“Lauren. You know I can’t do that. It’s not a mistake. Blood doesn’t lie.”
Lauren looks wild, completely out of control. She wrenches Juliet’s arm away from the door, throws it open and stalks off. Juliet lets her go. Denial. She is in denial. Understandable. It is too much to process. She shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. She handled it poorly. She doesn’t blame Lauren a bit for being pissed off.
But the truth is the truth, and sooner or later, they are all going to have to face it. Mindy is not a blood relation to them.
Who does she belong to?
12
Lauren’s heart is in her throat. This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening!
She wants to scream; she wants to run. She can’t face them, not like this, when she is torn apart, her heart in a million pieces.
She takes a lap around the hospital—the way she’s gotten the bulk of her exercise lately. She usually works out with Mindy; though she can’t keep up with everything her daughter does, Lauren can hold her own. Without the work, her muscles are atrophying, and she’s lost weight. She can feel her skin loose on her bones.
Damn Juliet, and her prying, meddling nature. Lauren hadn’t even thought to ask how her sister managed to see the records before anyone else. And to go straight to the lab—that means how many people know about this? The doctors, surely, the lab owner, plus Juliet. It is only a matter of time before someone talks, someone remarks on it, and then they will all be trotted out in front of the media. What a story. Olympic hopeful Mindy Wright in a scandal. Switched at birth. Not her mother’s daughter.
Lauren sits down hard on a bench in the first-floor atrium. The snow has stopped, the glass roof is covered. Tiny gleams of sun break through as the melt begins.
She thinks of Mindy’s adorable, scrunched face, the tiny cries and wagging hands—even as an infant, unable to keep herself still, always wanting to go, to move, to explore. How Lauren learned to swaddle her tight to keep her quiet, how she slept with her in the bed, how she put the baby naked on her chest to bond.
And then Jasper, and falling in love with him, especially because of his utter and complete devotion to the babe he called his own. The screaming freak girl child he carried around the apartment to let Lauren get a few hours of rest, the two of them doing lap after lap until Mindy no longer yelled, and instead cooed and gurgled into his hair while he talked to her in a language neither of them understood.
Their baby. They’d been with her almost every day for the past seventeen years. Every bump and bruise, every nightmare. Lauren is assailed by the memories: the look on Mindy’s face when she’d touched snow the first time, three-year-old Mindy on short skis and no poles, coming down the bunny hill at speed with her mouth open in a silent scream of pleasure. They’d taken her up and down that hill fifty times at least, watching in fascination as she became more coordinated, more flexible, how she leaned forward into the hill to allow herself to go faster.
They’d taken her on a green slope that first afternoon, trying to keep her hands in theirs, but she’d darted away and slid down the hill, already mimicking the side-to-side motion she saw from the other skiers. They’d caught up to her at the base of the slope, where she sat on her bottom with her mittens off, her hands in the icy slush, making tiny snowballs. She’d looked at them like, hey, what took you so long? and gave them a baby-toothed smile.
Gen, Mama.
Even as a baby, Mindy had been at one with the mountain. Even when fun became training, training, training, and the enthusiasm the tiny girl had for the mountain was dimmed by the enforced discipline of her mother and coach, and days went by when she narrowed her eyes and didn’t speak to Lauren because she didn’t want to put on her skis, didn’t want to go out in the blizzard, didn’t want to have another meal of chicken and rice and spinach, didn’t want to do the leg press and ballet, and Lauren would remind her what was at stake, that she wasn’t a quitter, even then, she’d find abandon on the slopes.
Of course, she is theirs. Of course, she is Lauren’s.
Blood doesn’t lie.
Her cell phone rings. Jasper. She wipes her eyes, sniffs. Forces some cheer into her tone.
“Hey, babe. I’m just, uh, taking a walk.”
“Mindy’s asking for you. She’s asking questions.”
Panic floods her system. “Questions? About what?”
There is uncharacteristic stress in Jasper’s voice. “What do you think, Lauren? She wants to know what her chances are. She wants to get an idea of what’s ahead. Not what the doctors are saying, but what you think. She wants reassurance she isn’t going to die. She wants her mother. She wants you.”
He manages to sound bitter and terrified at the same time.
“I’m coming. I’m right downstairs. I’ll bring us all some cocoa, and we can talk.”
“Bring four. Juliet is still here.”
Lauren bites back the response she wants to give. “Sure. Be right there.”
Juliet. Always the fly in the ointment. From the moment she arrived on the scene and cut Mindy’s hair, Lauren has wanted to force her away. She loves her sister; she just doesn’t have the bond she knows some people do with their siblings. From birth, Juliet was obstinate and difficult. A finicky eater, never getting along with anyone, always fighting with her sister, her friends, their mother. And as she grew up, always having to be the smartest one in the room, the little budding scientist. A brainy loner, relentless and intractable.
A problem.
Lauren rises, turns toward the cafeteria. She will bring the cocoa, let Juliet drink it, then escort her out herself and make sure Juliet keeps her big mouth shut. She refuses—refuses!—to put Mindy through the ignominy of the idea that she isn’t their child, not for a second. Mindy doesn’t need any more pressure on her than she already has. Her leg is just beginning to heal properly, and the stem cell transplant means all new protocols, new medications, and new stress. Lauren will be damned if she allows the mental stress of this clear mistake to weigh on Mindy, to in any way affect her treatment and its efficacy.
*
Juliet watches as Lauren comes into the room, a forced smile on her face. Lauren sends her a mental do not dare speak glare and hands her the cocoa.
“You have to get on the road early to get to work on time, won’t you?”
“Oh, you’re leaving?” Mindy asks, taking the proffered cup. “I thought we could play Trivial Pursuit. I schooled you last time.”
Juliet rolls her eyes. “You schooled me last time because you were studying for AP history and the categories were all historical. I’m up for a rematch. Bring it, sister.” And she looks at Lauren with that gleam in her eye that says, I dare you to stop me.
Lauren wants to scratch her nails down her sister’s smug face, leave runnels of red, then force her into the snow to freeze to death. Maybe she’ll get lucky, and a wolf will smell the blood and come eat her.
Instead, she hands Jasper his cup, and takes her own, dropping the Styrofoam tray into the trash, and smiles. “Of course we can play, Mindy dear. But your aunt has to go back to Denver and to work. Don’t you, Juliet? We wouldn’t want you to get fired from a job you love.”
Mindy’s frown is unreadable, but Jasper’s head swings toward Lauren’s in an instant. She blinks at him, and he straightens. The advantage of a long marriage, the marital glance. Words unspoken but messages sent.
Jasper edges around to the other side of the bed. “Yeah, Mindy, we don’t want Juliet to get busted by her boss. Besides, I think it’s my turn to play hooky. I haven’t gotten nearly enough time with ma leetle babushka.”
At his horrendously ridiculous Russian accent, Mindy starts to giggle, and he advances on her, opening and closing his fingers like he is going to pinch her cheeks, which sends her squealing under the bedclothes.
Lauren takes advantage to steer Juliet into the hall.