Chapter 5 - A Door Without a Handle
Emma sat in the chair Adrian had pulled away from my bed.
I watched her twist the cheap silver ring on her finger.
I’d given it to her when she graduated.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Tell me everything.”
She looked at Adrian.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes returned to mine.
“At first, she only wanted copies.”
“Of what?”
“Your emails. Your bank statements. Things from your laptop.”
I remembered Emma borrowing it while hers was being repaired.
There had never been a repair.
“She said you were helping people hurt Adrian.”
“And you believed her?”
Emma looked down.
“No.”
The word hit harder because it was honest.
“She showed me what would happen if I didn’t help. Pictures of my apartment. My car. Then the debt disappeared.”
“What about the divorce?”
“I told him what she told me to say.”
Adrian’s hands curled at his sides.
I looked at him.
“Stay there.”
He stayed.
Emma wiped her face.
“When you got pregnant, I thought it was over. I thought she’d let you go.”
“Instead?”
“She said the baby belonged with the Morettis.”
I felt our daughter move beneath the hospital blanket.
“What was supposed to happen tomorrow?”
Emma couldn’t speak.
“Say it.”
“They were going to tell you she didn’t make it.”
The room tilted.
Adrian reached toward me.
I caught his wrist before he could touch my stomach.
“I need a minute.”
He stopped.
Emma was sobbing now.
“They said she’d be raised somewhere safe. That you’d get money. A new start.”
“And you thought I’d accept that?”
“No.”
“Then you thought I’d be too broken to fight.”
She covered her mouth.
I pressed the call button.
A nurse came in.
“I need hospital security and the police.”
Emma lifted her head.
“Claire.”
“You’re going to tell them what you told me.”
“I’ll lose everything.”
I looked at her for a long time.
“You helped them plan for me to leave a hospital with an empty car seat.”
She had no answer.
Two officers arrived.
Then a detective named Lena Ortiz, who asked direct questions and wrote down the answers.
Emma agreed to give a statement.
She handed over her phone.
For the first time that day, I thought we might have found a way out.
Then Adrian’s lawyer arrived.
Not the man who’d handled the divorce.
A woman named Ruth Halpern, carrying a leather folder.
She asked to speak to me alone.
Inside the folder was a court document.
An emergency guardianship petition.
My name was at the top.
May you like
Attached was a psychiatric evaluation I’d never attended.
The hearing was scheduled for eight the next morning.
