Chapter 5: What Renata Carried
I didn't sleep.
I lay in the dark and listened to my daughters breathe and turned the message over and over in my mind like a stone with something written on the underside that I couldn't quite read.
*R.*
Renata.
It had to be Renata.
She had Daniel's number — she could have gotten mine from him at any point over the years.
I had never thought to wonder whether she had it.
But why a number I didn't recognize?
Why not her own phone?
At 6 a.m., when the morning nurse came in to check the babies and Daniel had finally fallen asleep in the chair beside Eli, I typed back one word.
*Where.*
The reply came in under a minute.
*Hospital café.
8 a.m.
Come alone.*
I looked at Daniel.
His head was tipped back, mouth slightly open, exhausted in the way that only came from a day that had broken something in you.
I looked at my daughters.
Then I pressed the call button for the nurse.
At ten minutes to eight, I was in a wheelchair being pushed down the corridor by a patient-care aide who had agreed, without much persuasion, to take me to the café for coffee.
I had my phone in my lap and my hospital bracelet on my wrist and a feeling in my chest like standing at the edge of something very high.
Renata was already there.
She was sitting at a corner table with both hands wrapped around a cup she wasn't drinking from.
She looked like she hadn't slept either.
When she saw me, she stood halfway up, then seemed to think better of it and sat back down.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"Tell the aide I'll be twenty minutes," I said.
The aide nodded and stepped back toward the entrance.
I positioned the wheelchair across from Renata and waited.
She looked at her cup.
"I owe you an apology."
"You owe me an explanation first."
She nodded.
"Six weeks ago, my mother came to me with a folder." She said it plainly, like she had rehearsed it.
"She said she had hired someone.
A private investigator.
She said she had been building a file on you for almost two years."
The café noise continued around us.
Cups, cutlery, low voices.
Normal morning sounds.
"Two years," I said.
"She was convinced — she has been convinced for a long time — that Daniel married beneath himself.
That you had a past you were hiding.
She wanted proof." Renata finally looked up.
"She found it."
"What exactly did she find?"
"There was a pregnancy.
Before Daniel.
Before you moved here." She said it quietly, without cruelty.
"The investigator found clinic records.
A name you had given.
A decision you made."
Caleb.
"Those records are sealed," I said.
My voice was steady.
I was proud of that.
"Private investigators find ways," Renata said.
"I'm not defending it.
I'm telling you what happened."
"And she told you all of this six weeks ago."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
Renata's jaw tightened.
"She told me in confidence.
She said she was going to use it to talk to Daniel.
To make him understand who he had really married.
I told her she was wrong.
I told her it wasn't her business.
We argued." She paused.
"I thought I had talked her out of it."
"You thought wrong."
"Yes." Her voice dropped.
"I know."
I looked at her.
At the shadows under her eyes and the way her hands had gone tight around the cup again.
"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked.
"Because last night she didn't just try to take your baby." Renata set the cup down.
"She told me this morning — she called me at five a.m.
— that she is going to tell Daniel everything.
The pregnancy.
The name.
All of it.
Before you have the chance to."
The café felt very small suddenly.
"She wants to control the story," I said.
"She wants Daniel to hear it from her.
In her version.
With her framing." Renata met my eyes.
"I think you need to tell him first.
Today.
Before she gets to him."
I sat with that for a moment.
"And the folder?" I asked.
"The investigator's file.
Does she still have it?"
Renata reached into her bag and placed a thick envelope on the table between us.
"I took it," she said.
"Last night, after she called me.
I drove to her house while she was still at the hospital and I took it." She pushed it toward me.
"It belongs to you."
I looked at the envelope.
My name was written on the front in handwriting I didn't recognize.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why are you doing this?"
Renata was quiet for a moment.
Then she said something I hadn't expected.
May you like
"Because I have a secret too.
And if my mother ever found it, I would want someone to do exactly this."
