Marcus
Chapter 04 - Marcus
Daniel had one brother.
Marcus Whitmore had been dead for six years.
Claire remembered him as a softer version of Daniel, taller, quieter, with the same brown eyes but none of Daniel's need to be admired. Marcus was the one who washed dishes after holiday dinners while Daniel and Marianne discussed golf memberships in the living room. Marcus was the one who brought Claire ginger tea during her first trimester, when the smell of turkey made her cry behind the pantry door.
Marcus had sent Noah a tiny baseball glove before Noah was born.
Claire still had it in a cedar box.
Now Marianne was saying Marcus had given more than a glove.
Daniel stood so abruptly the chair scraped across the floor.
"You used my brother?"
Marianne flinched. "Lower your voice."
"You used my brother?" he repeated, louder, and for once Claire did not mind the sound.
Dr. Marsh glanced toward Noah's room, but the nurse inside gave a small nod. Noah slept on.
Marianne's dignity frayed. "Marcus had banked samples before his surgery. He knew there might be complications. He said if anything ever happened, the family should still have a future."
"He said that to you?" Daniel asked.
Marianne looked away.
Claire knew that look now. It meant no.
"Did Marcus consent?" Claire asked.
Marianne's silence answered.
Daniel backed away from his mother as though she had become contagious.
"He was my brother," he said.
"And Noah is your son," Marianne snapped, panic making her cruel. "You loved him yesterday. Don't you dare stand here and pretend blood is the only thing that makes a father."
Claire stared at her.
"That is a beautiful truth," she said. "You do not get to use it as a cover for a crime."
Marianne's mouth shut.
Daniel looked at Claire then, desperate for something from her. Forgiveness. Direction. Permission to be broken.
She had none to spare.
The hospital began waking around them. Breakfast trays rattled in the distance. A woman down the hall laughed softly at something a nurse said, that fragile laugh people used when fear finally gave them one inch of room.
Claire envied her.
"Why didn't the clinic catch it?" Claire asked Dr. Marsh.
"I can't answer that without the full records," the doctor said. "But if what Mrs. Whitmore is saying is true, those records may have been falsified."
Marianne lifted her chin. "I paid for privacy."
"Privacy is not the same as consent," Dr. Marsh said.
The words landed harder than shouting.
Daniel ran both hands over his face. "Does Dad know?"
Marianne's eyes changed.
There was fear there.
Not embarrassment. Not regret.
Fear.
Claire caught it. So did Daniel.
"Mom," he said slowly, "does Dad know?"
Marianne's husband, Walter Whitmore, had built half the subdivisions north of town and acted as if he owned the other half by moral right. He had died two years earlier after a brief illness, leaving Marianne the lake house, Daniel the business shares, and Claire an engraved silver serving platter she had never used.
Claire remembered Walter as cold, not stupid.
"Your father had his suspicions," Marianne said.
Daniel's face tightened. "That's not an answer."
Marianne looked at Claire then, and there was hatred in it. Not fresh hatred. Old, preserved hatred.
"Your father thought Claire knew."
Claire almost missed the meaning.
Then Daniel turned toward her, wounded instinct rising before reason.
"Did you?"
That was when Claire stopped feeling sorry for him.
"Ask me that again," she said.
He swallowed.
"Claireâ"
"Ask me again if I knew your mother stole your dead brother's genetic material and used my body to protect your ego."
Daniel went silent.
Marianne whispered, "You make it sound ugly."
"It is ugly," Dr. Marsh said.
Claire looked at the doctor with sudden gratitude.
A nurse stepped out of Noah's room. "Mrs. Whitmore? He's asking for you."
The world narrowed to one small sentence.
Claire turned away from all of them.
Inside, Noah's eyes were open, unfocused and tired. When he saw her, his lower lip trembled.
"Mama?"
Claire reached him in two steps.
"I'm here, sweetheart."
"Did I get sick?"
She stroked his hair gently. "You did. But the doctors are helping."
"Where's Daddy?"
Claire closed her eyes for one second.
Outside the glass, Daniel stood with both hands hanging at his sides, watching like a man looking into a life he had locked himself out of.
Noah tried to turn his head.
Claire blocked his view with her body and kissed his forehead.
"Daddy is talking to the doctor."
It was not a lie, exactly.
It was a bridge too weak to hold much weight.
Noah's hand moved under the blanket. Claire slipped her fingers around his.
"Did I scare you?" he asked.
Her heart cracked open.
"A little," she whispered. "But you're allowed. That's my job. You scare me, and I love you anyway."
His eyes drifted closed again.
She sat with him until his breathing evened.
When she stepped back into the hallway twenty minutes later, Daniel was gone.
So was Marianne.
Vanessa sat alone near the vending machines, Lily asleep across her lap. The chain around her neck was gone.
"Where are they?" Claire asked.
Vanessa looked up, pale.
"Daniel went to find his mother's lawyer. Marianne said if he talked to you again before signing something, he'd lose everything."
Claire stared at her.
Vanessa reached into her purse with trembling fingers and pulled out a folded paper.
"She dropped this," Vanessa said. "I think you need to see it."
It was an old clinic invoice.
At the bottom, handwritten beside Marcus's name, was another name Claire recognized.
Not Daniel's.
Not Marianne's.
May you like
Walter Whitmore.
And beside it, in blue ink, were the words: Confirmed match for Lily Reed.
