Chapter 2 - The Knock
Bringing her home frightened me more than I'd expected. I'd set everything up with care — the crib, the changing table, bottles lined up like little soldiers, diapers, stacks of blankets — and none of it stopped me from leaning over her every few minutes to check that her chest was still going up and down.
The first night, I barely closed my eyes.
The second wasn't much better.
I was exhausted and swamped and scared out of my mind and happier than I had words for.
Then, three days after Nora came home, someone knocked on my front door.
I was standing in the living room with her tucked against my shoulder when the knock came a second time.
I wasn't expecting a soul.
I walked to the door slowly and looked through the peephole.
There was a woman on the step.
She looked to be about forty, and her eyes were puffy and raw from crying. Something in the way she was standing there made the back of my neck prickle.
Nora shifted against me.
I opened the door halfway, no farther.
The woman looked straight at me.
"Are you Eleanor?"
"Yes."
Her eyes dropped to the baby right away.
"Was she born three days ago?"
Everything in me went tight.
"Who are you?"
She swallowed.
"The clinic called me yesterday. After your daughter was born."
I pulled Nora in closer without deciding to.
"Why would the clinic call you?"
Instead of answering, she reached into her coat.
I shifted Nora higher against my chest, fast.
She caught it.
"I'm not here to hurt you."
Then she drew out a folded envelope.
"My name is Marta. I'm forty-two."
I didn't move.
She held the envelope out toward me.
"This is from the clinic."
"What does it say?"
Her lips shook.
"I think you need to read it yourself."
Every instinct I had was screaming at me to shut the door, throw the bolt, and put my daughter first.
Then I looked at Marta's hands.
They were shaking.
Whatever this was, she was scared of it too.
"Come inside."
She stepped in carefully, her eyes glued to Nora.
"Please don't look at her like that."
"I'm sorry." She turned her head away.
I sat down on the couch with Nora against me. Marta stayed on her feet.
"Sit."
She lowered herself into the armchair across from me.
I opened the envelope.
The first page was a wall of medical and legal language. I read the top paragraph twice before I hit a sentence that made the walls of my living room seem to slide away.
The fertility center had found a possible error involving stored reproductive material.
My hands went cold.
"What error?"
Marta wiped under her eyes. "Keep reading."
Years back, she'd frozen her eggs at the same clinic. Her samples had been kept in the same facility as mine.
After Nora was born, something had triggered an internal review, and during it, staff found that the ID numbers on two storage records didn't line up with the archived lab data.
One record was mine.
The other was Marta's.
I looked up.
"No."
She said nothing.
"No. They used my egg."
"That's what they told both of us."
"I was told it was mine."
"So was I."
Nora made a tiny noise against my chest, and my eyes went straight down to her calm little face.
My heart was slamming.
"What exactly are you telling me?"
Marta took a slow breath.
"The clinic thinks the egg they used to make Nora might have been mine."
For a few seconds the sentence just wouldn't go in.
Every word made sense on its own.
Strung together, they were impossible.
"Might have been?"
"They don't know yet."
"Then why are you standing in my house?"
Her face pulled tight. "Because they called me yesterday."
"And you decided to just come here?"
"I shouldn't have."
"You're right."
"I know." Her eyes filled again. "But once they told me a baby had been born, I couldn't think straight."
I stood up fast.
Nora stirred.
Marta got to her feet too.
"Sit down."
She sat immediately.
I went to the window, because all of a sudden my legs didn't feel like they'd hold me.
May you like
For nine months I had believed Nora started as the last scrap of my younger self — that the woman I was at thirty-three had reached across forty-two years to hand me the child she'd kept the door open for.
Now a stranger in my living room was telling me maybe that never happened.
