Chapter 13 - Forty-Eight Hours
I left the hospital with Owen in a donated car seat.
Not Julian’s car.
Not a Vance driver.
Mr. Alvarez’s old sedan.
He drove as carefully as if every pothole had personally offended him.
Rosa hugged me before we left.
“Call if you need help.”
“I don’t know what I need yet.”
“Then start with sleep.”
My apartment smelled wrong.
Eleanor’s perfume lingered above the detergent and cheap coffee.
The mattress had been shoved sideways.
My drawers stood open.
Mr. Alvarez watched my face.
“I changed the lock.”
“Thank you.”
He pointed to the kitchen.
“There’s soup.”
I cried again after he left.
Owen slept in the secondhand bassinet I had scrubbed three times before he was born.
I stood beside it until Nora called.
“The estate administrator has acknowledged the birth notification.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’ve requested records.”
“Before Friday?”
“Yes.”
“And the transfers?”
“The investigator is working on stopping further movement through the proper process.”
Not victory.
Movement.
That was enough for the next hour.
I slept for forty minutes.
Fed Owen.
Answered questions.
Slept again.
By evening, my life had shrunk to diapers, evidence, and the apartment door.
Gabriel brought groceries and left them outside until I invited him in.
He did not touch Owen without asking.
He did not call himself anything.
Grandfather was a word nobody had earned yet.
He washed two dishes while I ate.
Then his phone rang.
His lawyer’s office had found something in the old file.
A returned letter.
Sent to Eleanor after the reported death.
The envelope bore an address in Chicago.
Gabriel stared at it on his screen.
“She was here.”
“She said she was overseas?”
“Yes.”
He sat down slowly.
While he mourned a child supposedly buried in another country, Eleanor had been living less than an hour away.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Julian.
He had attached a photograph of our building.
Taken from across the street.
Come downstairs.
May you like
Alone.
Or I send the approvals to the police before your lawyer explains them.
