He looked at the baby. He looked at the nose—his nose. He looked at the eyes—Jennifer’s eyes.
“You told me…” Michael’s voice was a ragged whisper that the microphone picked up. “You told me you had a miscarriage. Three months ago. You told me we lost her.”
The crowd gasped. A collective intake of breath from two hundred socialites.
“I…” Jennifer stammered. Mascara was running down her face now, carving black tracks through her perfect foundation. “Michael, I… I wasn’t ready! My body… the shop… I couldn’t be a mother yet! It would ruin everything!”
“So you hid her?” Michael roared. The veins in his neck bulged. “You hid my daughter? Where was she? Where has she been for three months?”
“At a nanny’s in Jersey!” Jennifer sobbed. “I was going to bring her home eventually! But then the anniversary came up, and the nanny quit, and I didn’t know what to do!”
“So you threw her away like trash,” I cut in. My voice was ice.
I walked forward until I was standing right in front of her.
“Michael,” I said, turning to him. “This is your daughter. I have the DNA kit in the bag. I have the birth records she left in the basket. She didn’t lose the baby. She hid the pregnancy with waist trainers and lies, and then she stashed her away so she wouldn’t ruin her figure or her career.”
Michael looked at me. Then he looked at his wife. The look on his face wasn’t anger anymore. It was revulsion. It was the look you give a stranger you realize is a monster.
“Don’t come near me,” he said to Jennifer, stepping back.
“Michael, please!” Jennifer wailed, reaching for him. She looked like a blue butterfly with broken wings, flailing in the wreckage of her own vanity. “I did it for us! So we could be the power couple! A baby is just… baggage!”
“Baggage?”
