Her face was turned partly away from the camera, but something about her seemed familiar.
Not her features.
The way she held herself.
The slight tilt of her head.
I turned the picture over.
Claire had written three names on the back.
Claire.
Elena.
Rebecca.
Below them, she had added one sentence.
Daniel must never know Rebecca’s real name until she chooses to tell him herself.
I looked again at the woman in the photograph.
Rebecca.
The name meant nothing to me.
Then Sophia climbed onto the chair beside me and pointed at the picture.
“That’s the sleepy lady,” she said, touching Claire.
Her finger moved to Elena.
“That’s Aunt Ellie.”
Finally, she touched the pregnant woman.
“And that’s the lady who came to see Mommy.”
Maria froze.
“What lady?”
Sophia looked up at her.
“The lady from yesterday.”
Every adult in the room went still.
Maria crouched in front of her.
“Sophia, what are you talking about?”
“The lady with the red coat.”
“Where did you see her?”
“Outside.”
“Outside where?”
“In the garden. She knew my song.”
Maria’s eyes widened.
“You never told me this.”
“You were talking on the phone.”
“What did she say to you?”
Sophia hugged the rabbit to her chest.
“She said Daddy was coming home.”
My pulse thundered.
“Did she tell you to call me Daddy?”
Sophia nodded.
“She said you might forget at first.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The pregnant woman’s face remained partly hidden.
Keller stepped close enough to examine it.
“I never saw the surrogate in person,” he said. “Elena handled all contact after the transfer.”
Maria rose.
“Security would have seen anyone entering the property.”
I pressed the intercom.
“Pull all exterior footage from yesterday. Garden, gates, service entrance, everything.”
A pause followed.
Then the head of security responded.
“Sir, yesterday’s recordings are missing.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“Missing how?”
“The system shows a scheduled maintenance reset, but none was authorized.”
Sophia tugged on my sleeve.
“The lady left something.”
I turned.
“What did she leave?”
“A present.”
“Where?”
Sophia slipped her hand into the pocket of her pajama top and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
Maria looked stunned.
I took it carefully.
It was a receipt from a storage facility in Pasadena.
A unit number had been circled.
On the back, written in blue ink, were six words.
Ask Daniel about the first embryo.
I read them again.
The first embryo.
The one Claire had carried.
The one we had been told was lost when her pregnancy ended.
Keller took a step backward.
“No,” he whispered.
I looked at him.
“What?”
He shook his head, but his expression had already revealed too much.
“What do you know?”
Keller stared at the note as though it had reached out of the past to accuse him.
“The pathology report,” he said.
“What pathology report?”
“After Claire’s procedure, the clinic was supposed to receive confirmation that the pregnancy tissue had been tested.”
My throat tightened.
