PART 1: Three Faces by the Fountain
"Daddy, look! Those girls by the fountain have my face!"
Lily tugged my sleeve so hard that one of my cufflinks popped loose. It was a bright Saturday afternoon in Santa Barbara, and between the wedding toasts we had slipped out of my restaurant on the plaza so she could stretch her legs. She was the flower girl at my business partner’s wedding. She wore a mint-green gown covered in tiny embroidered flowers, a satin bow in her blonde curls, and a pearl purse her mother had let her borrow for the day. I was worrying about whether the kitchen had enough champagne. She was staring at something that was about to split my life in two.
Two little girls sat close together on the warm stone edge of the fountain. They had no shoes. One wore a beige dress and the other a faded pink one, both stiff with dirt. The bigger one held her sister’s hand the way you hold onto a railing in a storm.
My name is Daniel Whitmore. I’m 38 years old, and I own four restaurants along the California coast, the kind that food magazines photograph from above. I had always believed money could buy one thing for certain: safety for the people I loved. That afternoon I learned how little I actually knew.
I crouched in front of them. The taller girl lifted her chin, and my stomach dropped. She had Lily’s curls, only tangled. She had Lily’s dimple, on the left cheek only. And when she pushed her hair back, I saw it: a little finger bent slightly inward at the top joint. Lily had that same crooked pinky. So did my wife, Claire. So had Claire’s mother, and her grandmother before that. Every woman on that side of the family had it.
"We’re not begging," the taller girl said quickly. "We’re waiting."
Before I could reply, Lily opened her pearl purse and took out a turkey sandwich wrapped in a white napkin. She had saved it from the kids’ table. She held it out with a proud smile. "You can have it. I’m full from all the cake."
The smaller girl glanced at her sister for permission. The older one nodded. The little one took the sandwich, tore it in half, and handed the bigger piece to her sister without even thinking about it. Something in my chest twisted in a way I wouldn’t understand for weeks.
"What are your names?" I asked.
"I’m Rosie. She’s June. We’re twins. We’re six." Lily stepped in beside them, her mint gown brushing against their dusty hems, and all three looked up at me with the very same smile, the fountain sparkling in the sun behind them. A woman walking past with a stroller slowed down and said, "What beautiful triplets." I couldn’t get a single word out.
"Where is your mom?" I finally managed.
June squeezed Rosie’s hand. "Mommy cleans offices at night. She told us to wait by the fountain near the restaurant with the blue awning, because she had to talk to the man who owns it. She didn’t come back last night."
The restaurant with the blue awning was mine.
I called 911 and asked for police and child services. Then I sent my manager, Tessa, to bring water, bread and two clean tablecloths, and told her not to let anyone come near the girls. Lily sat down on the stones beside them as if she had known them all her life.
While we waited, Rosie unzipped a small pink backpack held together with safety pins. She pulled out a folded magazine page. It was a profile of me from last spring, with a photo of Lily on my shoulders at a restaurant opening. Someone had written in the margin in blue pen: "Daniel Whitmore. W-14. Ask him." Paper-clipped to it was a white storage label printed with a logo I knew far too well: Brightwater Reproductive Center. Lot W-14.
My blood turned to ice. W-14 was the code on our frozen embryos. Lily had been born through IVF at Brightwater. Afterward, Claire and I kept four embryos in storage, hoping to give her brothers or sisters someday. Ten months later, Dr. Victor Lang called us personally. A freezer had malfunctioned overnight, he said, and everything was lost. Claire cried for weeks. We received a settlement letter and a fruit basket.
"Where did your mom get this?" I asked, my voice shaking.
"From work," June said. "She cleans at the baby doctor’s office."
Then Rosie went rigid. She grabbed June and pulled her behind the curve of the fountain. Across the plaza, a heavyset man in a gray cap and windbreaker was lifting his phone and pointing it straight at us.
"That’s him," Rosie whispered, her whole body trembling. "That’s the man who took Mommy away."
He lowered the phone, slipped it into his pocket, and started walking directly toward us.
