Its one of us, p.7
It’s One of Us, page 7
A quick, missed, peck on the cheek and she’s out the door, flying to the car. Thank God she hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. Darby doesn’t have her parental walls up yet; she would have broken down in front of her daughter and scared them both.
“Drive carefully,” Darby calls, heart swelling with love despite being annoyed as hell. Kids. Mixed emotions weren’t the half of it. At least they hadn’t had a fight. That happens more often than not these days. Donuts working their magic. Sugar and spice and everything nice.
Darby makes herself a cup of coffee, takes another donut because damn it, she’s having a bad morning and she deserves the treat, and sits down at her tiny desk in the corner of the kitchen. She ignores the tall stack of bills sitting neatly on the ledge just at eye level and brings up Facebook. Sees the burgeoning fight in her donor group, logs out. She can’t do this, not now. She has bigger problems.
Humiliation streaming through her, she pulls the unemployment papers from her bag and navigates to the website to file her claim.
* * *
Later, fortified with coffee, sugar, and a nap, Darby logs into Facebook again. She is met with a knotty philosophical discussion among the moms about whether they need to tell the police what they know in case there’s something related to the donor that might shed light on Beverly’s death.
On this, she has many feelings, and now she’s willing to share.
Our privacy is sacred, Darby types. It’s all we have. If we expose Beverly, we expose all of us. We will never have peace. The police, then the media, will hound us and we will be a part of this story. Our group will become the story. Tempers are high. Fear does that. We should stay out of it, at least for now.
The moderators chime in, suggesting we all take the night to think it over, and convene in the morning to vote on our course of action. Darby tries once more, already sensing this is a moot point.
Their lives are already ruined, she types. Dan’s, and the baby’s. What do we gain by tearing them apart? What do we gain from Dan learning his son probably isn’t his? That his wife was hiding such a huge secret from him? Because that’s what we need to think about today. It’s one thing to pull back the curtain and expose ourselves. The baby is innocent, and the baby will suffer. Dan might not want him anymore. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen.
Trust me.
A flurry of responses, some agreeing, some not. The Nots are vociferous. It’s amazing how quickly friends turn on each other. The moderator pops in again.
Ladies, seriously. We need to cool off. I’m closing this thread to comments.
Darby’s private message notification lights up immediately, but she logs out. No sense bickering. She needs to make dinner, and she might as well do some laundry since she’ll be home tonight to put it in the dryer. She’s superstitious about putting clothes in overnight and going to work with the dryer running. House fires are all too common.
She glances in Peyton’s room as she passes. Two decades of habit is hard to break. She misses him. It had been the two of them against the world, her little man and his single mom, until they decided he needed a sibling. He was almost four, precocious and lively, when he announced she should have another baby. She hadn’t been considering it; work was going well, she had managed to load up on certifications and was planning to go back to school for a physician’s assistant degree. More money, better hours. She could work in a clinic instead of the hospital.
But Peyton’s announcement gave her the bug. She loved babies. Loved being pregnant, loved holding Peyton’s sweet, warm body to her breast. Loved watching him grow. Two would be hard, but boys need brothers.
She went back to Winterborn because they’d made the process so easy with Peyton. Clear instructions, nonjudgmental coordinators, and, let’s be honest, they weren’t as pricey as some of the other banks she contacted. Privately funded, they kept costs low by allowing bulk purchases—it usually takes more than one insemination to achieve a pregnancy—and had a robust buyback program.
She’d held onto two vials of Peyton’s donor in case she decided to have another child. Winterborn had it in their cold storage and drop-shipped it to her with hearty congratulations. She was a nurse. She knew exactly how to do the intracervical insemination—ICI was simple, really, all she needed was a needle-less syringe and a good bottle of lube—and tracked her ovulation for three months so she had a solid idea of her moment of prime fertility. The limitations astounded her; considering how small a woman’s window of achieving pregnancy actually is, at best twelve hours within a single monthly cycle, it’s a miracle there are so many people on this earth, especially those conceived by accident.
The day of, she got a babysitter for Peyton, poured a glass of wine, let the sample defrost, took one more ovulation test to confirm she was ripe and ready, and inseminated herself. With the sample in place, she masturbated herself to orgasm to ensure the sperm got farther inside her (a fun trick she’d learned from the forum), and lounged in bed, sipping the wine and watching a Nora Ephron marathon.
She bled right on schedule two weeks later.
Undeterred, she tried again. Bled, again.
All her earlier ambiguity ended. Now she was in it and couldn’t stop.
She called Winterborn to purchase more samples, only to learn that Peyton’s donor had been retired. She didn’t want two kids by two different fathers. She wanted her version of a family, with full-blooded siblings, but the consultant convinced her what mattered was the mother. That’s why you’re using a donor anyway, right? So you can have this experience. We have the perfect man for you. A match to all your wants. They sent the paperwork and the donor interview, and they were right. This donor was exactly what she wanted—and even bore a resemblance to Peyton’s donor. She agreed, took receipt of the samples, and the third time was a charm.
Scarlett was born early eight months later, during a snowstorm that almost saw her slip out on the side of the interstate, and both Darby and Peyton fell head over heels in love. Scarlett charmed all the doctors and nurses in the NICU with her rosebud lips and wispy hair. She was perfect and tiny and adorable.
Darby enters Scarlett’s sanctum. The opposite of her orderly brother’s, Scarlett’s room always looks like a confetti bomb has just gone off in happiness. Darby gathers what clothes she can find from hither and yon, loading her arms, straightening as she can. She bumps the desk chair with a hip as she moves ungainly to the door. A piece of paper falls on the floor, and she stops to pick it up. A Gmail log-in and passcode—a string of letters and numbers no hacker could ever access. It is not Scarlett’s email; she’s not allowed to have a private email address. But this certainly looks like it belongs to her somehow—scarfly414—Scarlett Flynn, and 414 is their street address.
Darby confiscates the paper and bumbles downstairs with the laundry. She drops the note on the table and gets the clothes in the washer and started, then retrieves it and heads to her desk.
She pulls up her Gmail, logs out of her own, and logs into the strange account. The inbox is confusing at first, full of Discord notifications. She back traces to the first email and sure enough, Scarlett has herself an illicit Discord account, too.
Oh, girl. You are in so much trouble.
It takes Darby exactly thirty seconds to find the private group. The more she scans, the more horrified she is.
Scarlett is not her donor’s only child.
And one of her siblings has been tied to Beverly Cooke’s murder.
10
THE DAUGHTER
After gym, while the rest of the girls are changing back into their skirts and button-downs, Scarlett takes her phone to the bathroom, closes the door on the stall and downloads the app. She’s not allowed to have Discord; she has to download the app and delete it every day so her mom doesn’t get suspicious. She’s been busy, hasn’t had a chance to go back in and look to see what they’re saying about the Cooke murder since her mom came home and busted her for skipping homeroom. She’s dying to see what’s going on.
The group is buzzing. Her private messages are full. She goes immediately to the last one, the only other kid in Nashville—the rest are spread around the South, mostly, with a few off in other parts of the country. It’s weird to think she has a sister in town she’s never met. They’d talked about meeting up, revealing their real identities, but neither had gotten up the guts yet. Now, though, she needs to reach out and find out what’s going on.
Jezebelle: It’s one of us.
Jezebelle: Man, I drop a bomb and you ghost me.
Scarlett types quickly, thumbs flying over the screen.
Scarfly414: Sorry, mom came home early. I’m totally weirded out about one of the halves being a killer. How did you find out?
Sits for a minute, chewing a nail, waiting.
Jezebelle: Mom works for Metro labs. There was a match to our dad. Don’t tell anyone.
Scarfly414: Wait, so your mom knows you know?
Jezebelle: No. I was snooping. I have a flag on her account so I can see any activity that might match our DNA. Wrote the code myself. She has no idea. Though now...
Before J can answer, a message pops up from a strange account, one she doesn’t recognize.
Hello Scarfly414. This is your mother. We’ll discuss this when you get home. Straight home from school, do you hear me?
“Oh, shit!”
Not only has her mom found her private account, she’s read every message that’s come through. She knows everything that’s being said.
She knows that one of the siblings is a killer.
It’s not like Scarlett was going to be able to hide this anyway, not with that kind of news. But damn, her mom will go ballistic.
The bell rings. She needs to get to chemistry.
Scarfly414: JZ, I think I’m busted. Talk later?
Jezebelle: Yeah.
Scarlett scrolls quickly through the rest of her messages, tendrils of panic coursing through her. Everyone is concerned about the same thing. Speculation, fear, are we in danger?
Do you know who it is?
We should shut this down. I don’t want to be a part of this.
Do we know it’s not one of us on this group?
Could the person responsible for this woman’s murder be on their server already? Watching them? That’s like her worst fear ever.
You have only one chance to do the right thing in this world, baby girl.
Scarlett knows what the right thing is. She should call the police. She should tell them everything she knows. Everything she’s learned. She’s done nothing wrong. There’s nothing to be afraid of. She should get Jezebelle, whatever her real name is, to act as well.
Unless someone on the group is the killer, and they know she ratted them out.
Scarlett needs her mother.
A bit of peace settles upon her. Even if she’s furious, her mom will know what to do. This is too big a decision to make without her. It was one thing finding out who Scarlett is, genetically speaking. Something else entirely to know she may be related to a killer.
Screw chemistry. She’ll make up the quiz later. Scarlett goes to the office, tells the nurse she’s not feeling well, and checks herself out of school for the rest of the day.
The drive home doesn’t take long enough. Her mother is in the kitchen, on her computer. Great.
“What are you doing home?”
Scarlett opens the fridge, gets out a bottle of lemonade and a piece of string cheese.
“I feel sick.”
Darby stands with a sigh. “Let me get the thermometer.”
“Not sick like that.” She sits down at the table, gestures for Darby to do the same. An eyebrow raised, her mother sits.
“You’re missing a quiz in chemistry, you know. They might not let you make it up.”
“This is too important. We need to talk. I need your advice.”
Darby is clearly trying not to detonate. “On your little Discord group? My God, Scarlett. How dare you go behind my back like this?”
“How dare you snoop in my room?” Scarlett shoots back. “I thought we were past that.”
“I wasn’t snooping, I was getting your laundry. I was doing you a favor, and what do I see? You’ve been hiding the truth from me, living a secret life, and God knows what else—”
“Don’t you dare, Mom. I haven’t done anything wrong. I wanted to know who he was, that’s all.”
“And you couldn’t have come to me, made a plan with me? You went online and confided in a bunch of strangers? This could all be some sort of huge lie, some sort of scam, you realize that. To prey on donor kids.”
“It’s not. I’m not an idiot. And see, that’s the problem right there. You won’t ever say anything about him other than calling him your donor. Your donor, your donor, your donor. He’s my father. I’ve always wanted a father, and you tore that dream away from me, and now I have a chance to meet him, and I bet he loves me more than you do.”
They are both shocked by that outburst.
“Want to take that back?” Darby asks.
“No,” she cries, lower lip stuck out like a petulant five-year-old, though the tears are coming, her lip wobbling, and Darby sighs and pours herself a glass of water while Scarlett erupts into a shower of tears.
“Why couldn’t I have a father? Why did you have to do this alone? All I ever wanted was to be a proper family, and instead it was the three of us and people laughed and said nasty things and—”
“They did?” Darby puts the water pitcher back into the fridge.
“Yes.”
Darby hands Scarlett a tissue. “What did they say?”
A shuddery sigh. The fight has gone out of her as quickly as it arose. Her mother is so calm, so logical, so unruffled all the time. She doesn’t fight with passion like Scarlett. She’s almost robotic. It’s infuriating. Sometimes Scarlett wants to scream and smash things. The pressure builds inside until she needs to explode. When she was little, she’d punch or bite the kids around her, completely out of control, but as she’s grown older, she’s learned to master her feelings. She usually takes it out on her pillow, or on the pitch, against the soccer ball. Right now, though, it’s come to a head, and she’s forcing it away. They have bigger problems than her own emotions.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If it hurt you, honey, it matters. People talk, people say things, because they don’t understand other people’s choices, especially on something as personal as building a family.”
“Didn’t you want a husband? Or a wife? I mean, a partner of some kind?”
Scarlett claps a hand over her mouth. This is as close as she has ever come to inquiring about her mother’s sexuality.
“I assume there’s been talk?” Darby asks evenly.
“Speculation is more like it. Because people are cruel and can’t mind their own damn business. But I never knew what to say. Not that it matters, Mom. People were just curious.”
Darby runs a long finger across the top of her water glass. It sings a tiny note of squeaky joy. “I wanted kids. I wanted you. You know my dad wasn’t the greatest, right? I’ve told you I had a rough upbringing. He drank, and he hit, and he threatened, and my mom wouldn’t walk away, and she was always so miserable. I couldn’t do that to myself. I never wanted to be beholden to someone else for my happiness. I decided early on that I was going to be a single mother, and I never strayed from that.”
“But aren’t you lonely? I mean, it would be so hard to be alone all these years.”
“How could I be lonely when I have you and your brother? You’re my world, and always have been.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I have a bigger problem.”
“All right,” Darby says, leaning back in the chair. “Shoot.”
“It’s about the group. The match to the murder. I think we need to go to the police. Normally I would have said it on the page because the Halves—that’s what we call ourselves—we’ve been making most of the decisions together. But if the killer is a part of the group—”
“Slow down. Back up for me a moment, all right? You want to run me through how in the world you got hooked up with them—the Halves—in the first place?”
“Through the DNA website. You know, the one you send off your DNA and they send you your history?”
“I’m aware of such sites.”
“I did a lot of research on the science of this before I jumped in, and I used the DSR—that’s the Donor Sibling Registry—for advice, too. Anyway, right away I had a match that was, like, too close to be a cousin. It had to be a sister. I reached out, and she told me she was a donor kid. Several more had popped up by then. I sent them each a message, asked if they wanted to talk. It got unwieldy in the program, so I suggested we create our own server on Discord, where we could talk as a group.”
“So you did this publicly?”
“No, of course not. It’s a private server. It’s totally unfindable unless we give the link.”
“And you were the ringleader? You set all of this up?”
“I mean...technically?”
Darby sighs and shakes her head. “I don’t know whether to kill you or be proud, Scarlett. What have I told you about talking to strangers online?”
“These aren’t strangers, though. Not really. They’re my blood. They’re my siblings. We all have the same dad. We all want to meet him.”
“Not going to happen.”
Scarlett gives her mother a small smile. “Well, technically, it’s not your choice.”
Darby’s face darkens. “This isn’t about what I want or don’t, little darling. This is a legal issue. He—the donor—signed away his rights and was very specific that he didn’t want to be contacted by any potential offspring. You must respect that, Scarlett. You can’t meet him. He doesn’t want to meet you.”
