She slid an old ultrasound print across the table. “This was taken seven years ago.” At first, I only noticed the blur of a tiny baby hand. Then she placed my new scan beside it and pointed to the same unusual curve in the little finger. “It’s rare, inherited, and harmless by itself,” she said. “I’ve only seen it twice.” I looked up at her. “Once today,” I said quietly. She nodded. “And once before, when I was a consultant on another doctor’s case. The father at that appointment used another name, but it was your husband.” I actually laughed, because the sentence was too absurd to be real. Adrian lied about little things sometimes—where he had been, who had called—but not this. Not another identity.
Dr. Shah didn’t react. She just opened the file and turned a photograph toward me. It showed Adrian, younger but unmistakably him, standing beside a heavily pregnant woman at some charity event. His arm was around her waist. Both of them were smiling for the camera. “Her name was Rebecca,” Dr. Shah said. “She was a patient I knew. By the time she understood what kind of man she had married, she had already signed away most of her money and had no one left around her. He had isolated her first. That is why I told you to leave.”
