Chapter 1 - the voice on the nursery floor
I knew something was wrong before I reached the top of the stairs.
Maisie’s crying didn’t sound like her hungry cry or her angry, overtired cry. It was the raw, breathless scream she made when she was frightened enough to forget how to breathe between sobs.
I dropped my laptop bag in the upstairs hall and ran toward the nursery.
Corinne was on the rug with my fourteen-month-old daughter.
My stepmother had one hand twisted into the outside shoulder of Maisie’s pink romper, holding the fabric while Maisie clutched her stuffed rabbit against her chest. In Corinne’s other hand was a small black Bluetooth speaker.
She was holding it inches from my daughter’s face.
A woman’s voice came through the speaker.
“Maisie… Mommy isn’t coming back.”
My daughter screamed.
“Mama! Mama!”
Corinne leaned closer.
“Listen to her,” she said. “She left you.”
For one second I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
Then Maisie reached toward the speaker, still screaming for her mother, and Corinne pushed the stuffed rabbit away from her hands.
Something inside me snapped.
“Get away from her.”
Corinne turned.
The expression on her face changed instantly.
Not guilt.
Annoyance.
Like I had interrupted something.
I crossed the nursery, pulled her hand away from Maisie’s clothes, and lifted my daughter against my chest.
Maisie buried her wet face against my neck.
Corinne reached toward us.
“Ryan, don’t be ridiculous. She needs to learn—”
I shoved her hand away.
“Don’t touch her.”
She grabbed my forearm.
I hit her.
One open-handed strike across the face.
The sound was louder than I expected.
Corinne staggered against the dresser.
The second it happened, I knew I had crossed a line of my own.
But there was no time to process it.
I put Maisie inside her crib and turned back as Corinne came toward me, furious now.
“You have no idea what you’re protecting,” she hissed.
I forced her backward with both hands, putting myself between her and the crib.
“You played my wife’s voice to a baby.”
Corinne touched her cheek.
Then, incredibly, she smiled.
“You still think I made that recording?”
The speaker had fallen near the rocking chair.
Its plastic casing was cracked.
Static sputtered from it.
Then the woman’s voice returned.
“…don’t let Ryan hear this…”
Maisie stopped crying long enough to point.
“Mama.”
My anger disappeared so quickly it felt like somebody had opened a door beneath my feet.
Because the voice was Elise’s.
My wife had been gone for nine days.
And until that moment, I had believed she had walked out on both of us.
I looked at Corinne.
“Where did you get that?”
May you like
She lowered her hand from her face.
“For once in your life,” she said quietly, “ask yourself why your wife trusted me with something she was afraid to let you hear.”
