“At a family dinner, I said, “I’m about to give birth.” My parents sneered, “Call a cab. We’re busy.” I drove myself to the ER in unbearable pain. A week later, my mom showed up at my door and said, “Let me see the baby.”

I had thought waking up without my baby was the worst thing imaginable. I was wrong. The truth waiting outside my door was darker still, and the first person I should have feared wasn’t a stranger.

My heart pounded against my ribs.

A man stepped into the porch light, and for a sickening second I thought I was hallucinating. It was Noah—my husband, the father of my baby, the man who had disappeared three months before my due date. He looked thinner, colder, like someone had stripped away the version of him I loved and left behind a stranger wearing his face.

My mother folded her arms. “Enough games, Ava.”

I let out a sharp, hollow laugh. “Games? I woke up in a hospital bed with no child and a state trooper questioning me about my husband. Then both of you vanished. Now you show up demanding a baby I never even got to hold?”

Noah’s eyes flicked toward the street. “Keep your voice down.”
That scared me more than anything.

“What did they tell you at the hospital?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I snapped. “A woman said there was something I needed to know about you, and then my room was cleared. My chart disappeared. By morning, I was discharged with stitches, an empty car seat, and no answers.”