Chapter 2
I placed Noah beside Clara before answering anything else.
Her arms closed around him weakly, automatically, as if her body recognized safety before her mind did.
“He’s here.”
She started crying.
Quietly.
That frightened me more than screaming would have.
“I thought she took him again.”
Again.
I looked at Marissa.
Then Evelyn.
“How many times?”
Clara heard me.
Her eyes shut.
“Daniel…”
“You don’t have to explain now.”
My mother laughed bitterly.
“There. Exactly.”
I turned.
“What?”
“You let her collapse and immediately reward weakness.”
Clara flinched against the pillow.
I saw it.
My mother had been repeating that word enough that Clara now reacted to it before she reacted to me.
Weak.
Lazy.
Unfit.
I stood slowly.
“Bodyguards.”
Two men stepped closer to Evelyn.
“Move her to the east sitting room.”
Her eyes widened.
“You are not ordering me around in my son’s house.”
“My house.”
Silence.
“And tonight that distinction matters.”
Victor tried to intervene.
“Daniel, calm down.”
I looked at him.
“You pulled Marissa by the hair because she tried to speak.”
His jaw tightened.
“She was causing panic.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“She was causing information.”
That shut him up.
Once Evelyn and Victor were separated, Clara finally told me what happened.
The first night home from the hospital, my mother moved into the nursery wing “to help.”
By the second morning, helping became instruction.
No naps longer than an hour.
Meals at the formal table.
No food in the nursery.
No asking staff to bring water unless Clara had first finished whatever household task Evelyn assigned.
I stared at her.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Clara looked ashamed.
That made me hate myself.
“Your mother had my phone.”
My chest tightened.
“She said the doctor wanted less screen time.”
Marissa whispered:
“That was a lie.”
Of course.
Clara continued.
“Every time I asked for Noah, she said Carter mothers don’t cling.”
My hands closed.
“And Victor?”
“He watched.”
That hurt differently.
Not my mother’s ideology.
His choice.
“He kept saying your father raised you without a woman hovering over you.”
I almost laughed.
My father was dead.
Apparently his parenting had become useful mythology too.
Then Clara looked at me.
“There’s more.”
I sat beside her.
“What?”
She pulled Noah closer.
“Your mother wasn’t only trying to make me serve dinner.”
May you like
Pause.
“She wanted me to hand Noah over to her for thirty days.”
