Chapter 2
The baby was born forty-eight minutes later.
A girl.
Four pounds, eleven ounces.
Small.
Angry.
Alive.
She cried before the neonatal team carried her from the operating room.
Augusto heard the sound from the corridor.
He had heard men beg for their lives without reacting.
That tiny cry broke something open inside him.
Elise was stable.
Her daughter needed neonatal monitoring because of the early delivery, but the physicians were cautiously optimistic.
When Augusto was finally allowed inside recovery, Elise looked exhausted.
She also looked embarrassed.
That angered him more than anything.
Not at her.
At whatever had taught her embarrassment belonged in this room.
“You don’t apologize,” he said.
“I didn’t.”
“You were about to.”
She looked away.
Augusto pulled a chair beside the bed.
“What happened yesterday?”
Elise was quiet for a long time.
Then she said, “I thought I was overreacting.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone kept saying I was.”
Everyone.
Not someone.
“Who?”
“Travis. His mother.”
Augusto waited.
Elise told him the movement had seemed different two days earlier.
Not gone.
Just less.
She called Dr. Warren’s office.
The receptionist told her to come in that afternoon.
Travis said he would drive her.
An hour later, he told her the office had called back and canceled because the doctor had an emergency.
Elise believed him.
Yesterday morning she called again.
Travis said his mother had already spoken to the office and the doctor wanted Elise resting at home.
“You heard that from Millicent?”
“No.”
“From the doctor?”
“No.”
“Then why did you believe him?”
Elise’s expression tightened.
“Because he’s my husband.”
The sentence hurt Augusto because it sounded too close to something he had believed himself.
Family meant trust.
Spouse meant access.
Rank meant authority.
People who relied on those assumptions rarely noticed when somebody turned them into weapons.
“What happened today?”
“I barely felt her move after lunch.”
“Did you call the doctor?”
“I tried.”
“Tried?”
Elise stared at her hands.
“My phone was gone.”
Augusto’s face changed.
“Gone where?”
“Millicent said I was being obsessive and stressing myself out.”
“She took your phone?”
Elise nodded.
“Travis said we had the family dinner tonight and I was turning everything into a crisis.”
Augusto stood so quickly the chair shifted.
Elise flinched.
He saw it.
That stopped him.
He sat again.
Slower.
“Has he ever hit you?”
“No.”
“Has she?”
“No.”
“Has either of them kept you from leaving before?”
Elise did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
Augusto felt violence rise in him.
He pushed it down.
“What do you want to happen now?”
She looked toward the nursery corridor where her daughter had been taken.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s allowed.”
She started crying.
“I don’t want them near the baby.”
Augusto nodded.
“That I can help with.”
“No, Dad.”
He looked at her.
“I don’t mean your men.”
The correction was quiet.
Important.
“I mean legally.”
Augusto sat back.
His daughter knew him too well.
“All right.”
May you like
He took out his phone.
“Legally.”
