Chapter 3

Caleb came the next morning. He looked like he had not slept. His black suit was wrinkled, his jaw dark with stubble, his eyes red. He stood at the foot of my bed with his hands in his pockets and did not sit down.

“The sheriff took a report,” he said. “I had to tell them what I saw.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw Rae over you.”

“You saw her trying to stop the bleeding.”

His jaw worked. “She said she fell.”

“Your mother wrote that sentence.”

He flinched like I had slapped him. “My mother was in the hallway. She heard the crash and came running. She found you and Rae. She called for help.”

“She didn’t call anyone. She stood over me and waited.”

“Laney.”

“Caleb, she pushed me into that table.”

He turned away and looked out the window at the Atlanta skyline. He was thirty-five years old and he had buried his father six weeks ago, and he wanted his mother to be the woman who had raised him. I understood that. I also understood that wanting it did not make it true.

“Rae has been drinking again,” he said. “Maybe not drinking. But something. She was the only one home when Dad died.”

“That doesn’t mean she hurt him.”

“I know.” His voice cracked. “But she’s not reliable.”

“She’s not the one who pushed me.”

He didn’t answer.

Later that morning, a deputy from Cade’s Crossing came to take my statement. Deputy Hobbs was a heavy man with a soft voice and kind eyes, and he had known Deborah Whitfield his whole life. His mother’s funeral had been at Whitfield & Sons. Deborah had handled the flowers and the food and the folding of the memorial cards.

I told him Deborah shoved me. I told him Rae was coached. I told him the camera recorded it.

He wrote it down. He asked if I had the footage.

I said Deborah deleted it.

He asked if I had proof.

I said I had a still frame.

“Can you show me?”

I looked at my phone. I thought about Deborah’s hands on my shoulders. I thought about Rae’s face going white. I thought about Milo, Rae’s little boy, asleep in Deborah’s house.

“Not yet,” I said.

Deputy Hobbs nodded slowly. “Mrs. Whitfield, I have to tell you, we have conflicting statements. Caleb says he saw Rae over you. Rae says you fell. Deborah says she came in after. The doctor says you have a fractured hip and a placental abruption, which is serious, but he can’t say how it happened.”

“He can say someone shoved me.”

“He can say you suffered blunt-force trauma.”

“Same thing.”

He closed his notebook. “I’ll do what I can.”

By the time he left, Deborah had already called the family. My phone lit up with texts from cousins I had never met. They all said the same thing in different words: We’re praying for you. Rae has always been troubled. It’s a mercy the baby is okay.

That afternoon, Deborah moved Milo into her house.

Caleb told me on the phone. He said Rae was not fit to care for him right now, and Deborah had the room, and it was only temporary. He said Milo needed stability. He said Rae was not answering her phone.

I lay in the hospital bed with my hand on my belly and thought about Rae’s cracked screen and the plastic dinosaur in her jacket pocket.

“Don’t let her keep that boy,” I said.

“It’s not like that,” Caleb said.

It was exactly like that.

That night, the contractions came back. They pumped me full of magnesium, and my vision blurred, and I dreamed of the arrangement room. In the dream, Deborah stood over me with a pen and a piece of paper, writing lines for a choir.