I press my back against the wall.
He’s delusional—he’s got it wrong. Or else he’s still trying to preserve the lie for Collette’s sake. He doesn’t think she can handle this.
But Stephen keeps staring, his eyes not dropping from my face. He holds his gaze until my neck and cheeks are burning.
Pauline steps away, shocked. Collette and Mr. Bird stare too.
“What are you talking about?” Collette asks.
“That’s Patty,” Stephen tells her.
“Don’t say that!” she screams. “Your sister is only four. Stop making things up.”
“I’m not making it up.” He turns to his father. “Patty didn’t die twenty years ago. She lived. She grew up.” He points at me again. “I’m telling you, that’s Patty.”
No one moves. No one knows what to say, but Mr. Bird speaks up. “Stephen, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Pauline steps closer again. She’s the first one to stare at me up close. “It can’t be.” She shakes her head. “That’s impossible.”
But Stephen repeats, “It’s her. I know it is. Sarah is Patty.”
My heart wants to explode inside my ribs.
Mr. Bird and Collette won’t stop staring.
Impossible.
You’re all batshit crazy.
No way in hell.
That’s what I want to tell Stephen—what I want to tell all of them. They’ve got it wrong and I need to get out of here.
Stephen’s eyes are red. The saddest expression grips his face. But through his tears there is also hope. The tiniest of smiles. He’s pointing and staring and believing his words are true.
But he’s wrong, I keep repeating.
He must be.
I’m not Patty.
Their daughter is dead. They buried her. There was a coffin and a funeral.
A closed casket…
And something in my heart turns over.
They never got to say goodbye. They weren’t allowed to see her body…
But that’s impossible.
I back away, but there’s nowhere to go since I’m already pressed against the wall. Pauline is sandwiched next to me, her mouth gaping, trying to understand what this means.
Two months ago, I’d never heard of the Birds. We’d never crossed paths.
I saw a flyer, a job posting. Stephen put it there, but he posted flyers in other buildings too. They interviewed several nannies—right?
I stare at Stephen. Of everyone he spoke to, did he pick me on purpose?
But Patty is dead, I repeat. I’ve got to get a grip. Stephen is just as delusional as his stepmother. He doesn’t want to believe it either; he wants so much to believe his sister is alive. All these years of pretending have gone to his head too.
“I found an email to Freddie several years ago,” Stephen says.
Freddie? I think about the chef, the man who’d barely spoken to me until a few days ago.
“He was in the kitchen. He walked out to get something but left his computer logged in. I was nosy,” Stephen says. “Saw an email about a funeral and I remembered him asking for time off to travel somewhere. I wondered if that was what it was for.” He looks at me again. “The funeral was for a woman named Clara Larsen.” The sledgehammer in my heart hits deeper. “And when I clicked on the link for the obituary, I saw a picture and it was her. The same nanny from all those years ago. I was just a kid, but I remember her—Ms. Fontaine. Except she’d changed her name to Larsen, just like Sarah’s, and was living in Virginia Beach.”
I shake my head. “No…”
But Stephen keeps going. “Freddie was here when Patty died. He knew Ms. Fontaine. He must have kept in touch with her after she left.”
Beside me, Pauline is whispering to herself.
“He knew about her funeral. He knew she had been caring for a child, a child who is now about the age Patty would’ve been if she had lived.”
Alex Bird breaks in. “What are you saying? How could Freddie…how could Ms. Fontaine…?”
“Turns out, after we were told Patty died, Ms. Fontaine moved to Virginia Beach with a girl. She raised her as her own, claiming she was the girl’s aunt and was caring for her after her parents died. She changed her name.”
I don’t think I’m breathing anymore, the air is locked inside my throat.
Ms. Fontaine.
Clara Larsen.
Aunt Clara?
Aunt Clara had lived in New York City. But she told me she worked for an insurance company. We moved to Virginia after my parents died. We moved there…twenty years ago…
I find my voice. “This doesn’t make sense,” I say, every word trembling. “If Patty didn’t die, she would be twenty-three, turning twenty-four.” I stare at him. “I’ll be twenty-six soon. How do you explain that?”
“She forged a new birth certificate for you,” Stephen explains. “She made up a fake birthday and fake parents.” He points at Mr. Bird and Collette. “Those are your parents.”
Collette is crying—she’s distraught and confused. Her hands are squeezed tight over her mouth as she sobs. Mr. Bird’s face is pinched and pale. He’s speechless, unable to stop staring at me and simultaneously looking terrified.
“No,” I tell them. “That’s not right. My parents died in a car crash. Aunt Clara raised me.”
“Yes, she raised you, but she wasn’t your aunt. I hired a PI. He traveled to Virginia to investigate, but you’d changed so much, we couldn’t tell if you were Patty. But then you moved to New York and I couldn’t believe my luck. I followed you for a while…”
My eyes grow wide.
“You seemed to be doing okay, you’d found a good guy.” I wince at the memory of Jonathan. “But you were in horrible debt and struggling to make ends meet. I thought I could help you out financially while finding a way to bring you here so we could get to know you. Find out if you’re really her.” He gives me a look. “I put that flyer in your building for a nanny. We needed a new one after Anna left, and Collette was becoming inconsolable again. I knew we had to do something. You showed up for the interview and I couldn’t believe it, the plan was working out perfectly. I convinced Collette to hire you.” He gives his stepmother a sympathetic look. “I said you were the best candidate and she agreed. She felt like the two of you had a strong connection, and no wonder.” He looks at us both. “You’re mother and daughter.”
Collette is crying. She reaches out but then pulls away again.
“Stop!” I slam my hands over my ears. “She’s not my mom!”
“That first day you sat down with me,” Stephen says. “Do you remember? We had tea. You didn’t want to eat but you had tea and that’s how I got a DNA sample and sent it off to a lab. We matched your DNA to Patty’s lock of hair.” He looks to his dad. “I didn’t want to say anything to you until I knew for sure…” He looks at me again. “The results came back a perfect match. You’re Patty.”
I’m going to be sick.
Mr. Bird’s chin is shaking. He’s searching the room for answers, his eyes flicking this way and that. “But how?” he asks. “How on God’s green earth did this happen?”
“Patty was sick, there’s no doubt about it,” Stephen says. “Ms. Fontaine snuck her out of the building. She must have been working with the doctor—remember how we used to think they were close, and at one point, you thought they were having an affair? I was just a kid, didn’t know enough to pay attention. I just knew Patty was here, the doctor got really worried, and then she was gone.”
“The closed casket…” Mr. Bird says.
“He never let us see her. We never got to say goodbye.”
Mr. Bird blinks, his eyes bulging until they look as if they could pop from his head. “But he told us her condition…” Their conversation is whirling around me. My hands spasm. “We should have asked more questions,” Mr. Bird says. “We should have demanded to see her.”
“You wouldn’t let me!” Collette shrieks. “You said she had to stay in that room!”
“The doctor told us that!” Mr. Bird says. “How was I supposed to know he was lying? He said she had to be kept separate from us, that we wouldn’t want to remember her that way.”
“You didn’t let me see her…” Collette whimpers.
“We didn’t know,” Stephen tells her.
“And he was working with Ms. Fontaine?” Mr. Bird asks. “He made up this lie and helped her sneak Patty out—but why? Why would he do something like that and lie to us about our daughter dying?” He’s pulling at his face again. “I want to find this doctor. Strangle him with my bare hands. Sue him for every penny he’s got. We’ll make sure he never practices medicine again. I’ll kill him—”
“Except he’s dead,” Stephen says.
Mr. Bird stops in his tracks.
“I had the PI look him up too. He retired and moved out of the city. Died at his home in Connecticut.”
“Fuck!” Mr. Bird bellows. He looks wildly at Stephen. “And Ms. Fontaine is dead too.”
“Ms. Fontaine—Clara Larsen,” Stephen says. “Yes, she’s dead too.”
I’m still trembling.
Aunt Clara…I think again. This can’t be true.
She worked for the Birds? She wasn’t employed by an insurance company but was a live-in nanny?
She stole me? She took me to Virginia Beach?
Why would she do something like that?
She told me about her love affair, the man she’d left behind in New York. Was he the doctor? Pauline thought the nanny had been up to something with Mr. Bird, that they were the ones having an affair, but she had it all wrong. The affair had been with the doctor. The man who helped Aunt Clara remove a child from this home.
My head is spinning, the last twenty years of my life coming into question. Everything I know, a lie. All those memories: Aunt Clara caring for me, teaching me to ride a bike, helping me with Girl Scouts, soccer, studying for my SATs…
She told me my parents were dead. She was the only family I had and she loved me. She cared for me with all her heart.
But if my parents aren’t dead, if Stephen is correct and my parents are right in front of me—Collette and Alex Bird—and he’s my brother—
Then this family is mine.