Chapter 2

I didn't call Arthur Weller back. Not yet.

Whatever my father had left me had already waited nineteen years -- it could wait a few days more, until I'd settled one thing that was mine alone to settle.

Because for three years, Daniel had told me that I was the broken one. The doctors say it's you, Claire. Your body. It's nobody's fault. I'd swallowed it. Apologized for it. Let it explain the separate rooms, the coldness, the woman named Angela who was always, always around.

So I made the appointment myself. A full workup. My own name on the form.

One days later I sat in a clinic with my sleeve pushed up while a stranger drew four vials, and was told it would take a few days to get the results. I signed in my own name -- the real one -- and felt something I hadn't felt in that house in years: I was asking a question I actually meant to hear answered.

Then came the hard part. I waited.

I did not scream. I did not tell Daniel. I slid the appointment card into the gray folder, on top of the rest, and let it sit there like a fuse I'd lit on purpose.

That evening I watched my family the way you watch a play you already know the ending of.

Noah -- six, our adopted child -- scraped his knee and ran past me. Straight to Angela on the couch, who caught him, one hand already reaching for the exact drawer where the bandages were.

She knew which drawer. I'd moved those bandages twice this year. Angela knew the new drawer.

"He likes the dinosaur ones," she murmured, and Noah beamed like she'd hung the moon.

He didn't look for me once.

I stood in my own living room and understood it with no heat at all: they had already replaced me. They were only being polite about the timing.

That was when Daniel looked up from his phone, almost bored.

"By the way. Angela's moving in. Next week. It's better for Noah."

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