The Other Baby
Chapter 6 — The Other Baby
Arthur didn't bring up the subject of my biological mother until the fourth morning I spent at the estate.
We'd fallen into a quiet routine by then, the kind of rhythm that develops between two people who are still learning each other but trying not to push too hard. Breakfast at the long marble kitchen island. Coffee — his black, mine with too much cream, a habit Consuela had memorized by day two without being told. Arthur reading the Financial Times on a tablet. Me pretending to read something on my phone while actually just sitting still for the first time in years, letting the silence be something other than loneliness.
It was Consuela who accidentally opened the door.
She was clearing the breakfast plates when she paused beside Arthur, her hand resting gently on his shoulder. "Mr. Whitfield, should I put fresh flowers in Mrs. Whitfield's room today? The lilies arrived this morning."
Arthur's face changed so fast I almost missed it. A flicker of something raw crossing his carefully composed expression before he smoothed it away.
"Yes," he said quietly. "Lilies were her favorite."
Consuela nodded and left without another word, the way someone does when they've been navigating another person's grief for a very long time and know exactly which silences to fill and which to leave empty.
I set my coffee down slowly. "Your wife."
It wasn't really a question.
Arthur stared at a point somewhere past the kitchen window, where the morning sun was turning the olive trees golden. "Katherine," he said. "She died fourteen years ago. Ovarian cancer. She fought it the way she fought everything — stubbornly, brilliantly, and without ever once asking anyone to feel sorry for her."
He paused, and I watched him choose his next words with the kind of care that told me he'd thought about saying them many times before but had never found the right moment.
"She never stopped looking for you, Mariana. Even when I wanted to give up, even when every private investigator came back with nothing, she'd sit at that desk in her office with stacks of hospital records and adoption files spread out around her like a general planning a campaign. She used to say, 'Our daughter is out there somewhere, Arthur. She's living a life she doesn't know isn't hers. And one day she's going to have questions, and someone needs to be ready with the answers.'"
My throat tightened in a way I wasn't prepared for.
This woman — this Katherine I would never meet, whose room still received fresh flowers fourteen years after her death — had spent decades searching for me while I had no idea she existed. While I was growing up in a middle-class neighborhood thinking I knew exactly who I was and where I came from, a woman on the other side of the city was refusing to stop looking for me.
"She sounds incredible," I managed.
"She was," Arthur said simply. "And you look exactly like her. Not just the features — the way you hold yourself when you're thinking. The way you go quiet instead of loud when something hurts. Katherine did the same thing. Used to drive me crazy because I never knew if she was fine or devastated until she decided to tell me."
I smiled despite the ache in my chest. "That does sound familiar."
Arthur reached across the island and placed his hand over mine, briefly, just long enough for the gesture to mean something without becoming too heavy.
"There's something else you should know," he said. "About the other baby."
I frowned. "The other baby?"
"The one who went home with us," Arthur said carefully. "The baby girl who was raised as Katherine's and mine, while you were growing up somewhere else."
The air in the kitchen shifted. I'd been so focused on the shock of my own identity that I hadn't fully considered the flip side of the equation — that somewhere out there, another woman had spent her entire life believing she was Arthur and Katherine Whitfield's daughter.
"Her name is Claire," Arthur continued. "Claire Whitfield. She's your age, obviously. Grew up in this house, went to the best schools, inherited Katherine's stubbornness and my taste in expensive coffee."
He hesitated.
"We told her the truth six years ago, after Katherine passed and I finally had enough evidence to be certain the switch had actually happened. She... didn't take it well."
"What does that mean?"
Arthur's jaw tightened slightly. "It means she hasn't spoken to me in four years. She took her trust fund, moved to New York, and made it very clear that as far as she's concerned, biology doesn't override thirty years of being someone's daughter."
"She's not wrong about that," I said quietly.
Arthur looked at me with something that might have been gratitude. "No. She's not. And I don't blame her for being angry. But what concerns me isn't her anger — it's what she might do if she finds out about you before she's ready."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean Claire still has significant financial ties to Whitfield Holdings. She has a board seat. She has allies within the company who are loyal to her specifically, not to me. And if she learns that I've found my biological daughter and that daughter might inherit everything Claire has spent her life assuming was hers..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
I sat with that for a long moment, my hand resting unconsciously on my stomach beneath the counter where Arthur couldn't see it.
So there was another woman out there. A woman who'd grown up in my place, lived my life, received my inheritance, and now had every reason in the world to see me as a threat rather than a sister.
As if this situation wasn't complicated enough already.
"Does she know about the DNA test?" I asked.
"Not yet," Arthur said. "And for now, I'd like to keep it that way."
More secrets. More silence. More waiting.
I was starting to realize that the Whitfield family operated on an entirely different level of strategic patience than anything I'd experienced in my old life — where Ryan's idea of long-term planning was booking a restaurant reservation two days in advance.
"Fine," I said. "But Arthur — at some point, the truth has to come out. All of it. You can't build a relationship with me by keeping me a secret from everyone else in your life."
Arthur nodded slowly. "I know. And it will. Just... not yet."
That phrase again. Not yet. It was becoming the unofficial motto of my new existence.
May you like
I picked up my coffee and took a long sip, staring out at the olive trees, thinking about a woman named Claire Whitfield who had no idea I existed — and who was almost certainly going to hate me the moment she found out.
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