“Fast always costs more, Charlotte. You know that.”
“Money is not an issue. I need information on two people. Everything. Movements, relationships, the clinical history of a birth from eight years ago, and some light surveillance. Give me names, no questions about why. I liked that about Frank.”
“William Hayes, my husband, and Jessica Miller, a possible ex of William’s. I believe she lives in New York. Starting with the twelfth of September, 2018, he was at Mount Sinai with her car. She was probably there too. I need to confirm if she gave birth there on or around that date.”
On the other end of the line, I heard the click of a lighter. A long drag.
“Domestic stuff,” he exhaled. “The messiest kind. Anything else?”
“Yes. My son Ethan, eight years old. I want to know if he’s been seeing this Jessica. Where. When. Photos, if possible. No bugs, just tracking.”
“Got it. Understood. I’ll send you an estimate and the confidentiality agreement in an hour. Half up front. Weekly reports unless something urgent comes up.”
“Perfect.”
I hung up. I felt no relief, just a sharper determination.
While Frank worked, I had another, riskier avenue. I went down to the kitchen. Ethan was watching TV in the living room, the volume too loud. I walked over. He was watching some cartoon. He didn’t even flinch.
“Ethan,” I said.
He pretended not to hear.
“Ethan,” I repeated, more firmly.
“What?” he grumbled without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Do you remember when you were little, before you started school? Did anyone ever take you to the park besides your father or me? Or a family friend?”
I chose the words carefully. He turned slowly. His green eyes, so much like his father’s, scrutinized me with a suspicion unbecoming a child.
“What’s this about?”
“Curiosity. Your father traveled a lot. Maybe a neighbor.”
I left the sentence hanging.
“Sometimes Louisa took me,” he said with disdain. “But she’s a pain. Or Mr. Thomas, the driver, but he doesn’t come anymore.”
He paused. Then, as if it had just occurred to him, he added,
“Sometimes, when I was smaller, Dad would take me to see a friend of his. She had a dog. I liked it.”
The air got trapped in my lungs.
“Oh, really? What was her name?”
“I don’t know. Some blonde lady. She made awesome cookies.”
His tone was casual, but his eyes never left my face, as if he were measuring my reaction.
“Why does it bother you?”
“No. Just asking. And you haven’t seen her in a long time?”
“Nah. I saw her last Saturday. We went to her house. She has an inflatable pool.”
Having said that, he turned back to the TV as if the conversation were over. A deliberate master stroke. He knew he was hurting me, and he enjoyed it.
Last Saturday, William said he had a business meeting in Boston. He was gone all day.
“How nice,” I said, my voice sounding perfectly normal. “I think it’s great that your father and his friends look after you.”
Ethan didn’t answer. He had gotten what he wanted: to stick a knife in and twist it, and I unintentionally had handed him the hilt.
That evening, William called on schedule. I spoke with him first. Briefly, I told him the official version from the school without mentioning my conversation with the doctor. He sounded tired, distant.
“I’ll give him a good talking-to when I get back,” he said. “But Charlotte, it’s not the end of the world. Boys will be boys. He’ll grow out of it.”
“Of course,” I replied. “You’re right. He’ll grow out of it.”
I passed the phone to Ethan, who was waiting like a hawk. He locked himself in his room to talk. His giggles, his enthusiastic “yes, Dad,” seeped through the door. It was a sound he never directed at me.
After a while, he came out. He tossed the phone at me without a glance.
“Dad says next week he’s taking me to a Yankees game even if I’m grounded. He says you can’t stop him.”
“I can’t,” I said, picking up the phone.
He smiled a triumphant, cruel smile. It was William’s smile when he thought he had won an argument.
I waited until nightfall. When the house was quiet, I sat down again at the computer. Frank’s email was already there with the contract and a preliminary report. Concise and damning.
Subject one: William Hayes. Confirmed multiple trips to Chicago for business. Also multiple trips to Queens residential area. Regular pattern. Afternoons every ten to fifteen days, sometimes with minor Ethan. Use of vehicle owned by subject two for some trips, cross-referenced with provided parking-garage plate.
Subject two: Jessica Miller. Resident of Queens, NY. Works part-time as a sales clerk. No records of travel to San Diego. Medical history, preliminary access: admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital on the 11th of September, 2018. Discharge the 13th of September, 2018. Reason: vaginal delivery. Product male, 6 lb 3 oz. Note: same admission/discharge dates as subject zero—yourself. Same maternity ward.
Subject three: Ethan Hayes. Confirmed at least four meetings with subject two in the last two months. Context: cordial, family-like. Photo attached.
I opened the photograph. It was from a week ago, taken from a distance with a telephoto lens. It showed William, Ethan, and a blonde woman in her early thirties. They were sitting on the terrace of a café. Ethan was eating an ice cream cone. William had his arm over the back of Jessica’s chair. She was smiling, looking at Ethan with an expression I couldn’t immediately define until I did. Pride. Pure, simple maternal pride.
I looked at the date on Jessica’s hospital report: September 11. My admission date: September 2. My delivery: the 12th. Her delivery was probably the 11th or 12th. Her son: a healthy boy over six pounds. Mine, according to the chart, a premature boy of four pounds, twelve ounces who needed an incubator. An incubator that I now recalled I had very limited access to for days, always accompanied by William, who told me the baby was very fragile, that it was better not to touch him much yet.
There hadn’t been a confusion. There had been a swap. A cold, calculated exchange executed in the chaos of a medical emergency, taking advantage of my semi-conscious state. He had brought his son, Jessica’s son, and placed him in my arms, and he had taken away my baby, my daughter.
Nausea rose in my throat, acidic and violent. I held it down with clenched fists. There was no time for that. No.
I closed my eyes, breathing deeply. When I opened them, there was no room left for doubt or pain. Only for the truth. Naked and disgusting. William had not only been unfaithful. He had stolen eight years of my daughter’s life. He had placed his offspring—his male heir, because that was what this was also about, stupid me, the inheritance, the family name, the money—in my house at my expense. And he had turned my own daughter into an orphan, into a girl in a group home who fought in schoolyards because no one else would fight for her.
Valerie.
Her name was Valerie.
