Chương 3
This time it landed differently.
Maybe because I was barefoot on my porch.
Maybe because my scalp still hurt where his fingers had been.
Maybe because my daughter was trying to enter the world while he stood between me and my own front door.
Another contraction seized me.
I gripped Erin’s forearm hard enough that she said, “Easy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You can squeeze.”
“I have nails.”
“I’ve had worse.”
She checked her watch.
This contraction lasted longer.
When it finally released, she looked at her partner.
“We’re going.”
I shook my head.
“I need my hospital bag.”
“I can get it,” Morales said.
“Upstairs bedroom, closet floor.”
Charles stepped forward.
“Nobody is going through my house without—”
“Your house?” I said.
The words came out almost gently.
He realized the mistake at the same moment I did.
Harrison’s eyes shifted toward him.
Charles recovered fast.
“You know what I mean.”
“No.”
For the first time that morning, I did not feel confused.
“I really don’t.”
Deputy Morales disappeared inside with Harrison while Erin and her partner helped me onto the ambulance stretcher.
My father stayed on the porch, watching them enter as though the deputies were the trespassers.
“You can’t search private rooms because she made an accusation,” he called after them.
Harrison stopped in the doorway.
“We’re retrieving her medical bag with her permission.”
Charles pointed toward me.
“She isn’t competent to give permission right now.”
Even Erin looked up at that.
I had spent most of my childhood hearing my father describe anger as irrational whenever the angry person happened to disagree with him.
The habit had once seemed annoying.
Now it looked like strategy.
“I am competent,” I said.
Charles gave me the exhausted expression of a parent dealing with a difficult child.
“You’re in labor, Victoria.”
“Yes.”
“That is exactly my point.”
“No, your point is that you need me to stop talking.”
His mouth opened.
The phone in his hand rang again.
Mercer Private Bank.
This time Harrison glanced at the screen.
“Probably should answer that eventually.”
Charles shoved the phone into his pocket.
“I’ll deal with my business when I’m not being harassed outside my daughter’s home.”
“My home,” I said.
He looked at me.
“My home.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
A car door slammed across the street.
Mrs. Donnelly had come outside wearing gardening gloves even though she did not appear to be gardening.
She pretended to inspect a hydrangea while staring directly at us.
Ordinarily I would have been mortified.
At that moment, I found her shameless curiosity reassuring.
Someone outside the family was watching.
Someone would remember.
Erin fastened a monitor around my abdomen.
A rapid mechanical heartbeat filled the ambulance.
I stopped breathing.
“That’s her?” I asked.
“That’s your baby.”
The sound was too fast to resemble anything human, and still I knew it immediately.
My daughter.
Lucas had heard that same heartbeat at every appointment he could attend.
The first time, he had stared at the ultrasound machine and whispered, “That seems excessive.”
The technician had laughed and explained the normal fetal heart rate.
Lucas had nodded seriously.
“Good, because I was about to ask whether she’s training for something.”
The memory arrived so cleanly that for a second I expected him to climb into the ambulance beside me.
Instead, there was only an empty patch of bench seat.
I turned my face toward the open doors before Erin could see me cry.
Deputy Morales returned carrying my navy hospital bag and Lucas’s old canvas backpack.
I frowned.
“I only asked for the bag.”
“I know.”
She lowered her voice.
“The backpack was sitting open beside it.”
My stomach tightened, but this time it was not a contraction.
“What was in it?”
“Some documents.”
Charles came down the porch step.
“You had no authority to take that.”
Morales did not look at him.
“Mrs. Gallagher, do you recognize this backpack?”
“Yes.”
“Whose is it?”
“Lucas’s.”
“Did you place it in your bedroom closet?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer sounded weak even to me.
Morales nodded anyway.
“Fair enough.”
Charles raised his voice.
“She’s admitted she doesn’t even know where things in the house belong.”
Harrison stepped out behind him holding a clear evidence sleeve.
Inside was a silver key.
I recognized the black plastic tag attached to it.
BG-4.
My father recognized it too.
His expression barely changed, but his right thumb began rubbing the edge of his wedding ring.
He had done that during arguments with my mother.
“What is that?” Harrison asked me.
I stared at the key.
“It belongs to the document room at Baldwin-Gallagher Logistics.”
Charles answered too quickly.
“It’s an old key.”
I looked at him.
“No, it isn’t.”
He gave a short laugh.
“Victoria, I ran that company before you could drive.”
“And Lucas changed the locks last year.”
Silence.
Harrison looked from me to Charles.
“Why?”
“Because somebody had been entering the records room after hours.”
My father’s jaw tightened.
“He was paranoid.”
“He changed the system after payroll files were moved.”
“You don’t know what happened.”
“I was standing there when he called the locksmith.”
The baby monitor continued its frantic little rhythm between us.
Harrison lifted the evidence sleeve.
“Is Mr. Baldwin authorized to possess one of these keys?”
“No.”
Charles turned toward him.
“This is absurd.”
“Where did you find it?” I asked.
Harrison glanced at Morales.
She answered.
“In the pocket of the sweatshirt Mrs. Baldwin was wearing.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Then Courtney appeared in the doorway.
“What sweatshirt?”
Charles spun around.
“Go inside.”
Her face changed.
“You said it didn’t matter.”
“Courtney.”
“You said—”
“Stop talking.”
It was not loud.
That made it worse.
Courtney crossed her arms, suddenly looking much younger than twenty-four.
There was a stain near the knee of her white jeans.
She stared at Charles with the furious uncertainty of someone discovering the script had changed without warning.
May you like
Harrison said, “Mrs. Baldwin, please stay where you are.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
