Chapter 5: What Diane Knew
Diane's face was a ruin.
Mascara in lines down both cheeks, her lip trembling, her eyes fixed on her mother with an expression caught somewhere between horror and a grief that looked much older than this afternoon.
"She told me it was a surprise," Diane said.
"She called me two weeks ago and said she had worked something out.
She said the hospital had a program.
For families." She laughed once, a broken sound.
"I actually believed her.
I thought there was a program."
"Diane —" my mother-in-law started.
"Don't." Diane stood up.
"Don't say my name like that.
Don't use that voice."
"You wanted a baby.
I was trying to —"
"You were going to steal someone's child." Diane pointed at Rachel.
"Her child.
You were going to hand me a stranger's baby and tell me it was a gift."
"She has two.
You have none.
It isn't —"
"Stop." My husband stepped between them.
"Stop talking.
Every word you say right now is making this worse for you."
My mother-in-law looked at him.
Something shifted in her face — the calculation replaced, briefly, by something that might have been genuine feeling.
"I did this for your sister."
"You did this for yourself," he said.
"You've always done everything for yourself and called it family."
She flinched.
It was small, but I saw it.
The charge nurse had stepped out.
Through the window in the door I could see her in the hallway, still on the phone.
The word she used, twice, was security.
The second time, I was almost certain I heard the word police.
My mother-in-law heard it too.
Her eyes went to the door.
"I need to use the restroom," she said.
"No," my husband said.
"Daniel, I am not under arrest.
I can —"
"You're not going anywhere until someone official tells me you can." He pulled a chair away from the wall and set it in the center of the room, away from the door, away from the window.
"Sit in this one."
She looked at the chair.
She looked at her son.
She sat.
Rachel had not taken her eyes off her daughter since she sat down.
But she spoke without looking up.
"She planned this before we delivered," Rachel said.
"She knew which room I was in.
She knew the timing." A pause.
"How did she know?"
The question landed in the room and nobody answered it.
I thought about it.
Visiting hours.
The maternity ward layout.
The way my mother-in-law had arrived early, before my husband came back from the cafeteria.
The way she'd known exactly which bassinet to go to.
"She was here before," I said.
"She was on this floor before we thought she was."
My husband looked at me.
"She went to the nurses' station when she arrived," I said.
"I thought she was asking for directions to my room.
But she was here for twenty minutes before she came in."
Ethan nodded slowly.
"She talked to a lady in the pink uniform.
For a long time.
By the desk."
A volunteer.
Or an aide.
Someone who might have mentioned room numbers, delivery times, new arrivals.
My mother-in-law said nothing.
But her hands, folded in her lap, pressed together until the knuckles went pale.
The door opened.
The charge nurse came back in.
Behind her were two people in security uniforms, and behind them, a woman in plain clothes with a lanyard that read PATIENT ADVOCATE.
"Mrs.
—" The patient advocate looked at her clipboard, then at my mother-in-law.
"Are you the family member involved in the band incident?"
My mother-in-law lifted her chin.
"I'm the grandmother.
I was visiting my daughter-in-law."
"She switched the bands," Ethan said.
"I already told everyone.
I saw her."
The patient advocate looked at the six-year-old.
Then she wrote something down.
May you like
My mother-in-law's chin stayed up.
But her hands, still pressed together in her lap, had started to shake.
