Chapter 4
I called Lenora.
Not Cedric.
Her.
She answered sounding tired.
“Oswin?”
“Are you alone?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Did your father tell you he was bringing you a baby tonight?”
Silence.
Then:
“What?”
I looked at Eudora.
Her face collapsed.
Good.
I continued.
“A six-day-old boy.”
Lenora’s breathing changed.
“Whose?”
“Verity Fenwicke’s.”
She knew the name.
Everyone in Eudora’s immediate family did.
Another silence.
Then Lenora said something I did not expect.
“No.”
Not confusion.
Recognition.
“No, no, no.”
“What do you know?”
Her father had mentioned an “answer” two days earlier.
Lenora thought he meant another doctor.
A retreat.
Maybe time away.
He told her not to worry about the Vale family.
He would make sure “the house still had a son.”
She believed he meant someday.
Future pregnancy.
Anything except this.
“Is the baby alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is his mother with him?”
“Yes.”
Lenora started crying.
“Keep him there.”
The urgency mattered.
“Oswin, please.”
“I am.”
“Do not let my father bring him here.”
I looked at Eudora.
She heard every word through the speaker.
Lenora continued.
“I don’t want someone else’s child.”
Then corrected herself.
“No.”
Her voice steadied.
“I don’t want someone else’s child stolen for me.”
There.
Grief intact.
Morality intact.
Important.
I asked about Adrian.
“He’s downstairs.”
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Tell him.”
She hesitated.
Not because she feared him.
Because she feared what the plan implied about her.
That she was so unstable adults believed a stolen newborn could be placed in her arms and called healing.
“Tell him,” I repeated.
She whispered:
“I will.”
Then:
“Eudora knew?”
I looked at my fiancée.
“Yes.”
Lenora went silent for a long time.
Finally:
“Put her on.”
Eudora shook her head.
I handed her the phone anyway.
She took it.
“Len—”
Her sister cut her off.
I could not hear every word.
Only fragments.
How dare you.
My son had a name.
Not interchangeable.
She has a name too.
Then Eudora sat down against the hallway wall and cried.
The call ended.
She handed me the phone.
I said:
“Your sister just understood something you didn’t.”
Eudora looked up.
May you like
“What?”
“Her grief does not make another mother disposable.”
