CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

I hated doctors. Let me rephrase that. I didn’t hate them—I hated the places where they practice, like offices and hospitals. Admittedly, even the sight of a white coat and stethoscope was enough to send me running the other way. I refused to date three otherwise great guys because one was a med student, one an intern, and one a lab worker. So, yes, I may have had a problem with the profession, but it wasn’t personal. I thought doctors were lovely people. I just didn’t want to make out with one.

Why did I have such a problem with hospitals and doctors? I had spent my life wondering that. I was so damned healthy I rarely got a cold. I had never stayed in a hospital. Or so I thought, until I discovered there were two and a half years of my life unaccounted for.

Naturally, I’d asked Pamela. She said I’d spent one night in a hospital, for a fever, actually. Todd wasn’t allowed to stay in my room, so he’d slept in the waiting area and woken to me screaming, alone and terrified. That could explain my phobia, but I felt like there should have been more.

Dr. Escoda was the daughter of my former physician, who’d passed away a few years ago. Her office was packed. It didn’t matter. Give Ricky two minutes with the middle-aged receptionist and we didn’t just get a promise that we could see the doctor between appointments, we were shown into an exam room immediately to “protect my privacy.”

Dr. Escoda showed up less than five minutes later, and as she scurried in, I smelled terror wafting from her body like bad cologne. She shook my hand, her damp fingers enveloping mine.

“Ms. Taylor-Jones,” she said. “I’m so glad you stopped by.”

The sweat trickling down her hairline called her a liar.

Back when we first discovered my file had been lost, Gabriel had mentioned the possibility of pursuing it as a legal matter. I hadn’t ruled it out.

“We’re still looking for your file,” she said. “I deeply apologize for the distress it must cause you. I doubt there’s anything important in those records—”

“That’s not the point, is it?”

Ricky’s voice was low and steady, but there was a note in it that I hadn’t heard since James’s funeral. Charming Ricky had disappeared in the waiting room. The guy beside me held his face impassive, his lips tight, not a hint of a smile in his eyes. His leather jacket lay over his knee, the patch clear. He leaned toward the doctor, forearms on his thighs, tattooed biceps straining his T-shirt sleeves, as he watched her like a hawk. No, more like a raven. Zero predatory interest, but a cold, calculating appraisal.

Ricky continued. “The point is not whether Olivia is healthy now, but whether there is anything in her past she should be aware of. Has she ever had chicken pox? Broken a bone? Minor issues, yes, but she has the right to know them.”

“Of course.” Dr. Escoda looked at me. “Your friend here—”

“Boyfriend,” Ricky corrected.

“Your boyfriend is right. Getting those records is important—”

“How often does this happen?” Ricky asked, controlling the conversation, intentionally cutting her short. “How many records mix-ups have you had in your own career?”

“None, but—”

“And your father’s? How many others have you discovered since he passed?”

“None, which is why—”

“So this appears to be an anomaly. An unprecedented situation.”

She hesitated before answering. “I will admit that mix-ups do happen, when records are misfiled or the wrong one is picked up, but that is both rare and temporary. We discover the mistake quickly, and it is rectified and—”

“Temporary mix-ups aren’t our concern. We mean situations like this. You’re saying there have been none at all.”

She straightened like a witness on the stand. “Yes. None.”

“And you have been unable to find Olivia’s records? Despite a thorough search?”

“Yes, Olivia’s—”

“Ms. Taylor-Jones.”

She bristled but didn’t wrest back control of the conversation. She didn’t seem to know how.

Ricky continued. “So you’ve searched—thoroughly—and been unable to find them. Have you turned up any records of children that could have been her? I’m presuming you’ve looked at that angle—other girls Olivia’s age?”

“My father had two other female patients within a year of Ms. Taylor-Jones’s age. Both continued with him throughout their childhoods, and there is no chance that their records are hers—or that their records are the ones mislabeled as hers.”

“Because of the spina bifida? It’s a rare-enough condition that it would be remembered, correct? Likely by anyone who worked with the child in those records.”

She didn’t answer.

“Dr. Escoda?” Ricky said. “Am I right? Anyone employed at that time would recall the girl with that condition.”

“It—it’s been twenty years. My father wasn’t a young man even then, and his employees weren’t young, either, and—”

“You’ve spoken to them. You’ve asked about the girl in the file.”

“My father ran a very small practice. He believed in absolute patient-doctor confidentiality, so—”

“So he would not have discussed the case with outsiders. But his nurses would know.”

“He only employed three during that time, and two have passed on—”

“But you’ve spoken to the third.”

Dr. Escoda glanced my way. I met her gaze expectantly.

“Dr. Escoda,” Ricky said. “If you have not spoken to this former nurse, then we will, whether you provide us with her name or not.”

“I have, but . . . she’s seventy and not in the best of health.”

“Alzheimer’s? Dementia?”

“No, but—”

“Any mental impairment related to her health issues?”

“No apparent ones, but—”

“What did she say?”

Now the doctor snuck a look my way, pleading with me to get her out of this, only to realize I was the last person who’d spare her.

“She said . . .” Dr. Escoda swallowed. “She remembered when the Larsens were arrested. She called my father, to make sure she was hearing right—she was certain she couldn’t be. When my father found out, he immediately contacted child services.”

“Child services?” I said.

“To be . . .” She swallowed again and cast another anxious look my way. “To be certain they knew how to care for you. Because of your condition. Because the Eden Larsen he had treated six months earlier had severe spina bifida.”

—

Ricky did not back down once he got his answer. If anything, it snapped off the leash, and he went after poor Dr. Escoda with everything he had. There was no shouting, no threatening, no intimidation. But that was all implied in his voice, in his expression, in the very way he held himself on that chair. You want us gone? Answer my questions.

He asked whether there was any way the damage could have been repaired. She said no, and he pursued every loophole there. Could the condition have been less serious than her father thought? What were the medical procedures at the time? What about experimental procedures? Even now, twenty years later, could it have been cured? She was adamant it could not. He had her check my back. There wasn’t even a pucker. My spine was perfect, my skin unblemished.

Was it possible that somehow, after the Larsens left her father’s care, something happened to their daughter and I replaced her? Dr. Escoda stared at Ricky as if he was crazy. He made her answer the question. No, it was not possible. Her father and his nurse had seen my photo following the arrest. I was the child they’d treated. To be sure, Ricky had her bring the file of the girl with spina bifida and compare every identifying factor in it. Hair color, eye color, blood type . . . it matched down to a tiny scar on the back of my elbow that had needed two stitches.

I was the girl in that file. The girl who couldn’t walk. Who’d been sentenced to life in a wheelchair. Who’d spent two years of her life in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals and then been taken out of her doctor’s care. Who reappeared, six months later, running and jumping and playing like any other toddler . . . after her parents murdered six people.