CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4
Audrey was admitted overnight.
The burns were painful but treatable. The doctors said our baby’s heartbeat was strong, but stress had triggered contractions they wanted to monitor.
Every word felt like a blade I deserved.
I sat beside her bed, holding her hand carefully because the skin around her wrists was bandaged.
She stared at the ceiling for a long time before speaking.
“Your mother told me you’d choose her.”
I swallowed.
“She was wrong.”
Audrey’s eyes filled.
“She said if I complained, she’d tell everyone I was unstable. She said rich families always win because they can afford patience.”
I felt sick.
“When did it start?”
Audrey turned her face away.
“After we announced the pregnancy. She said I was carrying a Whitmore heir, not my own child.”
My jaw tightened.
“She used those words?”
Audrey nodded.
“She started controlling what I ate. What I wore. Who I called. Denise would write everything down and say it was for my medical routine.”
I thought of the notebook I had seen Denise carrying for weeks.
I had joked that she was thorough.
Audrey kept going, each sentence quieter than the last.
“Last month, when you were in Chicago, your mother made me stand during dinner because she said sitting too much would make me lazy. When I cried, Denise told her my blood pressure was high. Your mother said that proved I was dramatic.”
I looked at the floor.
I wanted to break something.
Instead, I breathed.
Audrey did not need my rage shaking the room. She needed me steady.
“Why didn’t you tell me everything?”
She looked at me then.
“I tried, Nathan.”
Those three words were worse than screaming.
I remembered every time she had started a sentence and stopped when my phone rang. Every time she had said, “Your mom was a little hard on me today,” and I had kissed her forehead and promised, “She means well.”
Means well.
Two words cowards use when they do not want to confront cruelty wearing a familiar face.
At 2:17 a.m., my phone began vibrating.
Mother.
Mother.
Mother.
Then an unknown number.
Then my father’s old attorney, Margaret Sloan.
I stepped into the hallway and answered.
Margaret’s voice was tight.
“Nathan, I just received a call from your mother. She wants me to prepare emergency guardianship documents for Audrey on grounds of mental instability.”
The hallway tilted.
“She what?”
“She said Audrey is a danger to herself and the pregnancy.”
My hand closed around the phone.
Behind me, Audrey slept with monitors attached to her stomach because of what my mother had done.
And my mother was already trying to steal her voice.
“Margaret,” I said, “do not prepare anything for her.”
“I wasn’t calling to obey her,” Margaret replied. “I was calling because your father left instructions for this exact situation.”
I went still.
“My father?”
May you like
“Yes,” she said. “Before he died, he warned me Vivian might one day confuse family with ownership.”
For the second time that day, the floor vanished beneath me.
