CHAP 5 — The House
Police reached the house before I did.
I watched them arrive through the doorbell camera.
Two officers moved up the porch. Mrs. Alvarez stood on the sidewalk in a raincoat, pointing toward the upstairs window with shaking hands.
Linda answered the door after the third knock.
Her face changed instantly.
From command to concern.
It would have fooled me once.
“My goodness,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
Officer Ramirez asked to see Megan.
Linda blocked the doorway with her body.
“My daughter-in-law is resting. My son overreacted. New fathers panic.”
On the nursery camera, Megan heard the officers and tried to call out.
No sound came.
Her mouth opened, but pain folded her forward.
Officer Ramirez must have heard Noah crying because her tone sharpened.
“Ma’am, step aside.”
Linda did not.
That was when the second officer moved.
Not roughly.
Decisively.
The doorbell camera shook as they entered.
Three minutes later, paramedics came through the front door.
By the time Jordan pulled up at the curb, the street was full of flashing lights.
I ran before the car fully stopped.
An officer blocked me at the porch.
“I’m Ethan Carter. That’s my wife.”
He looked at my face, then at the phone in my hand still showing the live feed.
“Go.”
I found Megan in the bedroom with paramedics kneeling beside her.
Noah was in Mrs. Alvarez’s arms near the hallway, crying but safe.
Megan saw me and broke.
Not loudly.
Her face crumpled with such relief it nearly took my knees out.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I dropped beside her.
“No. No, don’t you dare apologize.”
Her hand gripped my sleeve.
“She said they’d take him.”
“I heard.”
Her eyes widened.
“The camera?”
“All of it.”
A paramedic checked the bleeding and spoke quickly to the other.
Possible postpartum complication.
Transport now.
Linda stood near the doorway with an officer between her and the room.
“This is absurd,” she said. “I was trying to make her stronger. She refused to get up. The baby needed care.”
I turned toward my mother.
For one second, I saw her as two people.
The woman who packed my lunches when I was eight.
The woman who threatened my wife while she bled on the floor.
Only one of them was real now.
“You are done in my house,” I said.
Linda’s mouth opened.
“Ethan—”
“No.”
That word surprised us both.
Maybe because I had never used it on her and meant it.
The paramedics lifted Megan onto a stretcher.
Noah cried again from the hallway.
I looked at Officer Ramirez.
“My mother doesn’t touch either of them.”
May you like
The officer nodded.
“She won’t.”
