Natalie’s mouth curved in a wry grin. “A little silly to have caused all this trouble. I didn’t have much to eat all day, and I guess it caught up with me.”
He didn’t argue with her explanation, but began a few tests with her vision, hearing, reflexes, and memory.
When he was done, he looked pleased. “You have a nasty bump on the head, but it seems you were lucky—or have a hard head.”
She laughed. “Probably the latter.”
“Well, in this case that is good. The CT scan didn’t pick up anything, either.”
“Does that mean I can go home?” Natalie asked hopefully.
“I’d like you to stay overnight for observation.”
She heard the operative word: “like.” “But I don’t have to.”
He frowned but admitted, “No. I can’t hold you if you don’t want to stay here. Do you have someone who can stay with you?”
Guessing what Becky and the sheriff were going to say, she nodded and lied, “I can call someone.”
“Good,” the doctor said. “But you shouldn’t drive.”
“That’s okay,” the sheriff said. “I’ll drive her home. I have to head out that way to pick up Sammie from hockey practice later anyway.” Before she could object, he added to her, “You can call me in the next day or two when you need a ride back into town to pick up your car.”
“Or me,” Becky offered.
“That’s fine,” the doctor said. “I have some paperwork for Ms. Wilson to fill out, but if you two wouldn’t mind waiting outside there is something I would like to discuss with her in private.”
Both Brock and Becky looked curious but did as Dr. Peters asked.
Natalie gripped the sheets in her fists, her heart pounding in her chest. She felt like a cornered animal about to be asked a question she didn’t want to acknowledge, let alone answer.
She suspected what the doctor was going to say. From the bandage on the inside of her arm, she figured that along with the head scan they’d taken her blood.
“Are you aware, Ms. Wilson, that you are...?” He paused uncomfortably.
“Pregnant,” Natalie finished for him. “Yes.”
He looked relieved to not be the one breaking the news to her.
Her pregnancy was the reason she was alive and Jen was dead. Natalie had been violently ill and Jen had gone to the drugstore for her. Jen had come down from New York on the train for a long weekend visit so she’d taken Natalie’s car. The men who’d killed Jen thought it was Natalie who’d crashed into that freeway underpass.
As had everyone else. There had been no reason to think otherwise. It had been her car, her keys, and her wallet had any of it remained after the fire that had burned almost everything beyond recognition. Including Jennifer. Ironically, Natalie had insisted Jennifer take herwallet to pay for what she bought at the drugstore. She never dreamed that less than an hour later that insistence would enable her to take over Jennifer’s identity.
A wave of sadness hit her. The horror of her friend’s death was never far from her mind.
Even Natalie’s mother hadn’t realized who it was. She’d been the one to identify the body as it was too difficult on her father to travel. She didn’t want to think about what her death had done to him. To any of them: her dad, her mom, or her sister. The sister who needed her. She never could have cut herself off from Lana—Svetlana—if she wasn’t convinced it was the only way.
Identification mistakes in accidents weren’t unheard of. There was that big case a number of years back involving two Indiana college students in a car crash. One of the girls had been killed and the other so horribly injured no one—not even the parents—realized their IDs had been mixed up by an officer on the scene until the surviving girl woke from her coma five weeks later and wrote her name.
They, too, had looked close enough to pass for sisters.
In college Natalie and Jennifer used to joke about their resemblance. Jennifer had even used Natalie’s driver’s license as a fake ID for the couple of months before she turned twenty-one.
But now her friend was dead because Natalie had been too sick to drive herself to the store. Natalie had thought her sickness was from the news of Scott’s death, but Jennifer had guessed the truth: she was pregnant with the child of the man who she never should have fallen in love with.
She didn’t know what to think about it so she didn’t think about it. It was called denial. Big-time denial.
Instinctively—almost protectively—her hands went to her stomach. She hadn’t wanted a baby, didn’t know if she was ready to be a mother, and had no idea what she was going to do when the baby came in about twenty-three weeks. But she’d never thought about not having it.
