PART 3: 👇
My anger disappeared for a moment.
“Did Rebecca get to see her?”
James wiped his face.
“For about ten minutes.”
My eyes burned.
“She held her?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“She started bleeding.”
I closed my eyes.
James continued quietly.
“They tried everything.”
I reached for the wall.
Suddenly, the hospital smelled exactly like the room where I had nearly died giving birth to our youngest son.
The antiseptic.
The fluorescent lights.
The distant beeping.
For a moment, I wasn’t standing beside James anymore.
I was back on that operating table.
Terrified.
Doctors shouting.
James crying beside me.
Someone telling him to move.
Someone else saying my blood pressure was dropping.
“Emily?”
I opened my eyes.
James was watching me.
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m standing.”
That was all I could promise.
Then the baby began crying.
Not loudly.
Just a tiny broken sound.
Something inside me responded before my mind could stop it.
I stepped toward the room.
But James caught my arm gently.
“Wait.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“There’s something else.”
Of course there was.
I slowly turned around.
“What?”
James looked down the hallway.
Then he said:
“Rebecca asked for you.”
That shocked me more than anything else.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“She hasn’t spoken to me in eleven years.”
“I know.”
“Why would she ask for me?”
James swallowed.
“She made me promise I’d bring you here.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
“James.”
“She wanted you to meet the baby.”
I stared at him.
“Why me?”
He looked through the glass.
And something about his expression made my stomach tighten.
“Because she left instructions.”
“What instructions?”
James didn’t answer immediately.
Then he reached into his jacket.
He pulled out an envelope.
My name was written across the front.
EMILY
The handwriting was shaky.
But I recognized it.
Rebecca.
I reached for it.
James pulled it back.
My eyes narrowed.
“Give me the letter.”
“I will.”
“Then give it to me.”
“There’s something you need to understand first.”
“What?”
James looked terrified.
Not sad.
Terrified.
“Rebecca didn’t just call me because she was dying.”
I stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“She knew she might not survive the delivery.”
“How?”
“She’d been sick.”
“For how long?”
“Months, apparently.”
“And she didn’t tell anyone?”
“No.”
I looked at the envelope.
“Then what does she want from us?”
James took a breath.
“She wants us to raise her daughter.”
I couldn’t speak.
“She what?”
“She named us as guardians.”
I stepped backward.
“No.”
“Emily—”
“No, James.”
“Just listen.”
“We have three children.”
“I know.”
“We agreed we were done.”
“I know.”
“I nearly died having our youngest.”
“I know.”
“And now you bring me to a maternity ward and tell me your sister, who disappeared eleven years ago, left us a newborn?”
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