Chapter 1 - The Night the Heat Was Taken Away
Maya had Liam tucked against her chest under a thin cream blanket when Eleanor bent down, unplugged the small space heater, and dragged it across the kitchen tile.
The warmth vanished so quickly Maya felt it in her incision before she felt it in her hands.
Eleanor set the heater beside the wall, laid a black pen next to a deep-burgundy folder, and said, “Sign it, or stay cold.”
Maya stared at her. She was eleven days out from an emergency C-section. Standing for more than a minute still made her dizzy. David was supposed to be in Boston until morning. The New Year’s Eve party staff had already been dismissed from the kitchen level, and the townhouse felt too large and too quiet for what was happening inside it.
“You said David needed those for insurance,” Maya whispered.
Eleanor’s pearl earrings barely moved when she smiled. “Then sign like a cooperative wife.”
The front door opened upstairs.
Both women heard it.
Footsteps came fast across the foyer.
David appeared in the kitchen still wearing his black wool travel coat, snow damp on the shoulders, his overnight bag hanging from one hand. He took in Maya’s face, the baby wrapped against her, the unplugged heater, and the folder on the table. His expression changed so fast it was almost hard to follow.
Maya looked at him and said the only thing that mattered.
“She said you ordered this.”
Eleanor straightened instantly. “David, thank God. Your wife is overtired and dramatic.”
David didn’t answer her. He crossed the room, opened the burgundy folder, and went still.
His own signature was already on the last page.
He lifted his eyes.
“I never signed this.”
Eleanor reached for the papers. David moved them out of her grasp.
From her chair, shaking now from something colder than the air, Maya said, “She made me sign three.”
David turned his head toward the dining room sideboard.
Two more identical burgundy folders sat there in a perfect stack.
Eleanor moved first.
David got there before she did.
He opened the second folder, scanned one page, then another. Whatever he saw drained the blood from his face.
“Those are family documents,” Eleanor snapped.
David looked up at her. “No. They’re mine.”
He opened the third folder.
Inside was a page with Liam’s full name printed across the top. Beneath it, on a line marked Parent or Authorized Guardian, a signature had already been completed in blue ink.
Not Maya’s.
Not David’s.
David’s fingers tightened around the page.
Maya saw his throat move.
May you like
He looked at his mother and asked, very quietly, “What did you do to my son?”
For the first time that night, Eleanor stepped back.
