Still.
That one word nearly put me on the floor.
“But?” I asked.
Dr. Reese’s face softened with professional sorrow. “She has signs of trauma, blood loss, and uterine irritability. We’re trying to stop preterm labor. She also appears to have been given a sedative.”
“A sedative?”
“We’ll know more after labs.”
“Can I see her?”
“Soon. She’s asking for you.”
I followed her down a hallway that smelled of antiseptic and rain-soaked wool. Lily lay in a curtained room, smaller somehow beneath monitors and wires. Her belly rose under a blue blanket. A fetal heartbeat filled the room in fast, galloping rhythm.
Our son was still there.
Alive.
I stepped beside her bed.
Her eyes opened.
“I didn’t let them,” she whispered.
I bent close. “Let them what?”
She swallowed, tears shining. “Take him.”
My knees weakened.
“Lily, who was the doctor?”
She looked toward the curtain, afraid even of fabric.
“I don’t know his name. Your mother called him Martin. He had a black bag. She said he owed her.”
“Owed her what?”
Lily’s mouth trembled.
“She said blood pays blood.”
Before I could ask what that meant, she gripped my wrist with sudden strength.
“Adam. Listen to me. There’s a folder.”
“What folder?”
“In the nursery. Behind the moon painting. I hid it after she came the first time.”
“The first time?”
Her eyes filled with shame that should never have belonged to her.
“I tried to tell you,” she whispered. “You said I was overwhelmed.”
The memory struck me hard.
Two weeks earlier, Lily had called me at work crying. She said my mother had come by unannounced and touched her belly without asking. She said Evelyn had whispered something strange: This child should have been mine to decide.
I had been between meetings. Irritated. Embarrassed. Trained.
I told Lily my mother was intense, but harmless.
I told her pregnancy made everything feel bigger.
I told her to rest.
I had handed my wife back to the wolf and called it family.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but the words were too small to live in that room.
Lily closed her eyes.
“You have to see the folder before she gets it.”
Then her monitor spiked.
Nurses rushed in.
Dr. Reese pushed me back.
Lily cried out, one hand reaching for me.
“Adam!”
“I’m here!”
But the curtain closed between us.
This time, I did not stand still.
I ran.
The apartment was taped off when I got back, two police officers moving through the bedroom, photographing glass, blood, fingerprints. I told them about the folder. One of them, Detective Mara Voss, followed me to the nursery.
The room was soft blue and unfinished. A crib still waited in pieces against the wall because I had promised to assemble it after New York. There were tiny folded onesies in a drawer. A stuffed elephant sat on a shelf with its ears too big for its body. Above the changing table hung a painting Lily had made herself: a crescent moon over a sleeping fox.
My hands shook as I lifted it down.
Behind it was a slit in the wall backing, carefully taped.
Inside sat a manila folder.
Detective Voss put on gloves and opened it.
Photographs slid out first.
My mother outside our building.
My mother speaking to a man in a gray coat.
My mother entering the apartment with him at 2:14 p.m. two weeks ago, according to the printed timestamp.
Then medical documents.
Prenatal records.