Chapter 2
Daniel knew what I was thinking before I said it.
“The tea,” I whispered.
The doctor leaned forward. “Tell me about it.”
My mother had started visiting after I complained about being tired. She would arrive carrying a flask and insist I rest while she made me a cup.
She called it a special blend.
I had drunk it because she was my mother.
Some days I had felt dizzy afterward. I blamed the heat, or the pregnancy, or the fact that I wasn’t sleeping well.
The doctor asked whether we had any of the tea at home. Daniel said there was a sealed packet in our kitchen and half a flask in the refrigerator from that morning.
“Don’t touch either one,” she said. “We’ll ask the hospital’s safety team to help document what you’ve told us.”
She didn’t say my mother had poisoned me. She didn’t know that yet.
Neither did I.
I wanted another explanation so badly that I started looking for one. Maybe a test was wrong. Maybe something I had eaten had affected it. Maybe I had misunderstood the doctor.
Then I remembered my mother watching me drink every cup.
“Your grandmother swore by this,” she would say.
Grandma had hated tea.
A nurse adjusted the monitor around my belly. A fast rhythm filled the room. My daughter’s heartbeat.
I held on to that sound.
Daniel called a police officer back to the hospital. Ruby had already sent him the video, and the officers at my parents’ house had seen it.
The officer listened while I described the tea and the blood test. He asked for the flask, the packet, and any messages my mother had sent about them.
Daniel called his brother, who had a key to our home. He asked him to wait outside until an officer could meet him there.
Then my phone rang.
Mom.
I stared at her name until it stopped. She called again.
Daniel reached for the phone. “You don’t have to answer.”
“I want to hear what she says.”
I put the call on speaker.
“Claire, thank goodness,” Mom said. “Your father is being treated like a criminal. Ruby won’t put that video away.”
“Our baby is still alive.”
Mom went quiet for half a second. “Of course she is. I knew everything would be fine.”
“She’s being monitored. It isn’t fine.”
“Vanessa has been beside herself. She wants to apologize.”
I looked at the band around my stomach. “The doctor found something in my blood.”
“What?”
I told her.
Another pause. This one was longer.
“You must have taken something without realizing,” she said.
“The doctor asked about prescription medicine.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that.”
I hadn’t mentioned the tea.
“Mom, what was in the tea you brought me?”
“Herbs. I told you.”
“Which herbs?”
“Claire, you’re frightened and looking for someone to blame.”
Daniel ended the call when I began to cry.
He put the phone on the table. “She didn’t ask how you are.”
“She asked about Dad.”
“I heard.”
By evening, the doctors told us my daughter’s heart rate had settled. They still wanted me in the hospital. An injury could change after the first scan, and they needed to watch us both closely.
Daniel pulled a chair beside my bed. He had blood on his sleeve from where I had scraped my arm on the ground.
“You should change,” I said.
“I will.”
He didn’t move.
“I’m scared to close my eyes,” I admitted.
“Then I’ll sit here until you can.”
An officer arrived later with news from the house. The flask and packet had been collected. The contents would have to be tested before anyone could say what they held.
He also told us that Ruby had given a statement. Her video clearly showed Vanessa stepping toward me and kicking me.
“Will she be arrested?” I asked.
“The investigation is moving forward,” he said. “I don’t want to promise a timeline I can’t control.”
After he left, I found a message from Ruby.
I’m sorry I froze. I should have helped you.
I wrote back: You did help me. You kept the video.
Three dots appeared, vanished, then appeared again.
Uncle Richard tried to make me delete it before the police came, she wrote. Aunt Elaine told him the papers mattered more.
I read the message to Daniel.
“What papers?” he asked.
“The trust folder. Mom took it when they carried me out.”
He frowned. “Why hide it?”
I thought about the argument in the yard. Vanessa had insisted Dad could decide where the money went as long as my daughter wasn’t born yet.
I had said he couldn’t change Grandma’s wishes.
Then Vanessa had followed me outside.
Daniel called Grandma’s attorney, Mr. Bell, and left a message. He explained that I was in the hospital and asked for an urgent copy of the trust.
Close to midnight, I finally felt it.
A tiny movement, low in my belly.
“Daniel.”
He sat up.
“Put your hand here.”
We waited together. A second, softer kick touched his palm.
He bent over me and cried.
For one minute, there was only the three of us.
May you like
Then my phone lit up with a message from Vanessa.
You have no idea what Mom was going to lose if your baby was born.
