Chapter 6
The first baby was not mine.
Her name was Sophie Reed.
She had disappeared from St. Agnes Hospital two years before Thomas.
Her parents had been told she died from a heart complication.
A closed casket.
A sealed file.
A death certificate signed by the same doctor who signed Thomas’s.
Dr. Alan Price.
I remembered him.
Tall.
Silver hair.
Warm voice.
He had put one hand on my shoulder and told me, “Mrs. Bennett, sometimes God makes decisions medicine cannot explain.”
I had hated God for years because of that sentence.
Now I learned it had been a man all along.
Harris reopened both cases.
Then three more.
All infants or toddlers.
All “dead” at St. Agnes.
All families who had asked too many questions and been told grief was making them irrational.
Marla was not the center.
She was a piece.
Ryan was not the center either.
He had used the network.
Paid into it.
Benefited from it.
But someone else had built it.
Dr. Price disappeared before police reached his house.
That was when the threats began.
The first came in a white envelope at my apartment.
No return address.
Inside was a photo of Emily walking into school.
On the back:
You found one child. Do not lose another.
I stopped breathing.
Within an hour, police moved us into a protected family suite.
Thomas panicked when he saw the plain walls and locked doors.
“Not another place,” he said.
I held him.
“This one is to keep people out, not keep you in.”
He did not believe me at first.
That night, he slept on the floor beside my bed instead of in it.
Emily slept on the other side.
I stayed awake, one hand resting on each child.
At 2 a.m., Thomas whispered, “Did you really look every day?”
“Yes.”
“Even after the grave?”
“Especially after.”
“Why?”
“Because my heart never believed the dirt.”
He was quiet.
Then he whispered, “Mine didn’t believe Marla.”
The next morning, Celeste requested to see me.
I almost refused.
Then Harris said she had brought something.
She arrived without makeup, her wedding ring gone.
“I found Ryan’s storage unit,” she said.
I stared at her.
“You found it now?”
“I knew he had one. I didn’t know what was inside.”
“Convenient.”
She accepted the hit.
“I deserve that.”
She handed Harris a key and a folder.
“Ryan kept old files. Bank records. Copies of payments to Marla. And one video.”
My stomach tightened.
“What video?”
Celeste looked at me.
“The night Thomas disappeared.”
I could not breathe.
Harris played it with me sitting down.
Hospital hallway.
Dim lights.
Me asleep in a chair outside Thomas’s room.
Ryan standing near the nurses’ station.
Marla pushing a covered pediatric bed.
A tiny hand visible under the blanket.
Thomas’s hand.
Ryan looked at the camera.
Then at Marla.
He said, clear as day, “Make sure Laura never sees him again.”
The room blurred.
Thomas stood in the doorway.
I had not known he was there.
He looked at the screen.
At his father.
May you like
At himself.
Then he turned and ran.
