Chapter 3: What Robert Said Next
I pointed at the phone.
Robert moved toward the desk faster than I'd seen him move in years.
His hand came down over the screen.
"Don't," I said.
"It's nothing—"
"Pick it up." My voice was steady in a way that frightened even me.
"Answer it.
Right now.
On speaker."
He didn't move.
"Robert.
Pick up the phone."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he picked it up and pressed the green button.
"Dana." His voice came out flat.
A beat of silence on the line.
Then Dana's voice, slightly breathless.
"Did she find out?"
The room tilted.
Robert's jaw tightened.
"I'll call you back."
"Robert, I need to know if she—"
He ended the call.
Neither of us spoke.
The phone sat face-down on the desk between us like something neither of us wanted to touch.
"Sit down," he said.
"I will not sit down."
"Please—"
"Tell me where my daughter is."
He pressed both hands flat on the desk.
His shoulders dropped.
And in that moment, before he said a single word, I knew.
I had known since Willie said the bundle was crying.
I had known and I had refused to know, because knowing meant everything I had built for eleven years was a lie.
"She's alive," Robert said.
The sound that came out of me was not a word.
"She's alive," he said again, as if saying it twice would soften it.
"She's healthy.
She's safe."
I gripped the doorframe.
"Where."
"Dana has her.
She's been—"
"Dana has been raising my daughter for three weeks." It wasn't a question.
I said it out loud to make it real.
"You told me she d*ed.
You held me while I screamed.
You let me grieve.
You let Willie grieve."
"I can explain—"
"You let your eight-year-old son believe his sister was gone." My voice cracked on the last word.
"He has been saving his lunch money, Robert.
He thought if he saved enough he could buy her back."
Robert's face collapsed.
For a moment I almost felt something for him.
Then I remembered Dana's voice on the phone.
Did she find out.
Past tense.
A plan already in motion.
A conversation they had already had.
"How long?" I said.
"How long were you planning this?"
He was quiet.
"How long?"
"Six months."
The word landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Six months.
Before the birth.
Before the nursery.
Before Willie spent three weeks choosing a stuffed rabbit.
They had been planning this while I was still pregnant.
"Why." I couldn't form a longer question than that.
May you like
Robert finally looked up.
"Because I didn't think you were fit to raise her."
