Three.
“Were they alive?”
“All three were born alive.”
My knees weakened.
I pulled out the chair and sat down hard.
Somewhere outside the office, a car passed on the street.
The sound felt impossibly ordinary.
“Then where is my third child?”
“I don’t know exactly where the child is now.”
I stared at him.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Tessa found out about the delivery.
She was terrified Maren would contact you and the timing would make you question everything.
The twins were documented under Maren’s name with you listed as the father.
But there was another record.
A third infant.”
He reached toward the folder, then stopped when he saw my expression.
“Keep talking.”
“Someone altered the paperwork before the complete record reached you.
The third birth certificate disappeared from the packet.
I was paid to make sure anything connecting the third child to your divorce investigation stayed buried.”
“You stole my child?”
“No.
I hid records.
I never touched the baby.”
“Then who did?”
“Tessa arranged the rest.”
The name landed differently now.
Until that afternoon, Tessa had been the woman I planned to marry.
Now every memory involving her felt contaminated.
The first sympathetic call after my separation.
The dinners she brought when I said I could not sleep.
The way she had encouraged me not to answer Maren’s messages.
The way she called my ex-wife manipulative whenever I considered asking questions.
Tessa had not entered the wreckage of my marriage.
She had helped create it.
I pulled the birth certificates toward me.
“Where is the original hospital record?”
“There should be an archived delivery file.
The copies I saw listed three infants before the record was changed.”
“And Maren knows?”
He looked miserable.
“She knows she delivered three babies.”
That answer hit harder than anything else.
I pictured Maren on the roadside carrying two children, collecting crushed cans, refusing even to pick up the money Tessa threw at her.
That look in her eyes was not only pity.
It was knowledge.
She knew what kind of woman I was about to marry.
And she knew what that woman had already taken.
I gathered every page from the folder.
“These are coming with me.”
The investigator stood quickly.
“Rowan, some of that material—”
“Call the police if you think I’m stealing it.”
He froze.
“Actually,” I said, “please do.”
