Chapter 3 - The First Night
The boys were asleep upstairs, but the house felt utterly different with a fourth presence breathing under its roof. We had set up a makeshift bassinet in the guest room down the hall from our master suite. I sat in the rocking chair, wrapped in a heavy wool cardigan, watching Lily's tiny chest rise and fall under the pale light of a streetlamp bleeding through the blinds.
James stood in the doorway, his silhouette blocking the dim hallway light. "You should sleep, Clara. You’ve been sitting there for three hours."
"I can't," I murmured, my voice raspy. "Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing Mrs. Gable’s face. I keep thinking about what she said about the clinic. Irregularities. James, what does that actually mean? Why would an anonymous donor lot from nine years ago suddenly pop up in a hospital four miles from our house?"
"I don't know," James said, stepping into the room and crouching beside my chair. He reached out, his rough, calloused thumb gently brushing the back of my hand. "The detective assigned to the abandonment case called me while you were filling out the insurance paperwork. He said the mother who left her matched a description of a woman spotted near the old fertility clinic three days ago. She wasn't a random stranger, Clara. She knew who we were."
My blood ran cold. The rocking chair froze. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying she didn't just leave a baby at a random hospital. She left her here. In our town. At the hospital where my brother works as an administrator, where my name was already on file." James’s eyes locked onto mine, dark and troubled. "Someone wanted us to find her. Or worse... someone is watching us."
Before I could process the chilling implication of his words, a sharp, piercing sound cut through the silence of the house. It wasn't Lily. Lily was still sleeping soundly, her tiny fists curled near her cheeks.
It was the baby monitor on the nightstand, tuned to Sam’s room upstairs. But Sam wasn't crying.
Instead, through the static-laced speaker, a strange, low voice was whispering. It wasn’t a child’s voice. It sounded raspy, distorted, like someone speaking directly into the microphone downstairs near the back door.
“Open the back door, James. You left something outside.”
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James froze. His head snapped toward the ceiling, his muscles going rigid. Without a word, he stood up, grabbed the heavy iron flashlight from the dresser, and bolted out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time.
I grabbed Lily from her bassinet, clutching her tightly to my chest, and followed him into the dark hallway, stepping into a nightmare that had only just begun.
