Chapter 10 - THE EMPTY CRIB
Two years later, Noah ran through the house laughing.
His little feet slapped against the hardwood floor.
“Mom!”
I turned.
He held a toy airplane.
“Daddy says we're going to the airport!”
I smiled.
“Are you excited?”
“Yes!”
Daniel had changed.
Not completely.
People rarely change completely.
But he had learned responsibility.
He paid child support.
He attended every important appointment.
He never missed a birthday.
And he had finally accepted that being Noah's father didn't give him the right to control me.
We had become something unexpected.
Co-parents.
Nothing more.
One evening, after Daniel picked Noah up, I stood alone in the nursery.
The crib was empty.
The room was quiet.
For a second, memories returned.
Noah burning with fever.
My bloodied knuckles.
Twenty unanswered calls.
Daniel laughing on a beach.
Vivian telling me to protect her son's reputation.
Then I looked around.
The nursery wasn't a place of fear anymore.
It was a room where my son had survived.
Where I had survived.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Michael.
We found another account.
I frowned.
Then another message appeared.
It belongs to Victor Hale.
I opened the attached file.
My heart stopped.
There was a photograph.
Victor standing beside Daniel.
Beside Celeste.
And beside someone else.
My father.
But my father had been dead for eleven years.
I stared at the screen.
Then another photograph loaded.
My father was alive.
And underneath the photograph was a date.
Taken three months ago.
I couldn't breathe.
A final message appeared.
Grace, don't tell Daniel.
I stared at the empty crib.
The first battle had been about my marriage.
The second had been about my son.
But whatever this was…
It had started long before Daniel ever walked through my door.
I locked my phone.
Then I looked toward the window.
Outside, the street was quiet.
Noah was safe.
My life was finally mine.
But somewhere out there, a man who was supposed to be dead had been watching.
And if my father was alive…
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Then the story I thought I had survived wasn't the real story at all.
It was only the first chapter.
