Chapter 3 - The Unstable Wife
A freight driver found Vivienne forty minutes later near the service road.
She was barefoot, carrying Sophia inside her blouse to share body heat.
At the hospital, doctors treated both mother and child for exposure. Sophia recovered quickly, but Vivienne remained weak from blood loss, exhaustion, and the fall.
Dominic arrived wearing a wool coat and a devastated expression.
“My wife had some kind of postpartum episode,” he told the emergency physician. “She walked out with the baby.”
His mother, Beatrice Hale, stood beside him.
“She has been unstable since the birth.”
Vivienne tried to speak.
Dominic leaned over the bed as though comforting her.
“Say one word,” he whispered, “and I’ll make sure they take the baby.”
Then he straightened and asked the doctor whether Vivienne needed psychiatric observation.
It was not an improvised lie.
Before Sophia’s birth, Dominic had already contacted a private physician and described Vivienne as paranoid, irrational, and increasingly dangerous.
Beatrice had sent emails to relatives expressing concern about Vivienne’s “mental decline.”
Claire later told investigators Dominic had assured her the marriage was ending because Vivienne was unfit to care for a child.
They were building a story before the blizzard.
The hospital social worker initially treated Dominic as the stable parent.
Vivienne did not argue.
She requested Fiona Vance.
Years earlier, Vivienne had worked under Fiona as a crisis investigator for the state attorney’s office. She knew how quickly truth could be buried when the first official report favored the person with money.
Fiona arrived before dawn.
Vivienne handed her the diaper bag.
“Do not play it here,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because he has someone inside the hospital feeding him information.”
Fiona looked toward the door.
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Vivienne had stopped being Dominic’s wife.
She had become a protected witness.
