Chapter 2
For three seconds, Patricia did not blink.
Not once.
She stared at Ethan’s phone like it had grown teeth.
Then she recovered.
She always recovered fast.
“What are you talking about?” she whispered. “Ethan, sweetheart, you’re confused.”
He looked at her arm.
The scratches.
The tears.
The trembling mouth she had practiced for years.
Then he looked at me on the floor.
My hair half-pulled loose.
My shoulder against the bed frame.
My daughter screaming with her tiny fists shaking in the air.
Ethan’s face collapsed.
“Emily,” he said.
He moved toward me.
I flinched.
I hated myself for it.
He saw.
His eyes filled.
“I’m not going to touch you unless you say I can.”
That sentence broke me.
Because six days ago, he had held my hand while I gave birth.
Because I had trusted him.
Because his mother had known exactly how to make me afraid of my own husband.
I nodded once.
He came slowly, lifted Lily first, and placed her in my arms.
The second my daughter touched my chest, I could breathe again.
Then he crouched beside me.
“Are you hurt?”
Patricia made a strangled sound.
“Ethan, look at me. I’m bleeding.”
He did not turn.
“Mom, sit down.”
She gasped.
“Excuse me?”
His voice hardened.
“Sit down.”
She sat on the edge of the chair near the window.
Not because she wanted to.
Because for the first time, Ethan sounded like someone she could not bend.
He replayed the video.
I did not want to watch.
I did anyway.
The screen showed Patricia entering my bedroom.
It showed her demanding Lily.
It showed her pulling the bassinet.
It showed her grabbing my hair.
It showed me hitting the headboard.
It showed her scratching her own arm when the garage opened.
My stomach twisted.
Then came the part Ethan had mentioned.
Patricia had stepped into the nursery area for a few seconds before entering my room.
Her phone was on speaker.
A woman’s voice came through faintly.
“Is Ethan gone?”
Patricia answered, “Yes. I’ll push her today. Once Emily is gone, the baby will belong to us.”
The woman laughed.
“Make sure there are marks on you. Men believe mothers.”
Patricia reached for the phone.
Ethan pulled it away.
“Who is she?”
Patricia’s lips pressed together.
“No one.”
Ethan stood.
“Who is she?”
“She is trying to destroy us,” Patricia said, pointing at me. “Look what she’s doing. She’s making you turn on your own mother.”
I held Lily tighter.
My daughter had stopped screaming, but her breath still hitched against my skin.
Ethan looked at Patricia like he was finally seeing a stranger wearing his mother’s face.
“I installed that camera because you kept telling me Emily was unstable,” he said quietly.
My heart stopped.
I looked at him.
“You what?”
His face twisted.
“Emily, I’m sorry.”
The room tilted.
“You recorded me?”
“I thought I was protecting Lily.”
“From me?”
He closed his eyes.
Patricia saw the crack and lunged for it.
“Yes,” she cried. “Yes, Ethan. That’s exactly right. You knew something was wrong with her. You saw it too.”
Ethan opened his eyes.
“No,” he said. “I saw what you wanted me to see.”
Patricia froze.
He turned to me.
“I should have told you. I should have trusted you. But she kept saying you weren’t sleeping, that you were forgetting feedings, that you shook Lily too hard when you burped her.”
“I never did that.”
“I know now.”
“Now?”
My voice cracked.
He flinched.
“Emily—”
“No. You let her make me a suspect in my own baby’s room.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I did.”
That admission hurt more than denial would have.
Because it was honest.
Because it was late.
Patricia stood.
“This is disgusting. After everything I’ve done for this family—”
Ethan turned on her.
“You hurt my wife.”
“She’s weak.”
“You hurt my daughter’s mother.”
“She’ll ruin that child.”
“She is that child’s mother.”
Patricia’s face hardened.
“And you are my son.”
He stared at her.
For a moment, I saw the little boy inside him.
The one who had probably spent his whole life trying not to disappoint Patricia.
Then he picked up his phone and dialed.
“Ethan,” she warned.
He looked right at her.
“I’m calling the police.”
Patricia rushed at him.
I screamed.
Ethan stepped back, but Patricia grabbed his wrist.
“Do not do this.”
He pulled free.
“You did this.”
He put the phone to his ear.
“Yes. I need police and an ambulance. My mother assaulted my postpartum wife and attempted to frame her.”
Patricia’s mouth fell open.
Then rage burned through the mask.
“You ungrateful boy.”
I had never heard her speak to him like that.
Neither had he.
His shoulders stiffened.
“What did you say?”
She pointed at me.
“I gave up everything for you, and now you choose her because she gave you a baby?”
Ethan went pale.
There was something in his face.
Recognition.
Fear.
Old pain.
I whispered, “Ethan?”
He did not answer.
Downstairs, sirens grew louder.
Patricia backed toward the door.
Ethan stepped in front of it.
“No.”
She smiled suddenly.
Cold.
Calm.
“You think one video saves her?”
The sirens stopped outside.
Red and blue light flashed across the bedroom wall.
Patricia leaned close to Ethan and whispered, loud enough for me to hear.
May you like
“Ask your father what happened the first time a woman tried to take a baby from me.”
Ethan stopped breathing.
