The Girl in the Mirror(48)

Ten minutes later we’re driving into the hills. Daniel doesn’t have a driver today, so we’re alone in the car. Being with him is relaxing, despite his hints that I need a medical exam. I suppose it’s because he never met Summer. So when he starts questioning me, it catches me off guard.

“Tarquin’s language is very delayed,” he says. “I haven’t done a lot of pediatric work. Is that the sort of delay you’d expect with his severe prematurity?”

Oh my God. Doctor-nurse conversation. I have no fucking clue.

“Oh, yes,” I say. “Absolutely.”

“How many weeks was he?”

“He’s twenty-six and a half months.” The words roll off my tongue, but this isn’t what he asked. How many weeks was Tarquin? It’s not enough to know this sort of thing when you’re pregnant. You have to remember how early the runt was born, two years later. And Summer was right there in the neonatal unit. There’s no way she wouldn’t know.

“I’ve gone blank,” I say.

“Well, what was the birth like?” Daniel asks. “Was there birth trauma? Or was he born by cesarean?”

“Dunno,” I say, flicking my hands up carelessly. “Everything’s gone.”

Daniel slows the car right down, and his head swivels toward me. I risk a glance at him. His gold eyes are boring into my soul.

“You don’t remember?” he repeats slowly. “How could that be?” His eyes roam all over me.

He knows. He knows. Or he’s about to figure it out.

I say the first thing that jumps into my head.

“Daniel, I’m not pregnant.”

It works. Tarquin goes right out of his mind. I beg him not to tell Adam that I lost the baby, and he reassures me that a doctor’s duty of confidentiality is sacred. “Even if Adam were my brother, I wouldn’t tell him,” he says, patting my hand.

He adds, “To think that you suffered a miscarriage, all alone in the middle of the ocean, on top of everything else.” A tremor seems to pass through him. He’s grieving for me, for my loss. He pulls the car over, although there’s barely room to stop.

We’re on the crest of the hill, almost the highest point in the Seychelles, and the Indian Ocean is laid out before us, a banquet of blue. The color I thought I could never love again. Even though I’m messing up badly right now, I’m distracted by its beauty. We’re higher here than the top of the mast, but the feeling is the same. Everything is blue air and blithe sunshine.

“How many weeks were you when you lost the baby?” Daniel asks. What is it with these medical people and their obsession with weeks?

“It was very early,” I reply. “I had just found out I was pregnant.”

Daniel hints that I might have ongoing issues from the miscarriage, and I should still get a checkup. “At the least, you need to tell Adam. You shouldn’t try again for three months.”

I’m going to have to ignore that advice, obviously. In an inspired move, I hang my head, wringing my hands as though ashamed. “I wish I’d known that earlier,” I whisper.

Daniel shoots a glance at me. Is that a glimmer of a smile behind his golden eyes? “That’s understandable,” he says, “you two getting back together after a long time apart. Don’t worry about it too much. So soon after a miscarriage, you’re unlikely to fall pregnant.”

Here’s another reason not to tell Adam that I’m not pregnant. Aside from the fact that being pregnant proves I’m Summer, Adam won’t want to start trying for a baby against medical advice.

There’s no way I’m going to go through this charade and not even get the consolation prize. A hundred million dollars seems fair recompense for the sacrifice I’m making. I need the money now, since I can’t work either as a lawyer or a nurse.

Daniel starts the engine again, and the car glides forward, descending toward La Belle Romance. “Now, what were we talking about before, ocean girl?” he asks. “Oh, yes. Tarquin’s health issues. Tell me all about them.”



But questions about Tarquin can never be as difficult as Tarquin himself. I’m already jittery getting out of the car, thinking about how much I’ve tangled myself up, having one man think I’m pregnant and another that I’m not, and now I have to go straight into battle with the tiny tot.

We arrive at a bungalow set in a luxuriant garden. It’s Daniel’s mother’s house, or as Adam calls her, Aunt Jacqueline. A statuesque woman with long braided hair and a bewitching smile, she ushers us into her living room, where Adam is waiting along with several other Romains.

“Mama’s here!” Jacqueline cries to Tarquin as we enter, but the little imp shies away from me. He burrows under the sofa cushions, hiding his face and squawking. Adam looks from one of us to the other, nonplussed.

I had planned to pick the kid up and hug him so tightly that it would smother his protests, but I’m frozen to the spot.

Jacqueline comes to my aid. She plucks Tarquin from his hiding place and plonks him in my arms. Before I can drop him, she winds a colorful strip of fabric around my abdomen, binding him to me.

“This is how children punish their mamas when they go away,” she says, her voice warm and musical, as though your kid punishing you is oh-so-adorable. “He has to learn to love you again. He was in hospital and you weren’t there. He doesn’t know what you’ve been through.”