Fear.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“Hannah—”
“I called you seventeen times.”
He stared at me.
“I never received those calls.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
A cold realization moved across his face.
“My mother.”
I said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Ethan stood so abruptly that the chair scraped across the floor.
“What happened to the baby?”
And suddenly I was no longer in St. Catherine’s.
I was twenty-four again.
Alone.
Terrified.
Standing in a private maternity clinic owned by the Caldwell Medical Group because Evelyn Caldwell’s secretary had called and told me Ethan wanted nothing to do with me but would “ensure proper medical care.”
I remembered waking after an emergency delivery.
An empty room.
An empty bassinet.
A nurse who wouldn’t meet my eyes.
And a doctor saying the words that destroyed whatever was left of me.
