“We don’t know,” Lucas said.
“And where does Douglas come into it?”
He reached back into the suitcase.
This time he removed a tiny hospital bracelet.
The plastic had turned cloudy with age.
A paper label sat beneath it.
The handwriting was faded but readable.
D. Carter.
My stomach tightened.
“My last name.”
“Yes.”
“But Douglas’s first initial.”
“Yes.”
I looked at Douglas.
“You think this baby was ours?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Firmly.
“I know you weren’t pregnant. And I certainly would have remembered participating in the process.”
A strange laugh escaped me.
Douglas smiled.
For three seconds we were nineteen again.
Then his expression became serious.
“But someone wanted your mother to believe the child connected us.”
“Why?”
“That is what I’ve been trying to understand.”
I turned the hospital bracelet over.
There was a number printed beneath the name.
“Did your investigator trace this?”
