Chapter 4
I did not touch Claudia.
That required more control than she deserved.
Instead, I walked into the sitting room and sat on the floor beside Ruby.
She held the torn blanket toward me.
“Fix?”
I looked at the open seam.
Inside, someone had hidden the only proof that three years of my grief might have been built on a lie.
“Yes.”
My voice nearly failed.
“We’ll fix it.”
She accepted that and leaned against Elena.
Elena was crying silently now.
Not because she feared losing Ruby.
Because she had just been told the daughter she carried had died before she ever held her.
Two mothers had been robbed that night.
One of a death.
One of a life.
I looked at Elena.
“No one is taking Ruby from you tonight.”
Her eyes snapped toward mine.
“You don’t know—”
“No.”
I held her gaze.
“I know exactly what I don’t know.”
That mattered.
I would not respond to Claudia’s manipulation by turning another woman’s motherhood into property.
“We find the truth first.”
Elena nodded.
Barely.
Then I returned to Claudia.
“Who hid the bracelet?”
She looked genuinely confused.
Good.
Something she did not know.
“I thought it was destroyed.”
There.
Confirmation.
“You ordered it destroyed.”
“Yes.”
Elena covered her mouth.
My voice stayed low.
“And the photograph?”
“I never saw that either.”
Interesting.
Someone inside the hospital resisted.
Maybe quietly.
Maybe too late.
Thomas found a name on the back of the photograph.
Not handwriting.
A small embossed studio mark from the hospital maternity photography service.
The night nurse who signed out that batch of pictures had been June Mercer.
Retired.
Still alive.
Thomas located her within the hour.
I called.
An older woman answered.
I said my name.
Silence.
Then she whispered:
“I wondered how long that blanket would last.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“You know what’s inside it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
A long pause.
“Because Claudia Blackwood told me to destroy your daughter’s bracelet.”
I looked at my sister.
She went completely pale.
June continued.
“I couldn’t stop what she was doing.”
May you like
Her voice shook.
“So I made sure one day somebody could prove she had done it.”
