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“Is she alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Then why are you acting like that mark means something terrible?”
“I haven’t spoken to her in more than thirty years.”
He pointed toward Lily.
“Then why are you acting like that mark means something terrible?”
Carol went completely still.
“Because Ruth wasn’t the only person in her family who had it.”
My stomach dropped.
“There was a condition in Ruth’s family.”
“What does that mean?”
Carol sat down.
“There was a condition in Ruth’s family. I don’t remember the medical name. Some relatives had marks like that and were perfectly healthy. But in others, the mark appeared alongside a hereditary blood-vessel problem.”
Darren stared at her.
“You knew there was a medical condition in my biological family?”
“And you never told me?”
Carol nodded.
His voice dropped.
“And you never told me?”
“I convinced myself it didn’t matter because you never had the mark.”
Darren looked at her as if he no longer recognized her.
“You convinced yourself?”
“So you’re telling me my daughter might have inherited something serious?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you.”
“So you’re telling me my daughter might have inherited something serious from a family Darren didn’t even know he belonged to?”
The room seemed to tilt sideways.
Darren grabbed my shoulder.
She lowered the head of the bed, checked me, and called for a doctor.
“Claire?”
A nurse rushed in.
She lowered the head of the bed, checked me, and called for a doctor.
A doctor arrived a few minutes later and examined Lily.
He asked Carol what she remembered.
“You knew I had a biological family with a medical history I might need someday.”
“A birthmark by itself doesn’t tell us that your daughter has anything. She’s stable, and nothing I’m seeing right now suggests an emergency. But with a possible family history, we should document it and arrange the appropriate follow-up.”