Chapter 5 - THE FIRST PERSON SARAH STOPPED TRUSTING
Sarah woke properly on the second hospital morning.
She was weak, disoriented, and furious when she discovered Noah had pushed the twins to the hospital himself.
“You walked?”
Noah nodded against her shoulder.
“With the wheelbarrow.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
“Baby, I’m so sorry.”
Noah immediately asked the question everyone had been avoiding.
“Did Mason make you sick?”
Sarah shook her head.
“No.”
That answer surprised Hayes.
Sarah remembered developing chills after the midwife’s second visit. She knew she needed medical help. She planned to call Jenna.
Then she saw Mason’s car beyond the trees.
She panicked.
Instead of calling 911, Sarah called Diane.
“Why your mother?”
Sarah looked embarrassed.
“Because I thought if Mom came first, she could take the kids somewhere safe while I went to the hospital.”
Diane told her she was overreacting.
She said Mason had a right to know his children had been born.
Sarah begged her not to tell him.
They argued.
After the call, Sarah grew more confused.
She vaguely remembered unplugging the router herself because Mason had once told her he could find devices connected to accounts they used to share.
She did not remember disconnecting the phone line.
“Where’s your cell?”
Sarah stared at Hayes.
“I don’t know.”
“Could Mason have entered the house?”
“If he did, Noah would’ve seen him.”
Noah shook his head.
Then Sarah looked at Jenna.
“Mom has a key.”
Jenna stopped breathing for half a second.
Diane had helped Sarah move into the house six weeks earlier.
Sarah had never asked for the spare key back.
Hayes requested Diane’s travel history and phone-location information through the appropriate legal process.
Sarah made another decision first.
From her hospital bed she revoked Diane as an emergency contact for herself and the children.
“Until I know what she told him,” Sarah said, “she doesn’t get access.”
That choice hurt her.
Diane had been difficult, judgmental, and too sympathetic to Mason.
But she was still Sarah’s mother.
The relationship shifted fully when Jenna received a text.
It was from Diane.
Tell Sarah I only did what I thought would stop her from destroying this family.
Jenna turned the phone toward Sarah.
May you like
Nobody needed to ask whether Diane had told Mason something.
The only question was how much.
