It's One of Us(20)

She glances in Peyton’s room as she passes. Two decades of habit is hard to break. She misses him. It had been the two of them against the world, her little man and his single mom, until they decided he needed a sibling. He was almost four, precocious and lively, when he announced she should have another baby. She hadn’t been considering it; work was going well, she had managed to load up on certifications and was planning to go back to school for a physician’s assistant degree. More money, better hours. She could work in a clinic instead of the hospital.

But Peyton’s announcement gave her the bug. She loved babies. Loved being pregnant, loved holding Peyton’s sweet, warm body to her breast. Loved watching him grow. Two would be hard, but boys need brothers.

She went back to Winterborn because they’d made the process so easy with Peyton. Clear instructions, nonjudgmental coordinators, and, let’s be honest, they weren’t as pricey as some of the other banks she contacted. Privately funded, they kept costs low by allowing bulk purchases—it usually takes more than one insemination to achieve a pregnancy—and had a robust buyback program.

She’d held onto two vials of Peyton’s donor in case she decided to have another child. Winterborn had it in their cold storage and drop-shipped it to her with hearty congratulations. She was a nurse. She knew exactly how to do the intracervical insemination—ICI was simple, really, all she needed was a needle-less syringe and a good bottle of lube—and tracked her ovulation for three months so she had a solid idea of her moment of prime fertility. The limitations astounded her; considering how small a woman’s window of achieving pregnancy actually is, at best twelve hours within a single monthly cycle, it’s a miracle there are so many people on this earth, especially those conceived by accident.

The day of, she got a babysitter for Peyton, poured a glass of wine, let the sample defrost, took one more ovulation test to confirm she was ripe and ready, and inseminated herself. With the sample in place, she masturbated herself to orgasm to ensure the sperm got farther inside her (a fun trick she’d learned from the forum), and lounged in bed, sipping the wine and watching a Nora Ephron marathon.

She bled right on schedule two weeks later.

Undeterred, she tried again. Bled, again.

All her earlier ambiguity ended. Now she was in it and couldn’t stop.

She called Winterborn to purchase more samples, only to learn that Peyton’s donor had been retired. She didn’t want two kids by two different fathers. She wanted her version of a family, with full-blooded siblings, but the consultant convinced her what mattered was the mother. That’s why you’re using a donor anyway, right? So you can have this experience. We have the perfect man for you. A match to all your wants. They sent the paperwork and the donor interview, and they were right. This donor was exactly what she wanted—and even bore a resemblance to Peyton’s donor. She agreed, took receipt of the samples, and the third time was a charm.

Scarlett was born early eight months later, during a snowstorm that almost saw her slip out on the side of the interstate, and both Darby and Peyton fell head over heels in love. Scarlett charmed all the doctors and nurses in the NICU with her rosebud lips and wispy hair. She was perfect and tiny and adorable.

Darby enters Scarlett’s sanctum. The opposite of her orderly brother’s, Scarlett’s room always looks like a confetti bomb has just gone off in happiness. Darby gathers what clothes she can find from hither and yon, loading her arms, straightening as she can. She bumps the desk chair with a hip as she moves ungainly to the door. A piece of paper falls on the floor, and she stops to pick it up. A Gmail log-in and passcode—a string of letters and numbers no hacker could ever access. It is not Scarlett’s email; she’s not allowed to have a private email address. But this certainly looks like it belongs to her somehow—scarfly414—Scarlett Flynn, and 414 is their street address.

Darby confiscates the paper and bumbles downstairs with the laundry. She drops the note on the table and gets the clothes in the washer and started, then retrieves it and heads to her desk.

She pulls up her Gmail, logs out of her own, and logs into the strange account. The inbox is confusing at first, full of Discord notifications. She back traces to the first email and sure enough, Scarlett has herself an illicit Discord account, too.

Oh, girl. You are in so much trouble.

It takes Darby exactly thirty seconds to find the private group. The more she scans, the more horrified she is.

Scarlett is not her donor’s only child.

And one of her siblings has been tied to Beverly Cooke’s murder.



10


THE DAUGHTER

After gym, while the rest of the girls are changing back into their skirts and button-downs, Scarlett takes her phone to the bathroom, closes the door on the stall and downloads the app. She’s not allowed to have Discord; she has to download the app and delete it every day so her mom doesn’t get suspicious. She’s been busy, hasn’t had a chance to go back in and look to see what they’re saying about the Cooke murder since her mom came home and busted her for skipping homeroom. She’s dying to see what’s going on.

The group is buzzing. Her private messages are full. She goes immediately to the last one, the only other kid in Nashville—the rest are spread around the South, mostly, with a few off in other parts of the country. It’s weird to think she has a sister in town she’s never met. They’d talked about meeting up, revealing their real identities, but neither had gotten up the guts yet. Now, though, she needs to reach out and find out what’s going on.