“That baby isn’t my sister.”
A cold feeling moved through me.
“Why do you keep saying that?”
His eyes went to the stairs.
“I don’t want Dad to hear.”
I told him Keaton was downstairs.
Elio grabbed my hand with both of his. His fingers felt cold.
“At the hospital, Dad said we were going to get juice.”
I waited.
“But we didn’t go to the machine,” he continued. “He took me down a quiet hallway and told me to stay against the wall.”
“What happened?”
“A lady came through a door.”
“What lady?”
Elio struggled to explain.
“She had hair like yours, but lighter. She was crying, and she was holding a baby.”
My mouth went dry.
“What did Dad do?”
“He gave her a big yellow envelope.”
I thought of the thick document envelopes Keaton kept in his office.
“And then?”
“He took the baby.”
The nursery seemed to grow smaller around us.
“Elio, are you sure?”
He nodded hard.
“The lady didn’t want to let go at first. Dad said, ‘You already agreed.’ Then she gave him the baby.”
“Did you see the baby’s face?”
“She had the pink hat.”
My skin prickled.
“The plain pink hat?”
“Yes. My sister had the flower hat.”
I had never mentioned the two caps to him.
Elio began to cry.
“Dad saw me looking. He told me I was confused and that if I upset you, you might have to go back to the hospital.”
I pulled him against me.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Is my real sister still there?”
I could not answer.
After Elio fell asleep, I went downstairs.
Keaton stood at the kitchen counter warming a bottle.
“What happened when you took Elio to get juice?” I asked.
He did not turn around immediately.
“What do you mean?”
“At the hospital.”
“We got juice.”
“Elio says you took him down another hallway.”
Keaton finally faced me.
“He’s five, Maris.”
“He says there was a woman carrying a baby.”
For one second, something changed in his eyes.
Not surprise.
Calculation.
Then it disappeared.
“You’ve barely slept,” he said. “Elio is adjusting badly, and now you’re building a story from something he imagined.”
“Who was the woman?”
“There was no woman.”
“He described an envelope.”
Keaton gave a sharp laugh.
“Are you questioning me based on the testimony of a kindergartener?”
“Don’t speak about him like that.”
The baby began crying upstairs.
Keaton picked up the bottle.
“We are not doing this while you’re exhausted and emotional.”
He walked past me before I could stop him.
For two days, I tried to believe him.
That is the humiliating part. I wanted my husband’s lie to be true because the alternative was too terrible to hold.
But Elio would not enter the nursery.
Keaton kept his phone with him constantly.
On the third night, I woke at 2:17 and found his side of the bed empty.
A thin line of light showed beneath his office door downstairs.
I approached quietly.
Keaton was whispering on the phone.
“I told you not to call here.”
A woman answered, but I could not hear her words.
Keaton said, “The money cleared. You need to stop panicking.”
I opened the door.
He ended the call.
“Who was that?”
“A client.”
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