Chapter 11: Records

"Did you send it?" I said.

"The front desk faxed one page before the nurse stopped it," the doctor said. "Your appointment summary from the eighteenth. I'm so sorry."

My appointment summary from the eighteenth.

Patient: Nerissa Rendell, 29. Reason for visit: confirmation of pregnancy. Estimated due date: late June.

"Where did it go?"

"A fax number in Boston. I'll have the number for you in the morning."

I hung up.

Zeke had taken his face out of his hands.

He was looking at me.

"Who was that?"

"My doctor."

"Is everything okay?"

I stood up.

"I have to go in," I said. "Mavis needs help with the dishes."

I went inside and left him on the step.

In the morning the clinic gave me the number.

It belonged to a law firm on State Street in Boston.

I knew the firm. I'd paid its bills for ten years.

It was Orson's.

Except Orson didn't use it anymore. His new lawyers were the ones who wrote immunity deals.

The old firm had a new client since September.

The Weatherby Ferry Line.

I walked into the island clinic at nine in the morning in my father's sweater and asked to see the doctor.

She took me into her office and shut the door.

"I want my file sealed," I said. "Every page. Nobody sees it but you and me. Not a husband, not a partner, not a lawyer, not God."

"Miss Rendell, nobody should have seen any of it."

"Somebody did. So now I want it in writing."

She wrote it. I signed it. She signed it.

At the front desk the receptionist couldn't look at me.

She was young and pink and twisting a pen.

"He was so nice," she whispered. "He said he was the father. He said you'd want him to have it."

"He's not the father," I said.

I left her with that.

That night, after close, I sat Mavis down at the counter.

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