As if we had opened the trap too early.
I stared at her.
“You planned to take him.”
She lifted her chin.
“I planned to protect him.”
“From his mother?”
“From weakness,” she snapped. “From a woman who cannot handle one newborn without collapsing.”
“She collapsed because you forced her to cook and carry laundry two days after giving birth.”
“She needed to learn.”
The officer’s pen stopped moving.
Even he looked up.
My mother seemed to realize how it sounded only after she said it.
She softened her voice too late.
“You do not understand. Clara manipulates you. She cries and you run.
I had to see whether she could function when you were not here.”
“You tested her.”
“I evaluated her.”
“She was bleeding, Eleanor.”
My mother flinched at the sound of her full name.
Good.
I wanted her to hear it the way the dispatcher had.
Not Mom.
Not Grandma.
Eleanor Ward.
A woman with a signature on hospital forms and instructions she chose to ignore.
The paramedic touched my arm.
“Sir.”
I nodded and followed him toward the door.
As I passed my mother, she reached for the baby blanket.
“Give him to me.”
I stepped back.
Her hand froze in the air.
“You will not touch my son.”
Her eyes filled with fury.
“You would choose her over your own mother?”
I looked toward the ambulance where Clara lay pale and shaking beneath white blankets.
Then I looked at the notebook.
“I choose my wife. I choose my child. And I choose the truth.”
At the hospital, Clara was taken through emergency doors while I stayed with our son in a small exam room.
A nurse helped feed him. Another checked his temperature.
I sat there with formula on my shirt and my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold the bottle steady.
Forty minutes later, the officer entered with his supervisor.
“We secured the notebook,” he said. “There are more entries.”
My stomach tightened.
