Three days after my twin sons were born, my husband brought twenty-two members of his family into a hospital room and offered me two hundred thousand dollars to sign away my marriage, my children, and my right to ever ask about their company's accounts. They expected me to cry. I read every page and signed all of them.

I went to their Thanksgiving. I let Adelaide put her hand on my stomach. I said thank you for the crib.

And on the day I went into labour, at eleven weeks and four days before I expected to, Beatrix Nwankwo was on the first page of my hospital notes as the person to call.

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PART 4 — THIRTY-SIX HOURS

Here is why I signed, and it is three things.

The first is that you cannot do what they were trying to do at a bedside.

A parent in this state cannot contract away custody of a three-day-old in a leather folder. Relinquishment of parental rights is a court process with a statutory waiting period, specific formalities, and — for a child that age — protections that exist precisely because women are asked to sign things three days after surgery.

That instrument was worth nothing the moment it was drafted. Beatrix had told me in the September exactly what such a document would look like if it ever appeared, because she had seen it before.