Chapter 2 - THE THINGS THAT KEPT DISAPPEARING
Rachel went to the hospital before she went home.
Mark insisted.
The cashier insisted.
Even Rachel’s own body insisted once the adrenaline faded and a dull ache began spreading across the side that had hit the counter.
Caleb arrived at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s forty minutes later.
He came through the examination-room curtain looking terrified.
“Is she okay?”
Rachel looked at him.
Not me.
She.
Their baby.
Rachel understood the instinct.
It still irritated her.
“The heartbeat is fine.”
His shoulders dropped.
Then he saw the faint red mark on Rachel’s forearm.
“Mom did that?”
“She shoved me.”
Caleb sat down.
His face changed from fear to something darker.
Rachel reached for her phone.
“Mark said you went back to the store after Diane returned our baby things.”
Caleb became very still.
There it was.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
“How long have you known?”
“Rachel—”
“How long?”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“About some of it? Since March.”
It was August.
Rachel stared.
Five months.
“You knew she was taking things from the nursery?”
“I knew she returned a few things.”
“A few?”
“I didn’t know how many.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Caleb looked toward the monitor tracing their daughter’s heartbeat.
“Because every time I confronted Mom, she said you asked her to exchange duplicates.”
“I never asked her.”
“I know that now.”
“Now?”
His silence made Rachel angrier.
The first thing he noticed was a bottle sterilizer.
Rachel’s coworkers had given it to her at a small office shower.
Two days later it disappeared.
Diane said Rachel must have moved it.
Caleb later received an email because the gift had been purchased through a store registry connected to their household address. It had been returned without a receipt.
He went to the store.
Mark was working.
The sterilizer was already back on the shelf.
Caleb bought it again.
Rachel blinked.
“That’s why we had two charges.”
Caleb nodded.
Rachel had teased him about buying duplicate baby equipment.
He had laughed and said, “Dad brain early.”
He had lied.
“What else?”
“A diaper pail. Bottle set. A monitor.”
“The monitor from Megan?”
“Yes.”
Rachel’s friend Megan had been hurt when Rachel never sent a photo of the monitor installed.
Rachel had assumed it was another pregnancy-brain failure.
“How many things did you buy back?”
“Seven.”
Rachel felt nauseated.
“Seven.”
“I kept telling Mom to stop.”
“But you kept letting her into our house.”
“She has a key.”
“That is not an answer.”
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“I thought she was being controlling. I didn’t think she was dangerous.”
Rachel looked at the bruise on her arm.
“You thought wrong.”
He nodded.
That helped.
Not enough.
The doctor came in, confirmed that Rachel and the baby could go home with instructions to return if pain worsened, then left them alone again.
Rachel asked, “What did your mother do with the refunds?”
Caleb frowned.
“I assumed they went back to the original payment methods.”
“They didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Mark remembered her because she kept returning gifts without receipts.”
Rachel described the slip.
The merchandise credits.
The purse.
Caleb’s expression changed.
“What purse?”
“She grabbed something inside it when I said I was calling you.”
Caleb stood.
“We need to go home.”
Rachel did not move.
“Why?”
He looked at her.
“Because my mother has a whole nursery at her house.”
Rachel stared.
“What?”
“I thought she bought it herself.”
For several seconds Rachel could hear nothing except the fetal monitor beside the bed.
Then she remembered something Diane had said two months earlier while folding newborn clothes.
Don’t buy too much for your house, honey. Babies spend more time with Grandma than you think.
May you like
Rachel had laughed.
Diane hadn’t.
