Melissa hesitated. “Let me check something.”
She left the room, taking the photo only after Richard asked her to make a copy and return the original.
Daniel sat down slowly.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would Whitney have that?”
I looked at the empty doorway.
He looks like her.
Not he looks like Claire.
Her.
A cold, impossible thought moved through me, then vanished before I could name it.
Richard seemed to see it pass across my face.
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did know one thing: Whitney had not been indifferent to Noah. She had been watching him before she ever admitted he existed.
Two hours later, Melissa returned with a hospital administrator named Mrs. Alvarez, a composed woman with silver hair and a badge clipped precisely to her jacket.
“I can’t share private staff information casually,” Mrs. Alvarez said, “but I can confirm that someone called the maternity desk the day after Noah was born asking whether a baby boy had been delivered to Claire Bennett.”
