Chapter 8
No one moved for a long moment.
The officer outside the room lowered his weapon.
My coffee had spilled across the floor. I hadn’t even felt the cup leave my hand.
Carla came in quietly.
“Helen,” she said, “sit down.”
But I remained standing.
Because inside my mind, memories were rearranging themselves.
Thomas insisting Ellie was unstable.
Thomas telling me not to remove the onesie.
Thomas saying he had “tried to fix it.”
Thomas claiming he didn’t know what happened to the first baby.
And Ellie’s final words.
Ask him what he buried.
At 2:06 a.m., Detective Delaney returned.
His face told me something had happened before his mouth did.
They had gone to the cabin.
Ellie had not been there.
But in a locked shed behind it, they found boxes.
Baby clothes. Medical records. Photographs. A sealed plastic container holding journals older than Mason.
And beneath loose boards in the shed floor, wrapped in a waterproof tarp, they found human remains.
Tiny remains.
The room seemed to vanish around me.
Dr. Patel’s machine hummed.
Mason breathed.
Somewhere, a phone rang.
Detective Delaney’s voice continued, steady but distant.
“We’re waiting for the medical examiner. We cannot confirm identity yet.”
But we all knew.
The first baby.
Ellie’s almost-seven-month child.
The one she said had been stillborn.
The one Thomas said she had “taken care of.”
I sat slowly.
“Did Thomas know?” I asked.
Detective Delaney didn’t answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“We’re looking for him,” he said.
I stared at him.
“Looking for him?”
“He was supposed to remain with officers while guiding them to the service road. At some point in the woods, he fled.”
My hand flew to Mason’s blanket.
“No.”
“He left his phone behind.”
The detective reached into his coat pocket and removed a clear evidence bag.
Inside was Thomas’s phone.
The screen was cracked.
“There was one unsent message on it,” he said.
He placed the bag on the table.
I didn’t want to look.
But I did.
The message was addressed to me.
Mom, I’m sorry. I thought I could keep both stories buried. I thought if no one saw Mason, no one would ask about Noah. Ellie didn’t hurt the first baby. I did. But Mason’s bruise wasn’t mine. Not yet.
The words blurred.
Not yet.
A sound escaped me.
Half gasp.
Half grief.
Detective Delaney watched me carefully.
“Mrs. Russell, who is Noah?”
I could barely speak.
“I don’t know.”
But as I looked at Mason, sleeping with one tiny fist tucked beneath his chin, I remembered something from two months ago.
A visit to the apartment after Mason’s birth.
Ellie asleep in the bedroom.
Thomas standing over the crib, whispering a name.
Not Mason.
Noah.
I had thought I misheard.
I had wanted to mishear.
Outside the room, police radios crackled.
Inside, Mason stirred.
His eyes opened.
For the first time all night, he did not cry.
May you like
He simply looked past me toward the empty corner of the room.
And smiled.
