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Chapter 4

Six months later

Bella Nolan looked around her tiny apartment and the minuscule paths she’d created among her packed belongings, which consisted of trash bags and boxes and piles of stuff that she was undecided about and were stacked and waiting for a box or bag or the trash heap.

She was finally, finally, going to do something constructive now that the six months of mourning she had allowed herself were over. She rather thought now that she’d been overgenerous in allowing six whole months to wallow and wail, along with hosting a pity party every day of the week. She had quit her job, packed up the apartment, and was ready to move to North Carolina, where she had a distant cousin who was around her age.

Feeling desperate, she had reached out to her for help, and her cousin had agreed to lend her a hand. Adeline Beaumont said she would be delighted to help Bella out and invited Bella to stay with her while she sought out an apartment and a new job.

Addie, as she liked everyone to call her, said she could help with that, too. She knew of a spacious two-bedroom apartment that was newly renovated, and the rent was only $450 a month. She went on to say that until Bella found exactly what she was looking for in a job, she could hire on at the company she worked for as an assistant. She’d added that Bella had gotten in touch in the nick of time because her company was sending her abroad to open and oversee a satellite office for a year. She’d just sublet her own apartment or she would have let Bella rent it.

Done and done! The only downside (if there was a downside) was that she would be starting over somewhere not knowing a single person. For the most part, she thought that might be a good thing because she would then be open to anything new and challenging.

A new life. A new beginning. Starting over. Slow and easy. One day at a time.

Bella eyed the packing boxes, bags, and the piles of junk she’d accumulated over time. Most of the boxes belonged to her, but three of the huge cartons were Andy’s, which he had stored in a closet in her old apartment. To this day, she had not looked at the contents. She’d just moved the boxes from one place to the other. She knew she needed to make a decision regarding the boxes, but it did not have to be right this minute. Maybe if she could find out where the sister lived, she could send them on to her. Damn, now she was thinking about her again. She never did figure out what it was that bothered her about Andy and his sister. By now, you’d think that it would have come to her. She told herself that if she would stop thinking about it, practically obsessing over it, it would eventually come to her.

What she needed to do and do right this minute was to make an appointment at the fertility clinic where she had stored her eggs. If she was moving to North Carolina, never to return to this unhappy city, she needed to transfer the eggs to a clinic close to where she was going to live. Leave nothing behind was her motto so she would never have to come back to Washington. Never, ever!

But she had doubts. Should she just leave the eggs? Stop paying the monthly fee to store them. Maybe she needed to rethink this whole thing. She wished now, the way she’d wished a hundred other times, that she’d never allowed Andy to talk her into harvesting her eggs.

She could, if she wanted to, just walk away and pretend that it had never happened. If she didn’t leave a forwarding address, the clinic people couldn’t track her down. Had she given them her social security number? She couldn’t remember. If she had, they could track her that way. Damn it, why did everything have to be so complicated?

Bella leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. She needed to think. But her only thoughts were about Andy’s sister. Why? “Because I hate her, that’s why!” Bella screeched to the empty room. Damn! Damn! What was it I couldn’t remember about Sara Nolan?

Bella jumped up. “That’s it! That’s it! I am so done with this mess, and I am never going to think about it again. Never!” To drive home her point, she scrolled down on her phone until she found the number of the clinic and dialed the number. She was given an appointment for the following day at noon with a one-hour window of time.

Bella wondered why she didn’t feel something—angst, relief, anything—now that she’d done something concrete and made a decision she was going to follow through on.

Now that the last thread binding her to this place was set to be unknotted, Bella changed the channel on the television and watched the soap opera she swore she was never going to watch again. It was either that or some silly game show. Other than that, her only other choice was one of the twenty-four-hour news shows, and all they did was talk about Afghanistan and Syria and all things war and more war. She knew in her gut that if she lived to be a hundred, they would still be fighting over there. Andy had said that at least once a day and believed it implicitly. She was done with that, too. Hopefully forever.

Bella blinked when a thought raced through her weary brain. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. “Yeah, right,” she muttered to herself, as she forced herself to concentrate on the drama playing out in front of her on the television screen.

* * *

At twenty minutes to twelve, anxious and antsy, Bella was walking to the boulevard, where she was more likely to be able to hail a cab to take her to the fertility clinic, which was thirty or so blocks from her apartment. It was clear and cold, with a blustery wind that bit right through her jacket. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked with her head down so the stinging wind wouldn’t make her eyes water. Three more blocks to go. Maybe she’d stop at the Taco Bell that was directly across the street from the clinic and have some lunch. She’d take a seat near the window so she could watch who went in and out of the clinic, which would be directly in her line of vision if she was lucky enough to get a window seat. She did have an hour window, so it was doable if that is how she wanted to play it. Then she remembered how much she detested that particular Taco Bell and decided just to go right into the clinic when the cab dropped her off. She finally reached the boulevard and hailed a passing cab. What would normally be a ten-minute ride turned out to take twenty minutes given the heavier-than-usual midday traffic. She wondered what was going on to account for such traffic.

The Samaritan Clinic looked just like all the office buildings on Michigan Avenue. There was nothing about it that was special in any way. A lot of plate glass, shiny gray bricks with charcoal mortar between the bricks, no fancy doors, just your regular turnstile entrance. No doorman, but there was a courtesy desk in the lobby, and one had to check in before heading for the bank of elevators.

The building had twenty-one floors. The clinic was located on the top five floors. A very, very busy place. For some reason, she had no recollection of any of this. Probably, she had blocked it out because she had hated what she was doing. And now, here she was, still hating being at the clinic.

She did stop to wonder if she would come back to the District to visit Andy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery. Veterans Day, Memorial Day, laying the grave blanket at Christmas. Lordy, lordy, that was three times a year. She could never do that, torture herself like that. Obviously, she needed to do some serious thinking. In years to come, visiting might be easier, but right now she was almost certain that it would be too painful to bear. Things were too raw. Not to mention the awful guilt that still wracked her whole being.

Six sessions with a therapist told her it wasn’t going to get any better, and the only person who could help her was herself, so she’d buckled down and filled every waking hour of the day with some activity. That way, at night she fell into bed, exhausted, so she could wake up the following day and do it all over again.

Transferring her eggs from the Samaritan Fertility Clinic to the clinic in Davidson, where Addie lived, was the last thing she needed to arrange before heading out. Her game plan was to do some research and maybe . . . maybe think about selling one or two of the eggs to get herself a little nest egg of money so she could start off her new life free of debt and with a purpose in life. Selling off two would leave her ten eggs. Perhaps down the road, when she was really ready to take on her new life, she would consider having Andy’s baby. Then again, maybe not. Surely, somewhere in the years to come she’d meet some nice guy who would love her and want her to bear his children. That someone might not want some other man’s child, she told herself.

Tears puddled in her eyes. Don’t go there, Bella, she warned herself. “Okay, I won’t go there,” she muttered over and over until she almost believed it. She really needed to think about this some more.

Having made the decision that she was not prepared to deal with anything having to do with the fertility clinic, she turned around and walked back out through the turnstile. She was lucky enough to find a cab dropping someone off at the clinic and directed the driver to take her back to her apartment. She’d come back tomorrow. This, she told herself, was just a practice run to see if she was mentally ready to sever this particular tie. And, as she had just discovered, she was not. Not today, at least. With any luck, tomorrow would work.

Back in the apartment, Bella made herself a pot of coffee, called to cancel her appointment, and made a new one for the following day. She needed to finish what she’d started earlier. Once and for all. No more waffling. While the coffee dripped, she picked up the roll of packing tape and ripped off a long piece to wrap around a box that was clearly labeled, Andy’s Stuff. There was tape on the box already, but it was turning yellow and peeling away from the opening. She wondered if the day would ever come when she would want to look inside the box to see what Andy considered worth saving. Probably not, she told herself. Maybe when she had some spare time she would institute a search for Andy’s sister and send his things to her. Then again, maybe not, since she had a hate on for Andy’s faceless sister.

Bella stared off into space, her thoughts everywhere as she let them take her back in time to the day Andy told her he was going to freeze his sperm and asked her to freeze her eggs. He’d said military life, especially during wartime, was unpredictable, and he knew guys who came back all shot up and no longer able to make babies. He didn’t want that to happen, but if it did, he wanted to know Bella could still have a baby, carry it to term, and continue the Nolan bloodline. He said the same was true of her. She could get sick, hit by a car, all manner of horrible things could happen to her that would prevent her from having a baby.

She’d actually believed him because he was so intense. The whole thing sounded positively ghoulish to her, but Andy was so serious, so intent, and so worried something would happen that she said yes. It wasn’t that she regretted it; she didn’t, not really. Because his points had some merit. What she resented was the monthly payments she’d had to pay for storage. She figured it would get better financially once Andy’s military pay caught up with her, but that had never happened. And when those military officers showed up at her then-new apartment, she learned why.

Time to go to bed. Tomorrow was another day. How many times had she said that of late? Tomorrow is another day. “I hate that phrase,” she mumbled to herself. Her appointment at the clinic was at ten thirty, and she wanted to be rested and show up on time. But most of all, she wanted a clear head and her eyes on the future.

* * *

Bella pushed her way through the turnstile, marched over to the courtesy desk, and announced her name and the time of her appointment. The receptionist used her index finger, with a four-inch sparkly fingernail that matched the sparkles in her eyebrows, to trace the day’s appointments. It took her a few seconds to locate Bella’s information.

“Nineteenth floor. You will be seeing Dr. Candice Petre, who is in charge of that floor. Take the elevator on the left, it’s nonstop.”

Bella was off like a rocket. She wanted to get this over and done with.

She stepped out of the elevator to a pleasant waiting area, where a tall, extremely thin woman, dressed fashionably, with an elaborate hairdo, held out her hand to Bella. It felt warm and dry. Her voice was cheerful. “I’m Dr. Candice Petre. Tell me what can I do for you on this beautiful October day, Ms. Nolan.”

“I want to make arrangements to transfer my . . . my eggs to another location. My husband. . . my husband passed away, and I am relocating. Tell me what I have to do on this end, or is it the new clinic that will work with you? I’m sorry to say I don’t know how this works.”

“Perfectly understandable, and I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Nolan. Let me just bring your records up to date. Were you single or married when you contracted with us?”

“Single. My file should be under Bella Ames. I never came back to change my maiden name to my married name.”

“Most people do that right away,” Dr. Petre said. She sounded annoyed.

“I’m not most people. I’m me, and I didn’t do it, and what difference does it make in the end? None, that’s how much,” Bella said, answering her own question. Almost done. Almost.

Candice Petre looked over the rim of her glasses at Bella, and said, “But your name is Bella, correct?”

“Yes. And my husband’s name was Andrew. Why? Is something wrong?”

“It says you transferred your . . . property eight months ago. It says you came here with a technician and signed off on your eggs.”

Quicker than lightning, Bella bounced up and out of her chair. “What are you talking about? I did no such thing! I haven’t been in this clinic since I had the last procedure done. That’s at least three years ago. I know for certain my husband wasn’t here, either. Did you lose my . . . Well, did you? My God, you did, didn’t you? I can see it in your expression. I don’t believe this,” Bella shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Flustered, Dr. Petre pressed a button and, within seconds, a man and a woman in white lab coats appeared. Petre pointed to the computer screen as Bella continued screeching about fraud and calling the police. She could barely hear the introduction Petre was making. The woman in the white lab coat was Dr. Betty Donaldson, and the man was Dr. Martin Peabody.

Dr. Donaldson whistled sharply. Bella blinked and stopped shrieking to hear the doctor say, “You need to be quiet so we can make sense of this. Please. I understand you are upset. We will straighten this out. Now, Dr. Petre, tell me what happened here.”

“What happened here,” Dr. Candice Petre said in a voice that could have chilled milk, “is that this . . . person standing right here in front of the three of us came here this morning to make arrangements to transfer her . . . her property. The problem is that it already was transferred eight months ago. It’s all right here. Here is a copy of the release she signed and a copy of her current driver’s license. When you first came here, your driver’s license said Bella Ames. Along the way you got married and changed your driver’s license to Bella Nolan. This is a copy of the Bella Nolan license. Everything was time stamped, as you can see. We do not make mistakes here, Ms. Nolan. So, Ms. Nolan, how do you explain this? Is this your current driver’s license or not?”

Bella stared down at a very unflattering DMV photo of her face on the license. She licked at her lips and managed to say, “Yes, that is my license and my picture, but I did not, I repeat, I did not transfer my property from this clinic. I didn’t even know my husband had died at that time. I was in no frame of mind to . . . to do something like that. This is the first time I’ve been here since I had the procedure done years ago. Do you have cameras? Of course you do. I remember them when I was here the first time. Andy and I even discussed it. Andy is . . . was my husband. I want to see your camera surveillance footage,” Bella bellowed.

Dr. Peabody, a fussy little man with a bald head and wire-rim glasses, finally spoke up. “That will take a little bit of doing, but of course we will do it. We will accommodate you in any way we can. Dr. Petre is right, however. We do not make mistakes here at Samaritan. We follow all procedures that are in place to avoid exactly this kind of situation. Our records show that you were here. See for yourself,” he said, pointing to the computer that Dr. Petre turned around so she could view her own profile. Bella felt light-headed at what she was seeing. Was she losing her mind?

Bella suddenly felt sick to her stomach. “Then do it. I will sit here and wait until you prove to me I am wrong. Don’t even think about asking me to move. I will call the police; I was not kidding about that. And my lawyer. So hop to it, people,” Bella snarled.

All three doctors started to talk over one another as they professed not to know anything about how such a transgression could have occurred and babbling on and on about how nothing like this had ever happened and they were so very careful and had an impeccable reputation.

“I’m waiting,” Bella said, stamping her foot. “You can talk this to death later, but for now, find those surveillance tapes for me to see. I want . . . no, I demand to see who you turned my property over to because it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

“Of course, of course,” the fussy little doctor mumbled as he wiped at the sweat on his bald head. Bella wondered how he could be sweating when it felt like it was forty-eight degrees in the room. “Come with me to a more comfortable waiting area while we . . . while we review our inventory of tapes. It’s going to take a while, so we want you to be comfortable. Would you like some coffee, some donuts, anything?”

Bella watched the fussy little doctor deflate like a balloon pricked by a pin. He was nervous, though all three of them were beyond jittery. The only word in their minds right now was lawsuit and this woman standing in front of them as the new owner of the clinic.

Bella followed along behind the trio as they ushered her into a tranquil-looking room with earth-tone-colored furniture, just enough greenery to please the eye, and a fish tank that took up an entire wall, with all manner and color of fish swimming from one end to the other. As she stared at the wall of fish, she felt herself instantly calming down. She knew without a doubt that if she kept looking at it, she would fall asleep. She gave herself a mental jerk, turned away from the wall, and sat down on a nubby oatmeal-colored swivel chair. Maybe that’s what they wanted, for her to fall asleep so they could cover their tracks about the loss of her property.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. The minute the door closed behind the three doctors, Bella was pawing through her purse for the business card of the lawyer she’d met at the tearoom six months ago. The pretty young lawyer had said to call her if she could help in any way. If Bella remembered correctly, the pretty lawyer said she worked for an all-female law firm. What was her name?

Five minutes later, Bella had the coveted card in her hand. Alexis Thorn. Quinn Law Firm in Georgetown. Without giving the matter a second thought, Bella had her phone in hand and was pressing in the digits to the main number of the law firm. When someone answered, she said, “I’d like to speak to Ms. Thorn, please. This is Bella Nolan. We met some months back and she gave me her card and said if I needed her to call. I need her. It’s urgent that I speak with her as soon as possible. Can I please speak with her?” A sob caught in Bella’s throat as she waited for the receptionist to reply.

“Hold, please. Let me see if Ms. Thorn is free.” Bella didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she heard Alexis Thorn’s voice. She let it loose with a wild swoosh of sound.

“Alexis Thorn.”

“Ms. Thorn, this is Bella Nolan. I’m not sure if you remember me or not, but we met at the tearoom a while back, and you were kind enough to speak with me. You gave me your card and said if I ever needed help, I should call you. I need your help. I really need your help.” Bella could feel herself start to choke up. Sheer willpower forced the tears back. “I’m sitting here right now at the Samaritan Fertility Clinic. I stored a dozen of my eggs here several years ago. It’s a little complicated. I’m going to be moving to North Carolina, so I came here to make arrangements to find out what I have to do to transfer . . . I don’t ever want to come back here . . . and they’re gone. They said I came here and took them about eight months ago. But I did no such thing. That’s around the time I found out that my husband had died, and at the time, I would have been hard-pressed to tell you what my name was. I did not take my property. Right now, there are three doctors who are supposedly looking at surveillance tapes to see if it really was me. They have a copy of my new driver’s license with my married name and a paper with my signature on it, releasing the clinic once I took my property. Everything is time stamped. But it wasn’t me, Ms. Thorn. Can you help me?”

“Of course. When can you come to the office? Do you know where we’re located?”

“Not exactly, but I’ll find it. Can I come by when I leave here, or would tomorrow be better? I know this is last minute.”

“No, no, today is fine. I’ll leave word at the desk. Would you have any objection if the managing partner of the firm sits in on our meeting? She’s a wonderful lawyer and has been practicing law longer than I have. It’s up to you.”

“I’m fine with that. What should I do or say?”

“Try not to say anything. Get copies of everything and have them make you a copy of the surveillance video. They have to give you that. If you have any problems, refer them to me. Again, Bella, I’m sorry for your loss. I guess I’ll see you when you get here. Try to stay calm. Easy for me to say, hard to do, but try.”

“I will. Thank you so much for agreeing to see me. I can’t believe this. How did someone get a copy of my driver’s license?”

“A hundred different ways, Bella. It’s done all the time. We’ll make this right. I’m glad you called me. You are in good hands now. Take a deep breath and wait for them to get back to you. Make sure they give you a copy of the tape.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

“You bet. That’s why I became a lawyer, to help people,” Alexis said.

Bella leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. All of a sudden she did feel calm, and she also felt like she was in good hands.

Bella opened her eyes when the door opened. One look at the expression on the three doctors’ faces told her she wasn’t going to like whatever it was they were going to tell her. Dr. Donaldson had a tape in her hand. She walked over to the far end of the room and slid the tape into the slot. Bella sucked in her breath, wondering what she was going to see.