“What does my daughter have to do with this?”
Instead of answering, he placed a sealed envelope on the table.
My daughter’s name was written across the front.
“Open it,” he said.
Before I could touch it, my phone lit up.
It was a message from my husband.
GET AWAY FROM THAT MAN.
HE ISN’T MY BROTHER.
I stared at the stranger.
He was no longer smiling.
Then he leaned closer and whispered, “Ask your husband why he’s been paying me every month since your daughter was born.”“My husband’s name is Richard,” I said.
“What’s yours?”
“Daniel.”
“And how did Richard know where I was sitting?”
Daniel glanced toward the dining-room entrance.
“I told him I was coming.”
I snatched the envelope from the table and tore it open.
Inside was a fertility clinic form dated twenty-five years earlier, shortly before I became pregnant with our daughter, Lily.
