Avenoir

Avenoir - Laura

Laura

"Amazing how all that baby weight has just disappeared, literally overnight," I laugh but there's no humor in the sound. "Really amazing."

"Oh, shut up," Kristen snaps nastily. "Go away, you interfering busybody!"

My eyebrow raises almost of its own accord. Now isn't this interesting? I've hit a nerve. A nerve that's making her nervous. I can see it in the way she is fiddling with the bedsheet, in the way her shoulders are rising up around her ears. I haven't been a psychiatrist for half of my life to miss when someone is lying. Or when someone is nervous that I'm too close to the truth.

My spidey senses aren't just tingling, they're damn near twanging back and forth.

"I met someone," I say with deliberate casualness. "While I was visiting the nursery." I have a theory. It seems highly unlikely, but this is Salem. And she is a DiMera. If anyone could make this happen, it's Stefano. "She was a little strange. She said she was there to visit her baby, but she wasn't a patient at the hospital."

"So?" I see Kristen's knuckles whiten where she grips the bedcovers. Interesting.

"She said she only gave birth yesterday and her baby is sick. That's very odd, don't you think?" I lean back in my chair, perchinh my chin on my fingers thoughtfully. It's a very theatrical gesture (I did theatre in high school, and it was either that or medicine when I went to college. Obviously, medicine won out) done with full deliberate effect.

"Is it?" Kristen shrugs her shoulders sulkily. "What's it got to do with me?"

"Well, that's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it Kristen," I smile easily. "What on earth would a mousy brunette, buck-toothed southerner have to do with you and your baby?"

I see her visibly recoil, her face pales until it is almost gray and I know I have her. Soo-san Banks and her baby have something to do with Kristen and John Jr., and as unlikely as it seems, I think I know what that something is.

"Why would a mother of a sick baby be released from hospital on the day she gave birth?" I ask carefully and slowly. "Unless, of course, she wasn't released."

"You're not making sense, Laura!" Kristen looks past me to the door. "Look, I'm tired and I need to sleep. I have a birth to recover from, and my baby is having an operation in the morning. I don't have the time or energy for your stupid riddles."

I raise my eyebrows and bite back a smile. She is freaking out and I think I know why.

"Yes, of course," I nod, pushing myself out of the chair and going to the door. "You have just been asleep though Kristen. I'm concerned that your fatigue is not normal, even for a postpartum mother. Dr. Robbins has checked you out, hasn't he?"

"Of course!" her answer comes a little too fast and frantic. "I am fine. Just tired."

"Right," I go to the door and look out and smile. "Oh look, here's David Robbins now."

"What!?" I turn around in time to see the look of panic flit across her face as the door swings open.