Chapter 3: What the Phone Said
Lauren's eyes moved from the screen to Mark's face.
Just once.
Fast.
Then she looked away — toward the fence, toward nothing — and I watched her press her lips together the way she used to when she was twelve years old and trying not to cry in public.
I crossed the yard in eight steps.
"Lauren."
"I'm fine, Mom."
"You're not."
She turned her back to the guests and lowered her voice.
"He says it's nothing.
Someone playing a prank."
"What did the message say?"
She hesitated.
Her thumb moved across the screen and she held the phone out to me.
It was a photo.
Mark.
The same woman from the bakery footage.
A restaurant I didn't recognize.
His hand was on hers across the table.
They were both laughing.
The timestamp in the corner read eleven weeks ago.
"Lauren—"
"Don't." Her voice was barely there.
"Not today.
Please."
I looked at her.
Really looked.
The way her hand had moved to her stomach without her realizing it.
The way her shoulders had dropped.
She already knew something.
Maybe not everything.
But something.
I glanced back at Mark.
He was refilling someone's glass, smiling, completely at ease.
I walked over to the baker, who was still standing near the van.
"I need to know everything," I said.
"The woman who left the note.
Did she give you a name?"
"No.
But she paid cash.
And she left before the party started." She paused.
"She did say one thing when she was walking away."
"What?"
"She said, 'Tell the mother.
She'll know what to do with it.'"
I stood there for a moment.
She had come to the bakery.
She had paid $500 to have the result changed — no, wait.
Mark had paid to change the result.
The woman had come back separately.
She had left the note.
They weren't together in this.
They were working against each other.
I pulled out my phone and called my son-in-law's number.
It rang twice.
Mark looked down at his pocket.
Then across the yard at me.
He answered.
"Hey, Carol.
Everything okay?"
"Come around the side of the house," I said.
"Just you."
A pause.
"Sure.
Two minutes."
I walked to the narrow path between the fence and the garage.
The party noise dropped behind me.
I could hear the neighbor's sprinkler and nothing else.
Mark appeared at the corner.
His smile was still in place but his eyes were doing something different.
"What's going on?"
I held up the note.
He looked at it.
His jaw moved once, like he was chewing something that wasn't there.
"Where did you get that?"
"Under the cake board.
The woman who left it — she was at your bakery this morning.
Standing right next to you."
"That's—" He stopped.
Started again.
"That's not what it looks like."
"Then tell me what it looks like, Mark."
He ran a hand through his hair.
Looked back toward the party.
Lauren's laugh floated over the fence, bright and unaware.
"It's complicated."
"My daughter is pregnant.
She's been through two miscarriages.
She is standing in that yard right now thinking today is the best day of her life." I kept my voice low and even.
"You will tell me who Diane is.
Right now.
Or I walk back in there and I tell Lauren everything I know."
The smile was completely gone.
"Diane is nobody."
"She cried when she left the bakery."
Something moved across his face.
Not guilt exactly.
Something older than guilt.
"She's someone I used to know," he said.
"It's over.
It's been over."
"The photo on Lauren's phone is eleven weeks old."
His eyes went sharp.
"She showed you that?"
"Who changed the gender result, Mark?
You or her?"
May you like
He didn't answer.
And that was answer enough.
