Neither of them noticed the figure standing silently on the other side of the narrow glass panel in the door.
Margaret Caldwell.
Watching.
And smiling.
The first thing I heard when I surfaced from the darkness was crying.
Not mine.
A baby’s.
Then another.
Weak. Fragile. Furious.
Alive.
My eyes opened beneath the dim lights of the intensive-care recovery room, and pain tore across my abdomen so violently that a sound caught in my throat.
“Easy.”
That voice.
I knew it before I saw him.
My blood seemed to turn to ice.
Ethan Caldwell sat beside my bed, still wearing blue surgical scrubs. His dark hair was disordered, exhaustion carved beneath his eyes, and there was dried blood near the cuff of his sleeve.
My blood.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Five years stood between us like a graveyard.
Finally, my lips moved.
“Where are my babies?”
