The Swallow's Nest. Emilie Richards

what it was like for me to manage everything on my own up to this point, when I was promised so much more.”

      She didn’t glance down at her son for a final goodbye. She turned and walked along the flowered brick pathway to the street. She was out of sight almost before Lilia could form another thought.

      In her arms the baby stirred. Stunned, Lilia looked down, and the tiny infant opened eyes the china blue of her husband’s. With shaking fingers she pulled back the blanket. What hair the baby had was blond, like Graham’s. But Marina was blond, and surely her eyes were blue, as well.

      This was a scam, a horrible, ill-advised prank.

      She lifted him slowly for a better view, and then, without a legal document, without confirmation from anyone except a crazy woman, with no proof whatsoever except a vague resemblance that might not even exist, she was 100 percent certain this was no scam.

      This child belonged to her husband.

      She wanted to drop the bundle and run. She wanted to race after the near-stranger who had just handed off her beautiful baby like a football in play.

      But most of all? She wanted to scream right along with Graham’s son, who was now wailing inconsolably in her arms.

       2

      Marina Tate pulled into her private space in the parking lot of the three-story apartment building that had once symbolized how fast she was rising in the world. Her one-bedroom was on the top floor, not exactly a penthouse, but still superior to anything she’d grown up with. The view from her narrow balcony was a freeway, but sometimes at night she sat in a folding chair and watched headlights blooming through banks of fog. She’d sat there many times after Toby was born. She hadn’t been able to get away from his screaming, but closing the door and listening to the roar of traffic had been an improvement.

      As she had during the trip home, she wondered again if the baby was okay.

      Clearly Graham hadn’t gotten around to telling Lilia about his son. Maybe announcing a love child between one dose of chemo and the next just hadn’t seemed sensible. Maybe in his shoes she would have kept silent, too. After all, if he’d made the announcement, who would take care of him? No man could drop a bombshell like that one and expect even the most supportive wife to spoon-feed him chicken soup, much less clean up his vomit and wash his sheets.

      But no excuse was really good enough, was it?

      She was still behind the steering wheel, and she drooped forward to rest her forehead against it. She was so tired she wasn’t sure she was going to make it up the stairs to her apartment. She was so tired she considered taking a nap before she tried. In the end, after two cars screeched into the lot with radios throbbing, she pushed away, opened the door and swung her feet to the asphalt.

      In the midst of flipping her seat forward she remembered she had no baby to retrieve from the back. For a moment she stood staring at the infant seat. She had considered carrying the baby to Graham’s door nestled inside, but the seat was used and worn, and at the last minute—not blind to the irony—she’d rejected the idea. She had been embarrassed to give Graham and Lilia the car seat, but not the infant.

      Tomorrow she would chuck it into the Dumpster.

      So many months had passed since she’d had an entire night’s sleep. She couldn’t remember when she hadn’t been sleep-deprived. Even in the weeks before the birth she’d slept fitfully because she was so huge, getting comfortable was a joke. And no man had been around to rub her aching back or get her a glass of water.

      One of those nights Graham had called. She couldn’t remember which, but why was stamped on her heart. He wanted her to know he had made the arrangements for a paternity test. She listened to him recite the clinical details, as if he were reading them from a list. At the birth someone would collect blood from the umbilical cord, and a lab would process the results. He confirmed he would not sign the Declaration of Paternity document agreeing he was the father until the test results were official. Without that, she would not be allowed to list him on the birth certificate. When paternity was finally confirmed, she would then have to fill out another form to have the birth certificate amended.

      Finally, as if this were a small thing, he said that at that point everything would be official, and she would get the rest of the lump sum he had promised when she agreed to have the baby.

      At the time she’d wondered, and still did, if delaying the test and refusing to sign the document were stalling mechanisms. A more expensive but equally reliable test could have been conducted during the pregnancy. Had he hoped these small rebellions would deter her from announcing the identity of the man who had carelessly planted the baby inside her?

      Had he thought about it at all? Or had he been so immersed in the present, ensnared in a mass of twisted and unshared emotion, that he hadn’t given the future any real thought?

      At the beginning Graham had been so anxious for her to carry the pregnancy to term, but all those months later, had he come to regret it? As his health improved, and the possibility of survival improved with it, had he wished that the baby and the baby’s mother would disappear and leave him to the good life he’d had before his diagnosis?

      Whatever his reasons, she’d been given no choice in the matter. After Toby’s birth the hospital had filled out the health department form without Graham’s name. Weeks went by before he was officially the father of record. Then once he was, the money he had promised to give her, the second half of a trust fund he had cashed in to help her through the pregnancy and early months of Toby’s life, had never materialized. Nor had a satisfactory explanation. He’d said she and the baby would be taken care of, and he had promised to find a way to be part of Toby’s life. By now she knew what his promises were worth.

      Today there was no more room for lies. Everybody would know Graham was officially Toby’s father. A copy of the baby’s amended birth certificate was among the items she had left in one of the bags at Lilia’s feet.

      She started toward her apartment and trudged up the three flights of an open stairwell. For a moment after she unlocked the door she stood on the threshold and drank in the silence. She’d grown up in a noisy home, but the months since she’d brought Toby here from the hospital had been filled with screaming that only tapered off when the baby grew too exhausted for more. At one point the noise had been so overwhelming her neighbors had threatened to report her to the landlord. She had been forced to move his bed to the center of the living room, away from common walls.

      By that point she had lowered herself to begging for help. Toby’s pediatrician had insisted the problem was colic. Along the way the woman, fresh out of medical school, suggested different formulas, modeled a baby carrier to keep Toby snug against Marina’s chest, prescribed white noise, swaddling, massage, letting him cry. Finally, at this morning’s visit, after pointed questions about her state of mind and how vigilantly Marina had followed her useless suggestions, the clueless young doctor had decreed that Marina was a first-time mom, and Toby probably sensed her insecurities.

      That had been the final straw. Marina had no insecurities when it came to babies. She had raised her younger brothers while her mother worked two jobs or “socialized.” She had a niece named Brittany whom she’d been unable to avoid in infancy, and a short-lived romance with an otherwise perfect man who had just divorced the mother of his newborn. She’d chucked him quickly, but not before managing weeks of diapers and bottles.

      Toby was born a nightmare. Or maybe Toby was punishment for trying to steal another woman’s husband, although a year of misery seemed like a pretty stiff sentence.

      She flicked on her lights and stepped inside. Her apartment was furnished in leather with chrome accents and neon table lamps. She was a fan of sleek surfaces with no hint of clutter. The walls were mostly blank, and she liked them that way, clean white paint and no memorabilia from a past she wanted to forget. The tile floors were unmarred by rugs. Toddler Toby probably would have cracked his head a hundred times.

      No