I feel the same way now as I did then.
“Look at her, Nataniele.” Nora reaches across the desk and grabs my hand. “Look hard. Is that the face of someone who has been betraying you all this time?”
I look at Cherry, still huddled on the couch and crying, and my throat tightens up. Antony is standing in the doorway, rubbing his crotch and looking confused as he glances from me to Nora to Cherry. When our eyes meet, he just shakes his head. All the confidence he had in our suppositions is gone.
Did we jump to more conclusions than the information warranted? Had I been so quick to pursue the first tidbit of information we had about Micha’s death that I hadn’t stopped to think about other possibilities? Was Cherry, in fact, completely ignorant of her heritage?
And I’ve been interrogating her like she’s an enemy infiltrator.
“Cherry?” I whisper. When she looks at me through red-rimmed eyes, my chest tightens.
She looks exactly how she has appeared to be all this time—completely confused and unaware of the illegal happenings in this town. How sure am I that she really is related to the Ramsays at all?
“She is,” Pops snarls. “You know she is.”
“I’ve never lied to you, Nate,” Cherry says softly.
I want to believe her. I need to believe her.
“Cherry, I—”
“Nate! I got it!” Threes bursts into the room with a stack of computer printouts. “It’s all starting to make sense now!”
“How about you try opening up that tiny brain of yours, brother?” Nora says quietly. “We will figure all of this out, and Cherry might even be able to help if you’ll just listen for half a second instead of acting like Pops and going off half-cocked.”
I swallow hard, glancing quickly from my sister to Cherry.
What have I done?
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Pops growls at me. “She’s one of them.”
I shove past him and go to the couch, crouching down and trying to capture Cherry’s gaze. I reach out, tentatively taking her hand. She lets me hold it but won’t turn her head to look me in the eye.
“Are you telling me the truth?” I ask.
“Of course I am!” She yanks her hand away but finally looks at me. “I’d never lie to you, Nate!”
“But you were holding something back. Why didn’t you call the police if you saw what happened outside your apartment?”
“Because…because…” she stammers, glances away again, and finally gives me a hard look, “because I figured it out already. I know what…what your family is—what you do. That’s why I didn’t call anyone. I figured you already knew.”
I take in a long breath, close my eyes, and let it out slowly.
“I didn’t lie,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know if…if those people are my parents.”
“We can talk more later,” I say quietly, reaching for her hand again. “Let’s see what Threes has, okay?”
“Fine.” Cherry yanks her hand from mine and stands up, immediately putting distance between us. She grits her teeth and crosses her arms over her chest, her hands clenched into fists.
We all gather around the desk and Threes starts to go through the pile of paper.
“Let’s go through it all in chronological order,” Threes says. “It will make more sense that way. First off, we have Leanne Ramsay in the hospital on December fifth.” He points to some hospital admission records. “Though there is no record of why she was there, the doctor she saw was an OB/GYN, and she was given Pitocin.”
“To induce labor,” Nora says.
“Right. So clearly, she was there to have a child. No birth certificate at all on file though we’d have to manually look to be sure. It might just never have been scanned. I can’t imagine we’re going to come up with anything like DNA to test to see if it was Roland’s kid, but clearly his wife had a baby between Janna and Jay.”
Everyone glances at Cherry.
“We don’t know who the kid was,” Nora says bluntly. “Let’s all keep that in mind.”
“My birthday is the fifteenth,” Cherry says.
“That’s what it says on a forged birth certificate,” Antony replies. “All someone would have to do is add a one in front of the five. Let’s face it—you don’t know what day you were born.”
“Based on that logic,” Nora says, “you don’t know your birthdate either, Antony. Maybe you’re a Ramsay.”
“I actually remember that year though,” Antony says. “I was six and very into Barney the dinosaur.”
“This is not getting us anywhere,” I say. “Stick to the topic. Threes, go on.”
“Okay,” Threes says, “so a month later, Leanne is admitted to the hospital again. Same doctor. Pitocin given again.”
“That’s not possible,” Nora says. “You can’t induce labor and then stop it. This doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh, it gets better,” Threes says with a grin. “This time, the hospital visit coincides with a death certificate for a newborn.”
Threes places the death certificate on the desk for all of us to see.
“Mary Elizabeth Ramsay. Born and died on January ninth.”
“Is this Leanne’s child?” I ask. “A stillborn?”
“A stillborn or a hidden live birth,” Antony says. “How can we tell?”
“At least you aren’t making assumptions again,” Nora mutters.
I silence
