Chapter 5: The Heartbeat

The car Rafferty sent was a plain grey sedan with no logo, no driver in uniform, and a woman in the back seat who introduced herself before I'd even closed the door.

 "Dr. Nadia Vance. Obstetrics." She held out a hand. "Mr. Cole says you need someone who doesn't gossip."

 "Do you?" I asked.

 "I deliver babies for a living. I know where all the bodies are buried, and I've never dug one up." Her smile was small and dry. "Seatbelt, Ms. Locke. We're going to take the long way round."

 We did. Forty minutes of side streets, two U-turns, and a parking garage where we switched cars without anyone speaking. Dr. Vance watched the mirrors the whole time.

 "You're careful," I said.

 "I was told there might be a tail."

 "There was?" I asked.

 "There was." She glanced at me. "He's gone now."

 *He.* I thought of the black car outside the Blackwood gates and the thought that had followed me through the dark. I didn't ask.

 "Scheduled event," the system said in my ear, unusually quiet. "Greenwich Women's Clinic. Appointment: 10:00 a.m. Your absence has been recorded."

 "Let them record it."

 Dr. Vance's private practice was a converted townhouse with frosted windows and a waiting room that smelled of chamomile. She walked me straight through to an exam room, handed me a gown, and closed the door.

 I stood there for a long moment, holding the thin cotton, and realized I was afraid. I was afraid the heartbeat wouldn't be there.

 "Take a breath," Dr. Vance said, squeezing gel onto my stomach. "This will be cold."

 It was. I stared at the ceiling tiles and counted them. 

 "Mara," I said, without meaning to.

 "Sorry?"

 "Nothing. Wrong name." I said.

 The screen flickered. A grey storm of static, a dark curve, and in the middle of it a small flicker of light, pulsing fast and bright as a struck match.

 "There," Dr. Vance said softly. "Do you see her?"

 "Her?" I asked.

 "I don't know yet. Habit." She turned a dial. A sound filled the room, rapid, rhythmic, like running footsteps. "That's your baby's heartbeat. One hundred and sixty-two beats a minute. Strong and steady."

 I put my hand over my mouth.

 Three years of a body that wasn't mine and a life I'd been dropped into without warning, and I had held myself together by counting dates and breaking plots. I had not let myself feel this part.

 Tears rolled sideways into my hair.

 "Nine weeks and two days," Dr. Vance said. "Healthy. Everything where it should be." She paused. "Ms. Locke, is someone supposed to be here with you?"

 "No." I said.

 "Do you want someone to be?"

 I thought of a card in a drawer, a number written in black ink, and a man who had stood in a cheap hotel room asking the wrong question.

 "No," I said again. It came out thinner. "Not yet."

 She nodded, and didn't push. "Would you like a printout?"

 "Yes. Please." I said softly.

 She handed me the grainy black-and-white picture a minute later, and I held it in both hands like it might blow away. A tiny curve. A tiny pulse of light.

 *You're real,* I thought. *You're really here.*

 "Warning," the system said. "Forged document detected."

 I went cold.

 "Source?"

 "Greenwich Women's Clinic. A medical record filed under the name Seraphine Locke at 10:02 a.m. today. Diagnosis: Acute emotional instability. Pregnancy classified as high-risk, non-viable. Recommendation: termination under guardianship."

 I stared at the ultrasound in my hands.

 "Non-viable." I said.

 "False. The record has been forwarded to the Blackwood family's legal office. Delivery confirmed 10:06 a.m."

 The room swam.

 They'd done it anyway. I hadn't gone to the clinic, and they had written my diagnosis without me.

 "Dr. Vance." My voice sounded very far away. "If I wanted to prove that record is fake, how fast could you do it?"

 She was already standing.

 "Thirty minutes," she said. "I'll stamp the ultrasound, certify the gestational age, and file a sworn statement with the state board. And I'll call Dr. Almeida at Greenwich. I trained him." Her eyes were bright and hard. "He won't have signed that. Someone used his credentials."

 I sat up, clutching the gown closed. "Do it."

 It took forty minutes, not thirty. By the time I was dressed, I'd signed three affidavits, and Dr. Vance had a phone pressed to each ear.

 At 11:03, the system chimed.

 "Evander Blackwood is approaching your location."

 I closed my eyes. "How?"

 "He received the forged record at 10:06 a.m. At 10:09, he called Greenwich Women's Clinic. At 10:21, he called Dr. Almeida. At 10:34, Dr. Almeida told him the doctor he'd listed as signatory had been in surgery all morning." The system paused. "At 10:41, Evander Blackwood asked Rafferty Cole's assistant where you were."

 "And she told him?" I asked.

 "She did not. Evander Blackwood followed the car."

 Of course he did.

 I made it to the front hallway before the door opened.

 He stood in the frame, hair disordered, coat half-buttoned, the forged paper crumpled in one fist. I'd never seen him anything less than composed. He looked like a man who had run up stairs.

 His eyes found me. Then they dropped to my stomach.

 "It's true," he said.

 It wasn't a question. It was barely a voice.

 "No," I said. "The record's false. I'm not unstable, and the baby is healthy." My hands were steady. I didn't know how. "But I am pregnant. Nine weeks."

 The paper slipped out of his fist and fluttered to the floor.

 I'd read this scene a hundred ways in my head. In some, he roared. In some, he took over, ordered the house prepared, the doctors replaced, my life reorganized into something he could control.

 He did none of those things. He stood in the doorway with his arms hanging at his sides and said, very quietly:

 "I've been your husband for three years."

 "Yes." I confirmed.

 "And I didn't know."

 "You didn't ask." I said.

 His eyes closed for a second. When they opened, they were shining, and it undid me more than any shout would have.

 "I read a piece of paper," he said, "that said my wife was unstable and my child was dead. And my first thought wasn't to doubt it." His voice cracked on the last word. "My first thought was that I had no right to be angry, because I wasn't there."

 I didn't answer. I couldn't.

 "Regret Index," the system murmured. "Eighteen percent."

 *Is it mine?* I heard it flicker through his mind, a thin, ugly, reflexive thing, the thought a man has when he's been trained to doubt.

 Then, harder, instantly: *No. Don't. Don't you dare. She would never.*

 He shook his head once, as if clearing it.

 "It's mine," he said.

 It wasn't a demand. It sounded like a promise he was making to himself.

 I looked at the man who had let his wife die in four paragraphs, and I thought of a heartbeat on a screen, running footsteps in a quiet room.

 "It's mine," I said. "She's mine."

 "She?"

 "Dr. Vance isn't sure. I just..." I stopped. "I just think so."

 Something moved across his face, too raw to name. He bent, slowly, picked the forged record off the floor, and tore it in half. Then in half again.

 "Whoever filed this," he said, "used my lawyer's office to deliver it. I'm going to find out who."

 "I know who." I said.

 His head lifted.

 "I'll tell you," I said, "when I'm ready. Not today."

 He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded, and I understood he was learning something new, that sometimes the answer to a question is *wait.*

 "I'll wait," he said.

 I watched him go. In the hallway, Dr. Vance appeared at my shoulder, holding a signed folder, her eyebrows raised.

 "Friend of yours?"

 "My husband." I said.

 "Ah." She considered the empty doorway. "He looks like he's been hit by a truck."

 "He has," I said.

 I looked down at the ultrasound in my hand, a flicker of light in a field of grey, and let myself smile for the first time in two days.