The silence came back, but it had changed texture. It wasn’t disbelief anymore. It was judgment.

Patricia’s eyes went to Claire, demanding allegiance. Claire stared at her napkin. She looked to Mark, who shook his head slowly.

Finally she turned to me, and under all that makeup I watched something cold click into place, like a vault being bolted from the inside.

“You engineered this,” she hissed.

I laughed once, without humor. “You abandoned a child in a parking garage, Patricia. I just supplied the witnesses.”

As she turned to go, I caught something sticking out of her open handbag: a receipt from the boutique upstairs, timestamped twenty minutes earlier.