cheer her on?”
“No,” I said, and I felt something in me go very still and very cold. “You’d rather be right than have her home. Even if being right cost us our daughter.”
Amber appeared in the doorway behind him. “Paul…”
I didn’t even look at her. “You don’t get a word in this kitchen.”
Paul stared at Hope like the baby might somehow throw him a rope. She didn’t. I grabbed the diaper bag off the counter with my free hand and picked up my keys.
“I’m taking her to the clinic,” I said. “And when I come back, I want you gone. I called you here to see if there was any shame left in you.”
“Jodi, wait—”
“I mean it. If you’re still standing in this kitchen when I get back, I will call the police and tell them you withheld information about a missing child’s
mother for five years.”
That got both of them moving toward the car.
PART 4 — Back to Work
Dr. Evans looked Hope over carefully, weighed her, checked her color, and told me she was healthy — just a little underweight, nothing that a few good weeks wouldn’t fix. She asked me careful, gentle questions, the kind a doctor asks when she already suspects the answer is complicated. I gave her careful answers back. I showed her the note. The supplies. The jacket, still slung over my arm like I couldn’t put it down.
“Do you have family support?” she asked.
I almost laughed, and caught myself before it turned into something else.
“I’ve got coffee and my coworkers,” I said.
She gave me a small, sad smile, the kind that had clearly been given to other tired women in other exam rooms. “Sometimes that’s exactly how it starts.”
By noon I
