“Whose…” I stammered, looking up into my son’s tear-streaked face. “Ethan, what is happening? Who is this?”
“She’s mine,” he whispered. A single tear finally escaped, cutting a clean, pale line through the dried dirt and sweat on his cheek. “She’s mine, Mom. Her name is Lily.”
I sat back on my heels, the room tilting. My eighteen-year-old son. A father. Marcus’s blood, the dark voice in my head whispered, he’s going to run. He’s going to leave.
“And the mother?” I asked, my mind racing frantically through the girls at his high school, trying to place a pregnant teenager I had somehow missed.
“Chloe,” a weak, trembling voice echoed from the open doorway of the adjacent recovery room.
I turned around, still on my knees, and felt the floor drop out from under me entirely. Leaning heavily against the metal doorframe, pale as a ghost, her hair matted with sweat, and hooked to a rolling IV pole, was Chloe Harrington.
Everyone in Oakridge knew the Harringtons. They were local royalty. They owned the massive textile plant on the edge of town, the sprawling country club, and half the commercial real estate on Main Street. Chloe was their golden child. She was the fiercely intelligent captain of the debate team, the homecoming queen, the girl whose destiny at an Ivy League school was practically written in the stars since birth.
“I tried to hide it,” Chloe sobbed. Her knees buckled slightly, and she gripped the metal IV pole until her knuckles turned white, fighting to stay upright. “I wore oversized sweaters. I told my parents the doctor said I was just gaining weight from the stress of finals. I hid the sickness. But my water broke during AP History. The school called an ambulance… and the hospital called my mother.”
I stood up, my maternal instinct overriding my shock. I took a step toward the trembling girl, intending to help her back to bed. But before I could wrap my arms around her, a sound pierced the quiet of the ward.
It was the unmistakable, sharp, predatory clack-clack-clack of designer heels echoing down the linoleum hallway.
