I panted in terror as I listened for them to open the door. To my great relief, the footsteps continued past, and I heard them carry on down the hall, farther than Gray’s room. A door shut a few moments later, and I released a long, strained breath.
I sank down to the floor, waiting to give them a chance to fall asleep. If Gray were to start crying, she’d come for him. I needed to give myself the best chance possible, though my entire body tingled with excitement and anticipation. I was seconds away from holding him in my arms, and it was more exciting and terrifying than being wheeled down the long hall on my way to deliver him. This time, though, we were both in more danger.
I sank to the linoleum of the bathroom floor, smelling the ammonia of uncleaned urine on the floor, and curled my lips. My body hurt, and taking the moment to slow down was showing me just how much. My stomach wound felt like it had been torn open again, despite there being no blood, and my skin screamed in agony. My arms were so sore I was sure I’d scraped my elbow on the roof, my feet were throbbing from my fall, and I’d cut my back on the gutter on the way down. I was exhausted and terrified, but I couldn’t stop. I was this close. If I’d given up, I’d never have gotten this far.
Gray was depending on me. I was all he had. I had to find him. I had to get him out of here and away from this woman…away from the danger his father put him in.
We could move away, change our names, and disappear. No one would have to know who we were or where we came from. It wasn’t safe for us to stay. The thought of taking him away was bittersweet, mostly because of my career and Dannika. But I would give it all up, burn it all down for him.
When the house had been silent for a while, I pushed up from the floor and moved toward the door. I pulled it open a half inch per second, easing it until there was enough space for me to sneak out into the dark hallway. I could see moonlight seeping in under the doors as I moved stealthily down the hall. I stopped at the door that held my son, taking a half-breath to prepare myself.
This was it.
I placed one hand on the cool, metal knob, the other on the wood of the door, counted to three in my head, and pushed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The small room was painted with moonlight, giving me just enough to see what it contained. The crib was in the far corner of the mostly empty room. It was old and worn, with a few of the bars painted while others weren’t. There was a wicker rocking chair just beside it, piled high with a combination of musty hand-me-downs and brand new baby clothes. A picture frame hung on the wall, though there was not yet a picture in it.
I moved across the room quickly, the rough carpet rubbing against my shoes on my way to him.
I took a deep breath, my vision clouding as tears quickly filled them, then dropped down onto him before I could stop them. I reached into the crib and picked him up. He was dressed in only a diaper, his hair slick with sweat in the hot room. He’d grown so much in just a few days.
I lifted him to my chest, and he began to cry out, though he calmed at once against my skin.
He knew me.
He hadn’t forgotten.
I was still his mom.
“Shhh, Gray baby,” I whispered, inhaling his scent. I never wanted to lose that smell, never wanted to let him go. I was torn between standing there forever and savoring him, breaking down into sobs with gratitude at finally having him back, and running for our lives. I squeezed him tightly, kissing his head and wiping down his cheeks. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s here.”
I sucked in a breath as he let out another cry, and I bounced him feverishly. My breasts filled with milk, painful and swollen at once, which only seemed to make his crying worse. Panic swept through me, my body turning to ice as I tried and failed to calm him. His body writhed in my arms, and I moved to the window, unlocking it with my free hand and attempting to lift it up.
I struggled against the heavy, painted-shut window. Come on, come on, come on. Gray’s cries grew louder, more fury-filled, in my ear. He was hungry. He was angry. He was afraid.
Behind me, the door flew open with a gust of air, and the light flipped on. I hadn’t heard her coming. I didn’t know she was there. I turned around in horror, staring at the face I’d had playing on a loop through my mind for days. Her hair was dark now, just like in her most recent picture.
Her eyes narrowed at me, the knife in her hand drawn high like an ancient dagger set to be slashed through a stone.
“Put him down,” she demanded, her voice low. I held up a hand, shielding him from her as she moved closer.
“Okay, okay… Don’t hurt him,” I begged, placing him back in the crib quickly before turning around, blocking Gray with my body.
“Palmer, right? What are you doing here?” she asked, her brow furrowed. “How did you find me?”
I shook my head. “Does it even matter? I just want him back. Let me take my baby, and I’ll never tell the police where you are.”
“You’ll never tell them anything anyway,” she said, spittle forming in the corners of her mouth. “You’re never leaving here. Don’t you get that, Palmer? You couldn’t just leave us alone, could you? Coming here tonight was a grave mistake.”
“I could never leave you alone as long as you had my son. I just want him back. Just let me take him, and I’ll go away. I promise you I will.”
“You could just go have another one. Don’t you know how lucky you are?” she cried, her hand shaking as she tightened her grip on the knife.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I said, shaking my head. “I just want my son. Please. I can’t be without him.”
“You really don’t get it. He’s my son now. Mine. He’s not going home with you. He’s going to forget about you. He’s not going to ever know you existed.”
“Why?” I cried, turning as she moved around the room, always keeping my body between hers and the crib. “Why are you doing this?”
“He was never yours! He was supposed to be mine! He was supposed to be mine!” she fumed, her frail body shaking as it grew red with anger. I watched as she lowered the knife just a hair, trying to decide if I could catch her off guard and wrangle it from her grasp.
“He’s not, though, Katherine. He’s my son. He needs me—”
She lunged forward, and I put my hand up, grasping her wrist as she attempted to plunge the knife into my chest. I pushed back, my strength an even match for hers, even at my weakest. I shoved her, trying to grasp the knife, but she pulled it back, kicking me square in the stomach. I fell to my knees, my arms wrapped around myself as I crawled away from her, trying to catch my breath. Something was wrong. My stomach felt strange, red hot with pain. When I glanced down, there was blood on my shirt. She moved forward with purpose, grabbing hold of my hair, and I grasped the nearest thing I could find, a lamp on the nightstand next to the crib, and swiped it at her, every movement a white-hot poker to my stomach. She met my arm with the knife, slicing into my skin, and I dropped the lamp. “Ah!” I cried out, trying to get closer to the crib again. I couldn’t allow her to touch my baby again.
I darted past her, ignoring the pain in my stomach, and she spun around, her arm raised high in the air as she plunged the knife down. One of my hands was pinned underneath me, supporting my weight, the other now carrying a deep, knife gash, and I found it impossible to move it quick enough. I watched in slow motion as the knife came down, waiting for the blow. I ducked, heard the slam of the door as it swung open and slammed into the wall, and watched the feet approaching just as the knife connected with my shoulder, the new pain competing with the old. I screamed out, jerking back and looking up as the pain tore through my body, and I collapsed on the musty carpet.
When I looked up, the woman stood above me, but rather than triumph on her face, there was pain. Confusion. She looked down to where, on the center of her pink shirt, a violet circle grew. She dropped the knife, stepping backward. I gasped as I watched her fall, the pain in my stomach throbbing as my vision faded in and out, and I re
ached a hand around to staunch the bleeding from my shoulder.
I looked back to the doorway, still not believing what I saw. He stood in the doorway, a large, bloody kitchen knife in his hand as he towered over her body with a terrifying grimace. He was bleeding from his head and upper thigh, and completely covered in dirt. When he looked at me, his expression softened, even underneath the mud.
“Ben?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ben
I was never going to be the hero in this story. I made too many mistakes. Did all the wrong things. But I wasn't the monster she thought I was.
I still remembered everything about the day I got the call. What I was wearing—white shirt, blue tie, black slacks. What I was thinking about just before—whether or not our boss would make us stay late because her customer was being extra difficult. What I had for lunch—tacos that I threw up the second the call ended.
I remembered seeing the number pop up on my screen, one I didn’t recognize. I shouldn’t have answered it, and normally I wouldn’t on the clock, but I had to then. Something pulled me to it, some unexplainable force.
I remembered the way the words ran over me, like blades piercing my skin steady and slow. “Your wife was in a car accident. We need you to meet us at Saint Francis.”
I stood from the desk, my knees colliding with its wood. “Is she…is she okay?”
The voice was quiet. “It doesn’t look good, son. Just meet us soon.”
I hung up, emptied my stomach into the wastebasket, and rushed out the door without a word to anyone. To be honest, I didn’t remember the drive there. It was all kind of a blacked-out part of my memory, but I remembered the rest in such vivid color, it was as if there was no space left for that insignificant part of the day.
The hospital was full of nurses and patients, busy like bees, and I somehow found my way to the front desk and demanded to see her. They made me wait for hours, believing the worst. Believing she was dead.
That I’d lost her.
When the doctor finally came for me, he pulled his scrub cap down in front of his chest, his expression a full apology without a word.
“She’s being taken to the ICU. She came through surgery…she’s not in the clear yet, but we believe she’s going to pull through.”
I swallowed, rubbing my palm over my face, mixing my sweat with my tears. “Thank God,” I choked out. “Is she…” I blinked. “I mean…the baby. Is the baby okay?”
The doctor’s eyes fell. “I’m so sorry. Your wife suffered extreme trauma to her abdomen in the crash. We did all we could to save them both, but we lost the baby’s heartbeat. Because of all the damage, there was no way to repair her uterus. We were forced to do a total hysterectomy.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s going to need you when she wakes up. Not only did she lose a baby today, she lost the chance to ever have one again.”
I could see it in his expression…she’d never recover. Not really. Even though she’d healed physically, the bleeding stopped, her scars faded, the woman I’d married was not the woman I was living with anymore.
Over time, we grew apart. I know it’s cliché. I know you’re thinking about what a piece of shit I am right now, and believe me, I am too. But how do you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? How can you be there for someone who shuts you out?
After a year of silence, a year of direct answers to direct questions, a year of doctor’s appointments and crying, and endless fights and blame and drinking too much and not eating enough, I couldn’t do it anymore.
In my weakest moment, I asked her for a divorce. I walked away from the girl I loved, the girl I’d loved since high school, the girl I’d thought I’d love for the rest of my life, and when I did…I felt free for the first time in so long.
I never completely allowed myself to feel my own grief because I was always deescalating hers. I never felt allowed to get mad, even when she’d left the food out all night and it spoiled, even when she’d quit her job and left everything up to me, even when she refused to see the doctors I couldn’t afford but tried to get her to see anyway.
She needed help, but I was out of options. I was out of patience, out of pain, out of grace.
Her parents checked her into a facility to deal with her depression, but she checked out almost immediately. She refused to be helped.
I’m not blaming her, okay? I know I’ll never know the way it felt to have a life taken from my body, but I lost my son that day, too. I lost the family I planned. The future I predicted. I lost everything I thought my future would hold in the blink of an eye, but I stayed. I tried to get better. Get over it. I tried to make things better for her, show her there were other ways. We could still have a family. There were options.
She wasn’t interested.
So, believe me when I say I exhausted every avenue I believed I had. I tried. God, I tried. In the end, it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. She wanted our child back, and I could never give her that.
No one could.
I met Palmer the month after I moved from Red River to Oceanside. When I say she was not in the plan, I mean it more than I can tell you. I wanted to clear my head, figure out what I wanted for my life, figure out how to deal with all I’d dealt with over the last year. So, I left the bank. I got a job at a hardware store, just trying to make ends meet while I crashed on a buddy’s couch, and I vowed to move on with my life.
When Palmer came into the store one day, looking for wood to build her own bookshelf, I asked her out before I’d even realized it happened. I legitimately don’t even remember how it happened. Two weeks later, I finished the bookshelf she’d given up on when her Pinterest plan didn’t work out.
Three months later, three blissful months spent with someone who actually wanted me around, someone who could look me in the eye and not see all the pain my love had caused, someone whose entire history with me wasn’t torn to shreds by a drunk idiot running a red light, and I couldn’t get enough. I lapped her up like a dog to water. Breathed her in like she was oxygen I’d never had. I fell in love with her harder than I could’ve braced myself for, and when she told me she was pregnant, I proposed right away. Like, that second.
It wasn’t because of the baby, though that certainly helped. It was almost like I’d been waiting for an excuse to do it. I loved her, but I didn’t want to scare her off. She was fiercely independent, wealthy on her own, used to doing things her way. She didn’t need me, and that terrified me. I didn’t want to move things too fast and scare her away.
It wasn’t until after we announced Palmer’s pregnancy that I heard from Kat for the first time since I’d filed for the divorce. She’d been refusing to sign the papers, but once she heard about the baby, I begged her to sign. I wanted to marry Palmer. Kat wanted proof that it was mine. She was angry, hurt. I hadn’t told Palmer about my past, so I could never explain the need for a paternity test to her. I ordered a fake paternity test result online from a prank store and had it sent to her. A week later, she signed the papers. I thought it would be the last time I heard from her.
When Palmer was midway through her pregnancy, Kat contacted me again. She apologized, said she was sorry for the way she’d handled things. The way she handled everything. She told me she was healthy. That she’d been going to therapy, processing her grief. She’d started her old food blog back up, and she was getting to travel around the US to run it. She told me she was sorry for all the pain she put me through and that she knew I’d tried my best.
She told me that she loved me. That she always would.
Without me having to say it, she knew I felt the same way.
As the pregnancy neared its end, Kat would send me occasional congratulations and warm wishes. I never believed it was inappropriate. After Gray was born, she asked if she could meet him. She said that seeing me happy, seeing me moving on, me as a dad, she thought it could help her move on as well. She said she was thinking about adopting.
I was an idiot. I remember
ed her for who she was, believed her when she said she was better. I met her at the park near our apartment on Palmer’s first day back to work. I never wanted to hide what I was doing—I didn’t want to sneak around—but I couldn’t bear to tell Palmer about Kat. I didn’t want her to think about me, what I still thought of myself—that I was a coward. That I ran away when things got hard. That I wasn’t worthy of love if I couldn’t stick around and make my vows mean something. I could never tell her the truth. I didn’t want her to look at me the way my family did. The way Kat’s family did.
The first time we met up, she seemed so normal. Like her old self. I was cautious with Gray, but I let her talk to him, let her play with him. It really seemed like it helped. She even brought him a sweet little onesie that was quirky and adorable, just like her. I thought things were going to be okay. Finally, this nagging worry in the back of my head could fade because it genuinely seemed like she was better.
That night, her father called me. I hadn’t heard from him since I’d left, though since then, I’d been sending him most of my paychecks—one thousand dollars a month—to help get the house paid off that Kat and I bought together. He had moved Kat home to Crestview; she was living in her parents’ rental house next door to them, but the mortgage still had to be paid until it would sell. In a small town, that could be awhile. It was costing me nearly everything I made to do it, but it was only fair. The divorce had granted it to her, but I still felt responsible. It wasn’t her fault she’d struggled to keep a job, nor her parents’ fault. They weren’t rich, and they’d always struggled to make ends meet, so taking on our mortgage wasn’t exactly ideal for them. We all just shouldered the responsibility the best way we knew how.
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