Chapter 5: What Lauren Already Knew
She appeared at the bottom of the stairs in her socks, hair loose, one hand on the railing.
She looked at Mark.
Then at me.
Then at the note on the table between us.
"How long have you two been down here?" she asked.
"Not long," Mark said.
Lauren walked to the table and picked up the note.
Read it.
Set it back down.
"I've seen that name before," she said.
Mark went very still.
"There was a voicemail," Lauren said.
"Three months ago.
I heard the first few seconds before it cut off.
A woman's voice.
She said her name and then the call dropped." She looked at Mark.
"I asked you about it.
You said it was a wrong number."
"Lauren—"
"I believed you." She pulled out a chair and sat down.
Not collapsing.
Choosing to sit.
"I believed you because I was eleven weeks pregnant and I had already lost two babies and I could not afford to fall apart.
So I chose to believe you."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Tell me now," she said.
"All of it.
Right now."
Mark looked at me.
"Don't look at her," Lauren said.
"Look at me."
He did.
And he told her.
Not everything at once.
It came out in pieces, the way these things always do — a sentence, then a silence, then another sentence dragged out by Lauren's steady, quiet questions.
She didn't raise her voice.
She didn't cry.
She sat with both hands on the table and asked questions and waited for the answers and when the answers were wrong she asked again.
It took twenty minutes.
When he finished, Lauren was quiet for a long time.
"Fourteen weeks," she finally said.
"Yes."
"So when we did the second round of treatment.
When I was in that clinic and you were sitting in the waiting room holding my hand." She stopped.
"You already knew."
He didn't answer.
"You knew and you held my hand."
"Lauren, I—"
"I want you to leave." Her voice was completely level.
"Tonight.
Take what you need for a few days and go."
"We need to talk about this—"
"We just did." She stood up.
"I need you to go."
Mark looked at me again.
I said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
He pushed back his chair.
The legs scraped against the tile.
He went upstairs and I listened to the sounds of drawers opening and closing, a zipper, footsteps.
Lauren sat back down.
I sat across from her.
We didn't speak.
I reached across the table and put my hand over hers.
She turned her hand over and held on.
Mark came back through the kitchen with a bag over his shoulder.
He stopped in the doorway.
"Lauren."
She didn't turn around.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She said nothing.
He left through the back door.
We heard the gate latch click shut.
Lauren exhaled slowly.
"How much do you know?" she asked me.
"Everything he just told you.
And that Diane has been calling your phone.
He's been deleting the voicemails."
She nodded.
Like this confirmed something she had already half-assembled in her mind.
"I need to know if the baby is his," she said.
"He doesn't know either.
She won't agree to a test."
Lauren was quiet for a moment.
"Then I need to talk to Diane."
I looked at her.
"Lauren—"
"Mom." She met my eyes.
"I am twenty-two weeks pregnant.
I have a daughter coming.
I am not going to spend the next four months wondering.
May you like
I need to know what I'm dealing with." She squeezed my hand once and let go.
"Help me find her."
