Chapter 1 - TIFFANY KNEW MY DAUGHTER
Tiffany dropped her champagne glass.
It hit the stone patio and shattered.
Everyone nearby turned.
But Tiffany was not looking at the broken glass.
She was staring at Lily.
More specifically, at Lily’s face.
“Mommy, can we get cake now?” Lily asked.
“In a minute.”
I placed one hand gently on her shoulder.
Mike finally found his voice.
“Jessica.”
I looked at him.
“Who is she?”
The question should have annoyed me.
Instead, Tiffany’s expression frightened me more.
“My daughter.”
Mike gave a short laugh.
Not amused.
Confused.
“You adopted?”
I did not answer immediately.
That was none of his business.
Rachel appeared from across the garden, still wearing her wedding dress.
“There you are, Lily.”
She bent and kissed my daughter’s head.
Mike stared.
“Rachel knows?”
Rachel looked at him.
“Of course I know.”
Apparently that injured his ego too.
Five years earlier, he left me and somehow expected everyone we once shared to remain emotionally frozen in the moment of his departure.
Tiffany took a step backward.
I noticed.
“So,” I said quietly, “why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“I don’t.”
“You dropped your glass.”
“It slipped.”
Her voice was wrong.
Mike turned toward her.
“Tiff?”
“I need some air.”
“We’re outside.”
She ignored him.
Then Lily looked at Tiffany.
Children notice things adults pretend not to.
“Have I met you?”
Tiffany went white.
“No.”
Too fast.
Lily frowned.
“You look like the lady from Mommy’s envelope.”
Every part of me stopped.
“What envelope?”
Lily immediately realized she had said something she probably should not have.
“The brown one.”
My pulse accelerated.
At home, I kept one brown envelope in the locked drawer of my bedroom desk.
Inside were documents from Lily’s adoption.
At least, that was what I had always believed.
“Tiffany,” I said.
She backed away.
Mike stared between us.
“What the hell is going on?”
I took my phone from my purse.
Opened the scanned records I kept encrypted.
Scrolled.
Then found the page Lily must have seen one morning when I was organizing paperwork.
A fertility-clinic transfer form.
Witness signature:
TIFFANY LANGLEY.
I looked up.
Her current last name was Price.
But five years earlier, before she met Mike publicly, she had been Tiffany Langley.
And she had worked at the fertility clinic where Mike and I spent two years trying to have a child.
Mike saw her name on the screen.
His face changed.
“You worked there?”
Tiffany closed her eyes.
He truly did not know.
Then I understood something worse.
Whatever Tiffany knew about Lily had begun before she ever became Mike’s partner.
I asked one question.
“What did you do at Hawthorne Fertility?”
Tiffany whispered:
“I was the embryology records coordinator.”
May you like
And suddenly Mike was no longer staring at my daughter.
He was staring at the woman beside him as though he had never met her.
