Chapter 1 - The Jacket on the Chair
Caleb Rowan came home two days early with flowers in one hand and breakfast from Hannah’s favorite Charleston café in the other. He had imagined opening the townhouse door quietly, finding his eight-month-pregnant wife still asleep, and placing the bag on the nightstand before she woke.
Instead, he found another man’s jacket draped across the bedroom chair.
For three seconds, that was all he saw.
Not the broken wedding portrait on the floor. Not the black medical bag lying open beside the window. Not Hannah sitting low against the side of the bed, one hand clutching the sheet and the other pressed beneath the curve of her stomach. Caleb’s eyes went to the jacket first because his mother’s voice had lived inside his marriage long before he understood how deeply it had infected him.
Hannah is too emotional. Hannah is secretive. Hannah knows how to make men feel guilty. Pregnancy gives women excuses.
He had dismissed those comments as his mother being difficult. But difficulty repeated often enough becomes training, and when Caleb stepped into that bedroom, suspicion reached his face before reason did.
“Whose jacket is that?”
The man kneeling beside Hannah turned. He was in his late thirties, sleeves rolled up, calm but intensely focused. A stethoscope lay beside the medical bag. Hannah’s phone was on the floor near his knee, its screen lighting again and again with missed notifications.
Hannah looked at Caleb, and the accusation forming in his mind died before it reached his mouth. Her face was nearly colorless. Her lips were dry. Her breathing came too fast, too shallow.
“Caleb,” she whispered, “I can’t feel the baby moving.”
The flowers slipped from his hand.
The doctor’s voice cut through the room. “She called for medical help. I’m Dr. Elias Morgan. Paramedics are on the way.”
Caleb moved toward Hannah, but Elias lifted one hand.
“Slowly. Don’t crowd her.”
That should have offended Caleb. It didn’t. The fear in Hannah’s eyes was too large for pride.
He dropped to one knee beside her, close enough for her to grip his sleeve.
“I called you,” she said. “Seventeen times.”
“My phone was off during the flight. I came home early.”
May you like
Her eyes closed as another wave of pain tightened through her body.
“Your mother answered.”
