Chapter 5: What My Brother Found by Morning
His name was Ryan, and he answered on the second ring.
I didn't give him the full story on the phone — Grace was still upstairs, and the walls in our house were not thick.
I told him enough.
I told him about the band, the card, the photograph, the letter, the name Daniel.
I told him about the ultrasound photos on the refrigerator.
He was quiet for a moment after I finished.
"Don't let her remove anything from the house tonight," he said.
"Documents, photos, her phone, her laptop.
Nothing leaves."
"She's sitting at the kitchen table."
"Keep her there.
I'll be at yours by eight tomorrow morning."
When I came back to the kitchen, Melissa was still at the table.
She had poured herself a glass of water and was holding it with both hands.
"Was that Ryan?" she said.
"Yes."
She nodded slowly, like she had expected it.
"He never liked me."
"He doesn't know you well enough to dislike you."
"He's always thought I wasn't right for you."
"Melissa." I sat down.
"I don't want to talk about Ryan.
I want to talk about Daniel."
She set the glass down.
"What do you want to know?"
"Start with his last name."
A pause.
"Hartwell.
Daniel Hartwell."
"And you married him when?"
"I was twenty-four.
We were together for two years before that."
"Where is he now?"
"I don't know exactly."
"But you spoke to him this morning."
She looked at the table.
"He called me."
"About what?"
"About us.
About — about the situation."
"He knows about the fake pregnancy?"
Her silence answered before she did.
"He knows," I said.
"He found out.
I didn't tell him."
"How did he find out?"
"I don't know how he found out.
He just — he called me three weeks ago and he already knew.
He said he was worried about me."
I thought about the unsigned letter.
The photograph with the timestamp.
The envelope tucked rather than sealed.
"Did Daniel send that letter?" I said.
She looked up.
And in her eyes I saw something I hadn't seen all evening.
Not guilt.
Not calculation.
Something that looked almost like fear.
"I don't know," she said.
"You don't know, or you don't want to say?"
"I genuinely don't know."
I stood up and walked to the refrigerator.
The ultrasound photos were held up by two small magnets — a yellow sun and a blue star that Grace had picked out at a market two summers ago.
I pulled the photos down and looked at them properly for the first time.
No clinic name.
No date.
No patient information in the header.
I had never noticed because I had never looked.
I had trusted her and so I had not looked.
I set them on the counter face-down.
"I'm going to check on Grace," I said.
"You'll sleep in the guest room tonight."
"That's not necessary."
"It is."
She stood up.
"I can explain everything, if you give me the chance.
Everything that happened, why I made the choices I made — there are things you don't know about what I was going through."
"There are things I don't know about a lot of things, apparently."
"That's not fair."
"Go to the guest room, Melissa."
She picked up her water glass.
Walked to the doorway.
Stopped.
"The nursery," she said, without turning around.
"I did want a baby.
That part was real."
I didn't answer.
She went upstairs.
I stood in the kitchen for a long time after that, looking at the back of the refrigerator door where the ultrasound photos used to be.
Then I went up to Grace's room, sat on the edge of her bed, and listened to her breathe until I was sure she was asleep.
Ryan arrived at seven fifty-three the next morning, before Melissa came downstairs.
He had a notepad, a laptop, and the name of a private records researcher he'd already contacted the night before.
He sat down at the kitchen table, opened his laptop, and turned it to face me.
"Daniel Hartwell," he said.
"Married Melissa Anne Croft in Clark County, Nevada.
October fourteenth, fourteen years ago.
No record of dissolution.
No divorce filing in Nevada, California, or any adjacent state."
I looked at the screen.
"Which means," Ryan said carefully, "your marriage may not be legally valid."
Footsteps on the stairs.
We both looked up.
Melissa stopped in the kitchen doorway, still in her robe, and saw Ryan's laptop screen from across the room.
May you like
Her face went completely still.
"Good morning," Ryan said.
