Five days after my emergency surgical delivery, my husband pressed two folded six-dollar bills into my hand and instructed me to take a public bus home with our newborn son while he drove his mother to an upscale restaurant in my customized all-black luxury SUV. What Gabriel never realized was that the quiet retired civil servant he had spent years looking down on as my father was actually Commander-in-Chief Alexander Remington, a four-star military commander who had spent decades overseeing high-level defense operations, and that one phone call from me was about to tear his carefully constructed world apart piece by piece.
I stood beneath the concrete awning outside Mercy General Hospital in Saint Louis, with five-day-old Theodore resting gently against my collarbone.
Every slight movement tugged painfully at the deep incision across my lower abdomen, making even the smallest shift in posture feel as though thick wire were tightening beneath my skin.
“Gabriel, you are seriously asking me to take the public city bus?” I whispered, holding the baby closer against my chest.
Gabriel glanced at the gold face of his wrist watch with an impatient flick of his wrist. “My mother has been looking forward to this luncheon for weeks, so please do not make this complicated, Caroline.”
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and placed the crisp paper bills into my palm.
Twelve dollars.
