Chương 2
“We don’t believe you did.”
The elevator doors opened.
Two paramedics rushed out with a building security officer behind them.
For the next minute, questions collided around me.
How many weeks?
Thirty-four.
First pregnancy?
Yes.
Bleeding?
No.
Any complications?
Not until my brother decided I belonged in Queens.
One paramedic, a woman named Marisol, gave me a look that said she had heard stranger things but not many.
They moved me onto a stretcher.
I gripped the rail when another contraction tightened.
Reeves stepped aside.
“Ms. Morgan, we can speak later.”
“No.”
Marisol frowned at me.
“You need to focus on the baby.”
“I am.”
I pointed toward Ethan’s folder.
“He said those were transfer forms.”
Reeves’s jaw tightened.
“They are.”
“But you said someone already tried to transfer the apartment.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Shah answered this time.
“An electronic filing was submitted yesterday morning.”
Yesterday morning, I had been at my obstetrician’s office arguing with a parking app.
I hadn’t signed anything.
I hadn’t authorized anybody to sign for me.
The paramedics started rolling me toward the elevator.
“Whose signature?” I asked.
Reeves walked beside the stretcher.
“Yours.”
The elevator seemed colder than my apartment.
“What else?”
He hesitated.
That frightened me.
“Ms. Morgan, the filing is connected to a larger investigation.”
The doors began closing.
I caught his sleeve.
“What larger investigation?”
His eyes went briefly to my hand.
“Mortgage and identity fraud.”
The doors shut between us.
Marisol pressed the lobby button.
My building security officer stood in the corner pretending not to listen.
I looked at the ceiling numbers dropping.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-six.
Thirty-five.
“Can we stop?” I asked.
Marisol checked my blood pressure.
“The elevator?”
“Everything.”
“No.”
“That was mostly rhetorical.”
“I know.”
She tucked a blanket around my legs.
“You can be sarcastic after we get you downstairs.”
“I’m already sarcastic.”
“Then you’re ahead of schedule.”
At the lobby, people moved aside when they saw the stretcher.
Mr. Alvarez, the afternoon doorman, looked stricken.
He had known me since I bought the penthouse four years earlier and still insisted on calling me Miss Morgan despite approximately nine hundred requests not to.
“Miss Morgan, your family just—”
“I know.”
His mouth closed.
Outside, the ambulance lights washed red across the building’s limestone facade.
As they loaded me inside, I saw Reeves emerge carrying nothing.
Shah followed with an evidence technician from building security.
They were treating my home like a crime scene.
My phone buzzed.
For one irrational instant, I hoped it was Mom.
It was Chloe.
I opened the message.
Please don’t call the police until after tomorrow.
I read it twice.
Then I showed it to Marisol because I suddenly needed another human being to confirm the words existed.
She looked at the screen.
Her eyebrows rose.
“That your sister-in-law?”
“Almost.”
“Interesting family.”
“You should see Christmas.”
She handed the phone back.
A second message arrived.
Ethan didn’t mean for you to fall.
Then a third.
Please Claire.
I locked the screen.
At the hospital, everything became fluorescent light, clipped questions, monitors, consent forms, and strangers using my first name as if we had known each other for years.
My obstetrician, Dr. Lena Patel, arrived twenty minutes later with her hair twisted into a loose knot and her reading glasses still perched on top of her head.
She examined me, checked the fetal monitor, and finally pulled a rolling stool beside the bed.
“The baby looks okay right now.”
I released a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding.
“Right now?”
“You’re having contractions, and your membranes have ruptured.”
“Thirty-four weeks.”
“I know.”
Her voice stayed gentle without becoming falsely cheerful.
“We’re going to monitor both of you closely.”
I stared at the fetal heart tracing.
The quick rhythm filled the room.
My daughter.
I had been calling her Bean privately since the ultrasound, a nickname so embarrassing that I had threatened my best friend Maya with financial ruin if she ever repeated it.
Now that ridiculous name was the only word in my head.
Stay, Bean.
Stay.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was Dad.
I opened the message.
Your mother is very upset.
Nothing else.
No question about the baby.
No question about me.
I typed, So am I.
Then deleted it.
I typed, I’m at Lenox Hill.
Deleted that too.
Finally, I put the phone facedown.
Dr. Patel watched me do it.
“Someone coming?”
“My family is busy.”
She waited.
“They have a wedding tomorrow.”
Her expression didn’t change.
Doctors, I suspected, learned early how to hear terrible things without rewarding them with surprise.
“Do you have someone else?”
“Yes.”
I called Maya.
She answered on the second ring.
“If this is about the orchids, I swear I told the florist—”
“My water broke.”
Silence.
Then the scrape of a chair.
“Where are you?”
I told her.
“I’m coming.”
“Maya.”
“What?”
“I think Ethan tried to steal my apartment.”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
“Okay,” she said.
“That sentence has too many problems in it, so I’m going to deal with the hospital one first.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It hurt.
“Drive carefully.”
“I’m getting a cab.”
“You hate cabs.”
“I also hate your brother, and apparently today is about personal growth.”
She hung up.
Forty minutes later, Maya appeared carrying my overnight bag, a phone charger, two mismatched socks, and a toothbrush she admitted she had taken from my guest bathroom because she couldn’t find the unopened ones.
She had also brought the orchid centerpiece from my dining table.
I stared at it.
“Why?”
“I panicked.”
“You brought flowers to the hospital that were already in my house.”
“I said I panicked.”
She set them on the windowsill.
For five minutes, we talked about nothing.
She complained about the cab driver’s podcast.
I complained about the hospital gown.
Neither of us mentioned Ethan.
Then Reeves called.
I answered on speaker.
“Ms. Morgan, are you able to talk?”
“For a few minutes.”
May you like
“We secured the documents your brother brought.”
Maya sat straighter.
