Chapter 2 - The Envelope
She drew out an envelope.
It was old. The corners were soft and furred from handling, the flap creased like it had been opened and closed a hundred times.
"My name is Rachel," she said. "Rachel Brennan. And I think something has gone very wrong."
"Wrong how?"
Her eyes went back to Ivy. Her chin was shaking.
"The clinic mixed up the eggs, Eleanor. Yours and mine."
The porch seemed to tilt under me.
"That's not possible."
"The lab report is right here." She pushed the envelope toward me with a trembling hand. "I've been trying to have a baby for six years. They called me yesterday and told me my egg had been used — without my permission — and that the baby had already been born."
I couldn't get a word out.
"I'm not here to take her," Rachel said quickly, the sentence tumbling out. "I promise. I just — I had to see her. I had to see she was real."
But I watched her face while she said it, and her face said something else. She wasn't looking at Ivy the way a stranger looks at a baby. She was looking at her the way I did at 3 a.m., standing over the bassinet just to watch her breathe.
Behind me, my phone started buzzing against the kitchen counter.
I glanced back at it.
May you like
The screen said the clinic's name.
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*What does the clinic already know — and what are they not telling Eleanor? Comment "NEXT."*
