Chapter 2 - THE BABY’S HEARTBEAT
The ambulance took Emily to WakeMed.
Ryan was not allowed to ride with her.
Not because a police officer dramatically declared him evil at the cemetery.
Because Emily said she did not want him there.
That sentence took more effort than she expected.
“I don’t want my husband in the ambulance.”
The paramedic simply nodded.
“All right.”
At the hospital, the obstetric team monitored the baby.
Emily had bruising along her shoulder and forearm, a scraped knee, and soreness through her lower back.
No broken bones.
No bleeding.
No sign of placental injury.
The fetal heart rate remained reassuring.
The nurse used the phrase reassuring several times.
Emily held onto it.
Thomas Bennett had been buried before Emily was discharged.
She learned that from Anne.
The cemetery had delayed lowering the casket while the ambulance and sheriff’s deputies were present, then completed the burial after the family left.
Emily hated knowing Thomas’s funeral had become attached to what Ryan did.
Then she corrected herself.
Ryan had attached it.
Not her.
That distinction would become important.
A sheriff’s deputy took Emily’s statement at the hospital.
He did not promise an arrest.
He asked questions.
Where had she been standing?
How close to the grave?
Did Ryan use one hand or two?
Had they argued first?
Did she fall accidentally?
Who moved the ladder?
Who had her purse?
Emily answered as carefully as she could.
Ryan had shoved both hands against her shoulders.
They had argued about the baby’s name.
Owen had initially been holding the ladder away.
Margaret had her phone and keys.
Emily did not know whether those last two things were part of a plan.
She refused to guess.
The deputy appreciated that.
Her obstetrician, Dr. Allison Greene, arrived shortly after six.
“You’re staying tonight.”
Emily looked at her.
“The baby’s okay.”
“I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because you’re thirty-one weeks pregnant, you were shoved into an open grave, and your back pain is increasing.”
Hearing the event described clinically made Emily cry for the first time.
Not in the grave.
Not in the ambulance.
Not during the fetal monitor.
Now.
Dr. Greene pulled a chair closer.
“Do you have somewhere safe to go when we discharge you?”
Emily automatically said:
“My house.”
Then stopped.
Ryan lived there too.
The house was jointly titled.
Their clothes were there.
The crib they had assembled three weeks earlier was upstairs.
The stroller sat inside the garage.
Emily had spent months preparing to bring a baby into that home.
Now she could not picture sleeping there.
“My cousin Anne has a guest room.”
“Good.”
Emily called Anne.
Anne answered before the first ring finished.
“Yes.”
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“Yes anyway.”
Emily almost laughed.
She didn’t.
Then Owen called.
Emily stared at his name.
She let it ring out.
He called again.
Then sent:
I am sorry. I should have stopped Ryan before today. Dad did not choose Raymond. I will tell you everything when you want to hear it.
Emily read the message twice.
She had expected relief.
What she felt was fury.
Because Owen had known something.
Maybe not everything.
May you like
Enough.
And he had waited until she was standing in his father’s grave to say no.
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