Alex went pale.

“How did you get this?” he asked.

And Beatrice told him.

She had visited the hospital, quietly, while the babies were still in the NICU.

Through her long connection with Dr.

Vance, she had obtained discarded lab samples, and she had run a private test, because she had wanted to know, for certain, whether the four infants were truly Alex’s, before she decided whether or not to tell him they existed.

The results had proved that they were his.