Chapter 1 - The Sound Inside the Machine
The baby was crying from inside the washing machine.
For one frozen second, I stood in the doorway with a basket of warm towels against my hip and tried to make the sound belong somewhere else. The laundry room smelled sharply of detergent, bleach, and hot metal. Owen’s cries echoed against the walls, thin and frantic, while Lenora Voss stood over the open washer with both hands gripping the lid.
My sister’s newborn nephew was inside the drum.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
Lenora turned. Her silver hair was pinned neatly at her neck, and her expression held the offended patience of a woman interrupted during prayer. Owen’s face was red. His little fists beat against the damp towel beneath him. The washer was not running, but the door had been closed around him until seconds before I entered.
“He was placed there,” Lenora said. “I didn’t put him there.”
I dropped the basket. Towels spilled across the floor as I crossed the room and yanked the lid higher. Owen’s cries changed the instant my hands reached him. He was warm, breathing, alive. I lifted him against my chest, pressing his cheek beneath my chin while his body trembled against mine.
“Give him to me,” Lenora said.
“Get away from us.”
She moved faster than I expected. Her palm struck my mouth with a crack that snapped my head sideways. Pain burst through my lip. I tasted blood immediately, hot and metallic, while Owen screamed against my shoulder.
The vase beside the utility sink was the first thing my hand found.
I grabbed it and swung without thinking. The ceramic edge struck Lenora across the temple. She stumbled into the wall, and a dark line of blood appeared beside her hairline. For half a breath, neither of us moved.
Then she lunged.
Her fingers caught Owen’s blanket and ripped him from my arms. He shrieked as she dragged him against her chest. I reached for him, but Lenora twisted away, her face twisted with something far more frightening than anger.
“He belongs with me!” she cried.
The front door slammed open.
Daniel stood in the hall, still wearing the dark blue jacket from his construction job. His eyes went first to my swollen mouth, then to his mother holding his screaming son, then to the blood beside her hairline. Something inside him seemed to break loose.
“Put him down.”
Lenora backed toward the kitchen. “Daniel, she attacked me. She came in here screaming and hit me with that vase.”
“Put. Him. Down.”
“You don’t understand what she’s done.”
Daniel crossed the room and knocked his mother sideways with one hard shove. Lenora hit the cabinet and released Owen. Daniel caught his son before he fell, gathered him into his arms, and turned his body protectively away from her.
“Get out of my house,” he said.
Lenora pressed one hand to her temple. A bruise was already darkening beneath her cheekbone. “You’re choosing her?”
“I’m choosing my son.”
She stared at him, breathing heavily. Then her eyes shifted to Owen, and the fury in them softened into something that looked almost like pity.
“You still don’t know what your wife did to get him.”
Daniel went still.
Lenora smiled through the blood on her fingers. “She used a donor because the chemotherapy left you sterile.”
The room seemed to lose all sound except Owen’s desperate breathing.
Only three people on earth were supposed to know that.
Daniel, Elise, and me.
“You’re lying,” Daniel whispered.
“Ask your wife who the biological father is.”
She snatched up her coat from the chair and staggered toward the door. Daniel did not stop her. He was staring at the phone on the kitchen counter, where Elise had left it charging beside folded burp cloths and an unopened pack of diapers.
The phone buzzed inside Lenora’s coat.
Daniel’s face changed.
“That’s Elise’s phone.”
Lenora froze.
He reached into her pocket and took it before she could pull away. The screen lit against his palm. One new message appeared, sent from Elise’s number to an unknown contact.
I got him alone. The next part starts tonight.
May you like
Daniel looked at his mother.
“What did you start?”
