I had barely caught my breath after delivering my baby boy when my eight-year-old daughter, Emily Carter, leaned down close to my face and whispered, urgent and trembling,
“Mom… get under the bed. Now.”
There was no playfulness in her voice. No imagination. Just raw fear.
I was shaking from exhaustion, my body still buzzing from pain, my hospital gown clinging damply to my skin. The room carried that sharp hospital smell mixed with the soft scent of a newborn. Nurses had just taken my son for routine checks. My husband, Mark Reynolds, had stepped out to answer a phone call.
It was just Emily and me.
“Emily,” I murmured weakly, trying to reassure her, “what are you talking about?”
She shook her head hard. “There’s no time. Please, Mom. They’re coming.”
“They?” I echoed.
Her eyes flicked toward the door. She squeezed my hand, her fingers icy.
“I heard Grandma on the phone. She said everything would be ‘handled’ today. She said you wouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
My heart slammed violently in my chest.
Mark’s mother, Linda Reynolds, had never hidden her dislike for me. She blamed me for Mark leaving his lucrative corporate job to start a small business. She resented that I already had a child from a previous marriage. And she had made her feelings about this baby painfully clear—she didn’t want another grandchild tying Mark to me permanently.
Still… this was a hospital. Cameras. Staff. Rules.
“Emily,” I whispered, forcing calm, “adults sometimes say strange things.”
“She was talking to a doctor,” Emily said, tears gathering in her eyes. “The one with the silver watch. She said you signed papers. But you didn’t. I know you didn’t.”
A wave of cold crept up my spine.
Earlier that morning, in the middle of labor, someone had placed papers in front of me while contractions tore through my body. I remembered being barely conscious, Mark and Linda standing close, the pen slipping from my hand.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. A cart rolled closer. Voices approached.
Emily dropped to the floor and lifted the bed skirt.
“Please,” she whispered. “Just trust me.”
Every logical thought told me this was absurd. But another instinct—older, deeper, the one that had kept my daughter safe her entire life—screamed louder.
Ignoring the pain, I slid off the bed and crawled underneath just as the door handle turned.
From the floor, I saw shoes enter the room.
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