"You will ruin her," he said.
"You ruined her," Catherine said. "The day she was born. I'm just the one who's going to pick up the pieces." She picked up her handbag and walked to the door, and there she stopped, looking back at him alone in the lamplight with his untouched scotch. "Pack a bag, Theodore. I don't want you in this house when I come back."
"And if I refuse?"
She smiled, and it was not a kind smile. "Then I'll have Susan Park make you. Twenty-three years of versions of the truth. I'm done with all of them."
Chapter 16: Iris Learns
The doorbell rang at ten on a Saturday morning, and Iris knew.
She had been bent over her drafting plans at her kitchen table when the sound cut through the quiet. She checked the peephole and saw Catherine Marlowe in the hallway with a worn leather folder under her arm.
Iris opened the door. "Mrs. Marlowe."
"Miss Webb," Catherine said. "May I come in? I have brought proof."
"Proof of what?" Iris said.
"Of who you are," Catherine said. "Ten minutes."
There was no madness in her face, only a terrible certainty, and that frightened Iris most of all. She stepped aside.
Catherine glanced around the small, bright apartment, all clean lines and pale wood. "You have a beautiful home."
"Say what you came to say," Iris said. She did not sit.
Catherine set the folder on the table and opened it. "Twenty-three years ago I gave birth at Saint Anne's Hospital. I was told I had one daughter, and that she died in a nursery fire that night. That was a lie. I had twins."
Iris folded her arms. "And this concerns me how?"
"These are the sealed records." Catherine laid two birth certificates side by side. "Two girls, born eleven minutes apart. One was marked deceased within the hour. The other never appeared in any record. My lawyer obtained these by court order."
"My mother is Helen Webb," Iris said, her voice level. "My father was Marcus Webb. I was adopted at three months. They chose me. That was always enough."
"What if you were never theirs to choose?"
Iris forced a laugh. "You return with papers and fairy tales. Do you collect daughters, Mrs. Marlowe?"
Catherine unwrapped a silver locket, worn smooth with age, and pressed it open. Inside was a faded photograph of a newborn, and on the infant's tiny wrist a heart-shaped birthmark.
Iris stared, her pulse beating in her ears. "A birthmark. Millions of people have birthmarks."
"Show me yours," Catherine said.
Iris's hand moved to her left sleeve and pulled it down. "You have no right to ask me that."
"Your inner left wrist. You have hidden it your whole life. Every photograph, every school picture: long sleeves. How do you think I know that?" Catherine said.
"Stop it," Iris said. "Stop it right now."
"That locket was on the baby in the hospital. I put it there myself," Catherine said. "The nurse who saved one of my daughters told me it was on the wrong twin. It was meant for you."
Iris sank into a chair. "The wrong twin." Her laugh came out thin and cracked. "You talk about me like luggage."
She slid the laboratory report across the table. "My DNA result with Nora Fields: ninety-nine point nine nine percent. Nora is twenty-three, waits tables at Maison Lumière, raised at Saint Mary's Orphanage. She has the same mark."
"I have never heard of Nora Fields," Iris whispered.
"Then look at this," Catherine said, turning over the last photograph.
A girl of seven or eight, gap-toothed, squinting into the sun, with Iris's own face. On her small wrist, the heart-shaped mark.
Iris's hand flew to her mouth. "Where did you get this?"
"It was in the second file. The file that was never supposed to exist. They kept it."
"Give it to me." Iris snatched it and held it close until her vision blurred. The girl wore a dress her mother had sewn, blue with white buttons, and suddenly Iris could smell the fabric, hear her voice: stand still, my chosen girl, stand still.
"Chosen," Iris said. Her voice broke. "Not taken. That is what they told me. Chosen, not taken."
"Theodore Marlowe is my husband," Catherine said. "He arranged all of it. The doctor falsified the records. He wanted an heir he could shape, a child easier to control. He paid the Webbs. There is a trust in your name, funded by him. Ask Helen about the arrangement."
"My mother would never." The words were hollow now, a wall with the bricks falling out. "She sat with me through pneumonia. She taught me to swim. She held my hand at my father's funeral. You cannot buy that. You cannot fake twenty-three years."
"I am not saying she did not love you," Catherine said gently. "I am saying she was given you through a theft, and she agreed, and she lied to you every day after."
Something in Iris snapped. She stood so fast the chair screeched. "My whole life is a forgery," she said, and did not wipe the tears. "Every birthday. Every Christmas. Every bedtime story. All of it built on a theft, and I am the stolen thing."
"You are not a thing," Catherine said. "You are my daughter."
"Do not call me that!" Iris shouted. "You do not get to walk into my home with a folder and rename me! I had a mother. I had a father. You do not get to take them from me too!"
She flung the door open. "Get out."
"Iris, please." Catherine gathered the papers but left copies on the table. "Everything is here. When you are ready, Nora wants to meet you. She is your sister."
"Get out!" she said again, and Catherine went.
The door slammed. The lock turned. Silence, except for the ragged sound of Iris's breathing.
She stood a long time with her back against the door. Then she slid to the floor, knees drawn up, the photograph clutched in her hand.