

"Sounds good. Chinese?”

I nod. Honestly, I could eat again. Breastfeeding has turned me into a bottomless pit.

I keep opening the fridge and never feel full.

It’s another side effect no one mentions.

Along with how your body stops feeling like yours, how sleep becomes rations, and how you can love someone fiercely while they still feel like a stranger.

Adam disappears upstairs, and I'm alone again with Eva, the mysterious blanket, and the questions that multiply in my head.

I walk to Eva's bassinet and look down at her sleeping face. She's beautiful. Perfect. Exactly what a six-week-old baby should look like. But there's something in her expression, even in sleep, that makes me uneasy. Like she's dreaming about things babies shouldn't know about yet.

The pale pink blanket sits on the chair where Adam left it, looking innocent and ordinary. Just another piece of baby gear in a house full of baby gear. But I can't stop staring at those faded letters. G. Matthews.

What if it's not a coincidence? What if G. Matthews is another baby who was born at the same hospital, around the same time? What if, somehow, in the chaos of a busy maternity ward, things got mixed up?

The thought is insane. Hospitals have protocols. Bracelets and footprints and procedures designed to prevent exactly this kind of mistake. But mistakes happen. Even in hospitals. Even with the most careful protocols.

I think about Mara's hollow eyes, the certainty in her voice. "You feel it, don't you? That something's wrong."

I do feel it. I've felt it since the moment they placed Eva on my chest and I waited for the flood of recognition that never came. The maternal instinct that was supposed to kick in automatically but feels more like a learned behavior I'm still trying to master.

Later, after we stuffed ourselves and Adam retreated into his home office to work on blueprints, I put Eva down for another nap. She goes down easily, too easily. Not like before. Today, Eva slides into unconsciousness like she's grateful for the escape.

I watch her for a long time, studying her features in the fading afternoon light. The dark hair that's getting thicker instead of falling out. The eyebrows that seem too defined for a newborn. The way she sleeps so still, barely moving except for the rise and fall of her chest.

Then I look back at the blanket, still folded on the chair where Adam left it.

I pick it up again and run my finger over the laundry tag. The ink is faded but legible. G. Matthews. Someone took the time to write that name, to mark this blanket as belonging to a specific baby. A baby whose name started with G.

It still feels like someone else's.

I take a picture of the tag with my phone, making sure the letters are clearly visible.

Then I fold the blanket carefully and carry it to Eva's nursery.

The closet is already overflowing with clothes she's either outgrown or never worn, gifts from people who don't understand that babies grow at their own unpredictable pace.

I shove the blanket into the back corner, behind the fancy dresses she'll never wear and the winter clothes that are useless in the desert. Hidden but not thrown away. Just in case.

Just in case what, I'm not sure. But something about that blanket feels important. Like evidence in a case I don't understand yet but might need to prove someday.

I close the closet door and look back at Eva, still sleeping peacefully in her crib. The late afternoon sun has shifted, casting long shadows across the nursery walls. Everything looks normal. Ordinary. Exactly like a baby's room should look.

But normal is starting to feel like a mask I can't see behind.

If this blanket wasn't hers, I don't want to forget that again.