“And Eli?”
“Also a person. A very loud one at three in the morning.”
She smiled faintly.
“What about June?”
“We will find out who she is.”
“What if she doesn’t want to be found?”
“Then we will respect that too.”
Lily rested her chin on her knees.
“Do you think she’s my sister?”
“I think there is a good chance.”
“That’s a lot of children for someone who thought he had none.”
I laughed softly.
“Yes, it is.”
“Are you scared?”
“Very.”
She seemed surprised by my honesty.
“What do you do when you’re scared?”
“I usually work too much and pretend I’m not.”
“That doesn’t sound useful.”
“It hasn’t been.”
She thought for a moment, then slipped her hand into mine.
“You could sit here instead.”
So I did.
We sat beneath the paper stars until Eli settled into deeper sleep.
Just before Lily stood, she said, “Good night, Nathan.”
Then, after taking two steps toward the door, she stopped.
“Maybe someday I’ll call you something else.”
I looked at her.
“There’s no hurry.”
“I know.”
She went upstairs.
It was enough.
The next morning, Rebecca called again.
This time, she gave us a meeting place.
At noon, we drove to a public botanical garden outside Stamford. Meredith came with us, as did Daniel. Two detectives remained nearby, out of sight but close enough to respond if needed.
The winter greenhouse was nearly empty.
Sunlight filtered through the glass ceiling, warming rows of citrus trees and white orchids. Water trickled through a stone fountain at the center of the room.
I saw Rebecca before she saw me.
Her hair, once dark brown, was threaded with silver. She wore a plain navy coat and held herself with the stillness of someone who had spent years looking over her shoulder.
For an instant, she was thirty-three again, standing in my unfinished kitchen and arguing that old wooden floors should be repaired rather than replaced.
Then she turned.
All the lost years returned to her face.
“Nathan.”
I stopped several feet away.
There were too many emotions between us for an embrace.
Anger.
Relief.
Grief.
And beneath all of them, something familiar enough to hurt.
“You’re alive,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That sentence is not large enough.”
“I know.”
She looked toward Meredith and Daniel.
“Did you find the locker?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know why Halcyon tracked the children.”
“We know part of it.”
Rebecca nodded.
“That is all I had time to leave there.”
“Where is the girl?”
Her composure wavered.
“Safe.”
“What is her name?”
Rebecca looked past me.
A figure had appeared at the far end of the greenhouse.
A girl stood beneath an arch of green vines, wearing a purple coat. She was tall for her age, with dark hair falling to her shoulders.
Her eyes were gray-blue.
Lily, who had been waiting with Mrs. Harris near the entrance, saw her at the same moment.
The yellow marble slipped from Lily’s hand and rolled across the stone floor.
The girl walked forward and picked it up.
For several seconds, she and Lily stared at each other.
Then the girl held out the marble.
“You kept the other one,” she said.
Lily’s lips parted.
“June?”
The girl smiled sadly.
“That’s what you called me.”
Rebecca came to stand beside her.
“Nathan, this is Clara.”
I could barely breathe.
“Is she my daughter?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca’s answer echoed beneath the greenhouse roof.
“But she wasn’t created from your stored sample,” she continued. “Clara was conceived naturally, before I left you.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“You were pregnant?”
“I did not know until after I moved away. I wrote to you. Stephen told me you had received the letter and wanted no involvement. He showed me documents with your signature.”
“Forged documents.”
“I learned that too late.”
Clara looked at me, uncertain but steady.
I wanted to cross the distance between us, but I remembered what I had told Lily.
Being a biological father did not entitle me to immediate closeness.
So I stayed where I was.
“Hello, Clara,” I said.
“Hello.”
Her voice trembled on the second syllable.
Lily moved beside her.
“Are you really my sister?”
Clara looked at Rebecca, then back at Lily.
“Yes.”
“Why do I remember you?”
“Because we met when you were four. Our mothers wanted us to know each other.”
“Why didn’t we?”
Rebecca closed her eyes briefly.
“Because Halcyon found out.”
Daniel lifted the C-1 file.
“You said Clara was the natural control. Why was she so important to them?”
Rebecca’s face changed.
Fear appeared there, but so did determination.
She placed one hand on Clara’s shoulder.
“Because the cellular marker was never the real discovery.”
“What was?” I asked.
Rebecca reached into her coat and removed a sealed laboratory report.
“The researchers found something else in all three children. Something that should not have been possible unless the same alteration was present before any of them were conceived.”
She handed the report to Daniel.
He read the first page.
Then he looked at me.
“Nathan,” he said slowly, “this alteration isn’t only in the children.”
My pulse quickened.
Rebecca stepped closer.
“Halcyon did not begin studying your family after Lily was born,” she said. “They began studying it when you were seven years old.”
I stared at her.
“I was never a patient at Halcyon as a child.”
“No,” Rebecca replied. “But your mother was.”
She opened the report to the final page.
At the bottom was the name of the first participant in the clinic’s original research program.
Eleanor Carter.
My mother.
Rebecca’s eyes held mine.
“They weren’t searching for a rare trait that started with you, Nathan. They were searching for proof that an experiment performed on your mother had passed into the next generation.”
