Chapter 5 - The Coffee Shop on Aspen Street
I should have ignored it. Vivian had told me flat out not to talk to Rachel alone. Every sensible bone in my body agreed with her.
I texted back anyway: *Tomorrow. 10 a.m. The coffee shop on Aspen Street. You get one hour.*
She was already there when I walked in — a corner table, two coffees she'd bought before I arrived. She started to stand when she saw me, then seemed to lose her nerve and sat back down.
I took the chair across from her. For a moment neither of us said anything.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"I have a lawyer's appointment at noon. So say what you came to say."
She wrapped her hands around her cup. Her nails were bitten down to nothing. The shadows under her eyes were darker than yesterday — or maybe I just hadn't been looking closely enough on my own porch.
"I didn't sleep," she said.
"Neither did I."
"I keep replaying what I said in your kitchen. That she's mine." She shook her head hard. "It came out wrong."
"Then say it right."
"I meant that biologically she came from me. That's all. I am not trying to pull her out of your arms."
"Then what exactly are you trying to do, Rachel?"
She turned and looked out the window. A young woman went by on the sidewalk pushing a stroller. We both watched it pass without meaning to.
"I want to know her," Rachel said. "That's it. I don't know how to say it any plainer. Six years I tried to have a child. Six years of failing. And then the clinic calls and says my egg's been used and there's already a baby, she's already born, and I —" Her voice cracked and she pressed her fingers to her lips. "I just needed to stand in front of her and see that she was real."
I watched her without speaking.
"I'm forty-two," she said. "I started trying six years ago, right after my whole life fell apart at once. My husband left after the third failed round. Told me he couldn't keep grieving on a schedule." She let out a sound that wasn't a laugh. "So I kept going by myself. And then this."
I still said nothing.
"I know you're her mother," Rachel said. "I could see it the second you opened that door. The way you were holding her. The way you wouldn't loosen your grip on her for one second while I stood in your hallway." She met my eyes. "I'm not your enemy, Eleanor."
"You're a stranger who showed up at my home three days after I carried my newborn through the front door."
"I know."
"You scared me half to death."
"I know. I'm sorry."
The apology sat on the table between us, and neither of us knew what to do with it.
"What do you want from me?" I said. "Specifically. Not feelings. What are you actually asking for?"
She was quiet a moment. "I want an independent DNA test. Not the clinic's. One we both trust."
"And if it says exactly what they already told us?"
She didn't jump to answer. "Then I want us to talk about what happens next. Like two grown women. Without a courtroom, if there's any way to avoid it."
I picked up my coffee. It had gone lukewarm.
"I'll talk to my attorney first," I said. "I'm not agreeing to anything without legal advice."
"That's fair."
"And Rachel." I set the cup down hard enough that it clicked against the saucer. "If you ever come to my house unannounced again — for any reason at all — I will call the police, and I will tell them I felt threatened. I need you to believe that."
She held my eyes. "I believe you," she said quietly. "It won't happen again."
I left first. I didn't look back at her.
But crossing the parking lot to my car, I felt something shift under me — not toward trusting her, nowhere close to that. Just the unwelcome realization that Rachel wasn't the villain I badly needed her to be.
And somehow that made all of it heavier.
May you like
My phone rang before I got my key into the ignition.
"Eleanor, it's Loretta Ford. I've been going through the clinic's consent paperwork from your original egg-freezing cycle." A pause. "There's something in this file you need to see with your own eyes."
