The room went quiet when I placed the ultrasound photo on the coffee table. My husband, Aleric, looked at it, then at me, while his mother stood beside the bassinet holding the three-month-old baby he had brought into our Greenwich home only days earlier.

incredibly fortunate,” Estelle cooed. “Imagine growing up in a family like the Sterlings.”

Near the windows, my husband was speaking quietly on the phone.

“Yes,” Aleric said. “The paperwork is almost finished. Custody won’t be an issue.”

I stopped in the foyer.

For a few seconds, no one acknowledged me.

Then I asked,

“Whose baby is that?”

Eleanor looked up.

Her smile tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Aleric didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

She looked down at the sleeping infant.

“He belonged to a distant cousin of his. She died suddenly, and the