“How do you know all this?”
“I grew up here. I went to school with Madison. People talk. I used to hear my mom and her friends talk about the Clarks all the time when I was younger. They’re like royalty in this area.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“After Madison married Max, they both really wanted children, but I heard that the doctors said Madison’s condition was much more advanced than Nora’s at her age. So Max wanted to adopt, but the Clarks are really against adoption—you know, blood heirs for their fortunes, optics, all that.” Melanie rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I heard Max and Madison fought about it a lot and supposedly they even split up for a while. The Clarks tried to squash the rumors because they’re so careful about their reputation, but my best friend heard it from her dad, who supposedly overheard Mr. Clark blabbing about it a little at the country club bar one day when he’d had too many.”
“Then what?” I pressed.
“Well, I don’t know how much of this to believe … the rumors, I mean. But Max has an apartment in the city, and I heard he was dating around while they were split up. This girl Iknow was at a party in the city and said she saw Max all up on some girl at a bar. Iheardthat Max ended up getting some random woman pregnant. Madisonflipped out. Supposedly she went to the city to try and work things out with him. They both came back to town a couple of weeks later and seemed perfectly happy together, like the split had never happened. They were excited and telling everyone they’d found a surrogate and were having a child. But some people think they just planned to try and get custody of that ‘oopsy-baby,’ and wanted people to think she was their surrogate, not that Max had slept with her on the side. Like it was all planned.Madison and Nora were all excited that she was going to have a baby, finally. But then, the girl lost the baby. They were devastated.”
My vision blurred, and a muffled thrumming filled my ears, like I was underwater.
She was talking about me.
She continued. “I remember the day Mrs. Clark came in to the coffee shop. She was so upset for her ‘precious baby girl,’ losing her baby.”
Her baby?!
“She said Madison was inconsolable.”
She was sad about losingherbaby?My hands were trembling. I tried to hide them under the table so Melanie wouldn’t see them shake.
“Apparently, after Madison healed from the whole tragedy, I heard they were researching other surrogates. I mean, the Clarks are so wealthy—why not, right? A couple of months later, Mrs. Clark came in all happy—she said they’d found a new surrogate, and the girl was already pregnant.”
“You think she meant Savannah?”
“Yeah, she definitely did. Because about a month after that, she came in looking super unhappy. I asked her what was wrong. All she said was, there were ‘problems’ with the surrogate. Maybe she was having second thoughts? I didn’t think that was legal. Ifyou sign a surrogacy agreement, then legally, it’s not your baby, right? Even if you’re carrying it? That’s what I thought, anyway. When I said that to Mrs. Clark, she just rolled her eyes and said the surrogate was causing trouble anyway.”
So Max and the Clarks lied and told everyone Savannah was their surrogate? Not that Max slept with her, too?I chewed on the information for a moment. I could feel all the pieces starting to come together. “So … how did the DCS scam come about?”
Melanie looked away and breathed out, long and slow. Obviously, she didn’t want to go there; she didn’t want to incriminate herself.
“Melanie? Come on, you need to tell me.”
She gave me a defeated look. “Fine. Not long after that, Nora came into the coffee shop and asked to talk to me. She showed me a picture on her phone. It was me … doing something … something I never should have done.”
“Doing what?”
Melanie’s eyes flashed in anger. “Look, that’s none of your business. Let’s just say it was something bad—something that could really hurt my family. It would tear them apart if they knew.”
“Okay—then what?”
“She said if I did what she wanted, she’d delete the photo, and she’d pay me five thousand dollars. And I could really use that money to help pay off my student loans. I’ve been trying to find a good job and get out of Starbucks ever since my grad school graduation, and I’m having no luck.”
“So you posed as a DCS investigator to rattle Savannah?”
She flashed me a guilty look. “First, I had to dress up like Savannah, in a wig with a belly pad under my dress. She told me to go into the city, go to a couple shops and buy some stuff—crazy, gross stuff—and then go to a liquor store and buy a case of booze. She had me use a credit card she loaded into my ApplePay. Then I had to pose as the DCS investigator and use a photo of me as Savannah, buying the booze, as evidence against her. She paid me half up front, and said she’d pay me the other half once the situation turned in her favor.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“All I know is, the whole idea was to scare Savannah. Freak her out, drive her crazy, so she looks totally unfit to be a mother. That way, everyone would think that Madison and Max should clearly be the ones to raise the baby. I don’t know … I’m starting to suspect that maybe the surrogacy agreement between them wasn’t totally on the up-and-up. Otherwise, I wouldn’t think there would be any question about who will raise the child—it would be in the agreement, right?”
My God.I’d suspected some of this, but still.This family—they’re total monsters.
I swallowed and looked back at Melanie. “What else?”
“Well, she wanted information on everyone close to Savannah. So I conducted ‘character witness interviews.’ ” Melanie made air quotes with her fingers. “She seemed especially interested in Savannah’s best friend, Ellie. She wanted to know where she lived, where she worked, how often they saw each other, all of that.”
