Chapter 6: This Has Gone Far Enough
"Far enough," I repeated.
"You're not well," Ryan said.
"You've just been through a trauma.
Someone has clearly been filling your head with—"
"Ryan." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Sit down."
He didn't sit.
"I'm not going to sit down and be interrogated in my wife's hospital room by some attorney she hired twenty-four hours ago—"
"Mr.
Calloway." Daniel's voice was calm and final.
"Your wife has a video recorded in this hospital's NICU on the night your second son d*ed.
She has a timestamped access log showing a manual alarm silence at your son's incubator at 1:17 a.m.
She has documentation of a life insurance policy you restructured six weeks before the birth, assigning a higher payout to the child who subsequently d*ed.
And she has a record of a forty-minute private meeting between you and Gerald Marsh the morning after." He paused.
"Would you like to keep talking, or would you like to call your attorney?"
Ryan's face had gone the color of old chalk.
"That video," he said.
"How did you—"
"Does it matter?" I said.
He turned to me.
Something in his expression shifted — the flatness cracking, something desperate underneath.
"You don't understand what was happening," he said.
"You were unconscious.
You didn't see what I saw.
The doctors — they told me there were complications.
That one of them wasn't going to make it regardless.
They said if we didn't—"
"Stop," I said.
"I was trying to protect you.
I was trying to make sure at least one of them—"
"Stop talking."
"Claire—"
"Which one did you want?" My voice broke on the last word and I didn't care.
"Which one was worth more to you?
Was it the money?
Was that it?
Was my son's life worth a payout to you?"
Ryan opened his mouth.
He closed it.
He looked at Daniel.
At Paula.
At the bassinet where our surviving son lay sleeping.
"I want an attorney," he said.
"That's the first honest thing you've said," Daniel replied.
Ryan picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.
His hands were shaking — I could see it from across the room, the slight tremor in his fingers as he pulled the jacket on.
At the door he stopped.
He turned back to me.
"I did love you," he said.
"I need you to know that."
"Get out," Paula said, before I could speak.
He left.
The door swung shut behind him and the room was quiet and my son made a small sound in his bassinet and I pressed both hands over my face and breathed.
Paula moved to the edge of the bed.
"You okay?"
"No," I said, from behind my hands.
"That's the right answer."
Daniel was already on his phone.
He stepped toward the window, speaking quietly.
I caught fragments — *warrant*, *insurance fraud*, *NICU records*, *Dr.
Webb*.
I lowered my hands.
My son had kicked one leg free of his blanket.
I reached over and tucked it back.
"Daniel," I said.
He held up one finger, finished his call, and turned.
"The detective I spoke with last night is ready to move," he said.
"But I need you to formally hand over the video and the log.
Today.
Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"There's something else." He came back to the bedside.
"Dr.
Webb.
I spoke with a colleague who knows him.
Webb has been under financial pressure for the past two years — a malpractice settlement that wasn't fully covered by insurance.
He needed money." Daniel looked at me steadily.
"Someone may have offered him a way to get it."
The cold thing in my chest spread wider.
"Ryan paid him," I said.
"We don't have proof of that yet.
But we're looking."
Paula stood up.
"So Ryan didn't just choose which baby to let go," she said.
"He arranged it."
Daniel didn't answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
I looked at the bassinet.
At my son.
At his small curled hands and the rise and fall of his chest.
"Find the proof," I said.
"We will," Daniel said.
His phone rang again.
He glanced at the screen.
"It's the detective." He moved back toward the window.
"Mrs.
Calloway — don't let Ryan back into this room without me present."
He answered the call.
I sat there in the quiet hospital light with my son beside me and Paula's hand on my shoulder and the understanding settling over me like something very heavy and very cold.
Ryan hadn't just let one of my sons d*e.
He had planned it.
May you like
And somewhere in this city, Dr.
Harlan Webb was still walking free.
