Chapter 1 - The Thing Janice Tried to Hide
Janice lunged across the pediatric ER bed before Dr. Mercer could unfold Harper’s blanket.
Her hand closed around the deep-burgundy fleece.
“That has nothing to do with this.”
Claire tightened both arms around her one-year-old daughter.
Harper was exhausted, pink-cheeked, and safe against her chest after another terrifying nighttime episode that had ended before the ambulance reached White Plains Hospital.
Dr. Mercer didn’t argue.
He simply took the blanket back.
Something metallic slipped from one folded corner.
Click.
A tiny crescent-shaped piece landed on the stainless-steel tray.
Janice froze.
Claire noticed.
“Why are you scared of that?”
“I’m not.”
Janice stepped forward.
Then deliberately placed her shoe over the object.
Dr. Mercer looked down.
Then at her.
“The baby scared herself,” Janice said sharply. “Claire panicked. Again.”
Again.
The word hit harder than Claire expected.
For three months, Janice had been telling the family Claire overreacted to everything Harper did.
Crying at night.
Refusing food.
Waking suddenly.
The strange alarms from the nursery monitor.
At Christmas dinner, Janice had even joked that Harper needed “a calmer mother.”
Everyone had laughed except Claire.
Dr. Mercer calmly moved Janice’s shoe aside and lifted the crescent with forceps.
“Then why was this in her blanket?”
Janice’s face lost color.
Claire looked toward her mother-in-law.
That was when she noticed Janice tugging the sleeve of her camel coat lower over her wrist.
Dr. Mercer placed Harper’s earlier X-ray beside the metal piece.
Near the outer edge of the image was another faint crescent.
Not inside Harper’s body.
Caught somewhere in the layers of her pajamas.
Claire stared at the shape.
Then at Janice’s hidden wrist.
“What are you hiding under your sleeve?”
Janice gripped her cuff.
“Nothing.”
“Show me.”
“No.”
Dr. Mercer quietly asked Janice to step away from the bed.
For the first time all night, Harper stopped crying.
Claire looked down at her daughter.
Then back at the woman who had spent months telling everyone Claire was imagining things.
May you like
And one ugly possibility entered her mind.
Maybe Harper’s mysterious nighttime episodes weren’t mysterious at all.
