Cooking at the end of the day was relaxing for her. A self-taught chef, Monica had culinary talents that were legendary among her friends. But neither the walk nor the excellent pasta and salad she prepared for herself that evening did anything to settle her uneasy sense that a dark cloud was hanging over her.

It’s the baby, she thought. I have to discharge Sally tomorrow, but even if I check the DNA and learn that Ms. Carter isn’t the birth mother, what does that prove? Dad was an adopted child. I can hardly remember his parents, but he always said that he couldn’t imagine being brought up by anyone except them. In fact he used to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice. A widower, Roosevelt had remarried when Alice was two years old. When asked about her stepmother, Alice had replied firmly, “She was the only mother I ever knew or wanted to know.”

And having quoted that, and fully sharing for his adoptive parents the sentiment of Alice Roosevelt’s love for the stepmother who raised her, Dad always wondered and longed to know more about his birth parents, Monica mused. In his last few years, he was pretty much obsessed by it.

Sally was terribly sick when she was brought into the emergency room but there wasn’t a hint of any kind of abuse and she was obviously well nourished. And certainly Renée Carter won’t be the first person who turns her child over to a babysitter or nanny to raise.

The prospect of testifying about the disappearance of Michael O’Keefe’s brain cancer was another reason for concern. I don’t believe in miracles, Monica thought vehemently, then admitted to herself that Michael had been terminally ill when she examined him.

As she lingered over demitasse and fresh-cut pineapple, she looked around, as always finding comfort in her surroundings.

Because of the chilly evening, she had turned on the gas fireplace. The small round dining table and the upholstered chair where she was sitting faced the fireplace. Now the flickering flames sent darts of light across the antique Aubusson carpet that had been her mother’s pride and joy.