Chapter 3
I stood up so fast the chair scraped across the floor.
“I’m going to kill her.”
Hannah jumped up and grabbed my arm.
“Daniel, no! If you go after her now, she’ll know we have proof. She’ll move the baby. Or worse. We have to do this smart. We have to get the police involved.”
I paced the room.
My heart was hammering.
Every breath burned.
“The police? My mother has friends everywhere. She’s on the PTA. She volunteers at the hospital. She knows the chief of police personally. They’ll take one look at her and call me a grieving widower who’s lost his mind.”
“Then we get more proof. Hard proof. We go to the hospital tomorrow. We get the real birth records. We find the doctor who delivered him. We find the nurses. Someone had to see something.”
She was right.
As much as I wanted to drive to my parents’ house and wrap my hands around Diane’s throat, my son came first.
Finding him.
Bringing him home.
That was the only thing that mattered.
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, we go to the hospital. But tonight… I need to go back to my parents’ house. I need to play the part. Let her think I’m still broken. Still clueless.”
Hannah nodded.
“Be careful. She’s smarter than she looks. And she’s already killed once. She won’t hesitate to do it again.”
I drove to my parents’ house an hour later.
The lights were on in the kitchen.
I parked down the street and sat there for five minutes, breathing.
Preparing.
Then I got out and walked up the driveway.
Diane opened the door before I even knocked.
“Daniel! I was so worried about you. Where did you go after the cemetery? I called and called.”
She pulled me inside.
The house smelled like her cooking.
Like the chocolate chip cookies she used to make me after school.
“Just drove around,” I said, letting my voice sound hollow. “Needed to be alone for a while.”
“Of course you did, baby. Come in. Sit down. I made your favorite. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. You haven’t eaten a real thing in days.”
She fussed over me like nothing was wrong.
Like she hadn’t spent the last week planning my wife’s murder and my son’s abduction.
My father was sitting at the kitchen table.
A half-empty glass of whiskey in front of him.
He looked up when I came in.
“Hey, son.”
“Hey, Dad.”
I sat down.
Diane piled food onto a plate and set it in front of me.
I forced myself to take a bite.
It tasted like ash.
“So,” Diane said, sitting across from me. “What are you going to do now? The house in the Heights—are you going to sell it? It must be so hard, being there without Emily and the baby.”
There it was.
The first probe.
She wanted me gone.
Wanted me to sell the house and leave town so she could cover her tracks.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring at my plate. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Well, you should. I already talked to a realtor friend of mine. She can get you top dollar. And then… maybe you should go back to Abu Dhabi. Get away from all these bad memories. Start fresh.”
I looked up at her.
“Start fresh? Without my wife? Without my son?”
My voice cracked.
Part acting.
Part real.
Diane reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
Her skin was soft. Well-cared for.
“I know it’s hard, baby. But Emily wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life grieving. She’d want you to be happy. To move on.”
I stared at her hand on mine.
I wanted to pull away.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I let my shoulders slump.
“Maybe you’re right. I just… I need a few days. Okay?”
“Of course. Whatever you need. Your father and I are here for you. Always.”
She smiled.
Warm. Loving.
The smile of a mother who would burn the world down to get what she wanted.
Later that night, they showed me to the guest room.
I closed the door and locked it.
Then I pulled out Emily’s phone.
I went through her call log.
The last number she had called before she died wasn’t Hannah.
It wasn’t 911.
It was a number I didn’t recognize.
A Dallas area code.
I wrote it down.
Then I went through her notes app.
Page after page of information.
Names. Dates. Dollar amounts.
My mother’s gambling debts.
The names of the men she owed money to.
And at the bottom, a name.
Margaret and Richard Hale.
Dallas, Texas.
$350,000.
Baby Boy Miller.
I stared at the screen.
That was my son.
He was in Dallas.
With a couple named Hale.
Who had paid three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for him.
I slipped the phone under my pillow and lay in the dark.
Somewhere in this house, my mother was sleeping.
Dreaming about the life she was going to have now that her debts were paid.
And somewhere in Dallas, my son was sleeping in a stranger’s arms.
I closed my eyes.
I’m coming, I promised him.
Daddy’s coming.
The next morning, I woke up early.
Diane was already in the kitchen, making breakfast.
“Morning, baby. Sleep okay?”
“Not really.”
“I bet. I made pancakes. Blueberry, just how you like them.”
“Thanks, Mom. Listen, I’m going to run some errands today. Go by the house. Pick up a few things of Emily’s. I think… I think I need to have something of hers to keep.”
Diane’s face softened.
“Of course you do. That’s a wonderful idea. Take all the time you need.”
I left the house and drove straight to Hannah’s apartment.
She was already waiting by the door.
“Find anything?”
“Names. A couple in Dallas. Margaret and Richard Hale. Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And a phone number with a Dallas area code.”
Hannah’s eyes went wide.
“That’s it? That’s who has him?”
“Looks like it. But first, we’re going to the hospital. We need the official records. Something the police can’t ignore.”
We drove to Houston Methodist.
The same hospital where Emily had supposedly died.
I walked up to the medical records desk with my driver’s license and our marriage certificate.
“I’m Daniel Miller. I need the medical records for my wife, Emily Miller. And our son.”
The woman behind the desk typed into her computer.
Her forehead creased.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Miller. I’m not showing a birth certificate for a child of Emily Miller. Only a death certificate for Mrs. Miller. Maternal mortality, fetal demise.”
I leaned across the counter.
“That’s impossible. I have the hospital bracelet. He was born. Two days before the funeral.”
The woman looked uncomfortable.
“Mr. Miller, I understand this is a difficult time—”
“Look up the bracelet number,” Hannah said, stepping beside me. “BABY BOY MILLER. Medical record number 472-891.”
The woman typed again.
She went still.
Her face went pale.
“I… I need to speak to my supervisor. Excuse me.”
She got up and hurried down the hallway.
Five minutes later, a man in a suit came out.
Dr. Chen. Head of Obstetrics.
“Mr. Miller. I’m so sorry for your loss. If you could come with me to my office, we can discuss this privately.”
We followed him down the hall.
His office was cold and sterile.
He closed the door and sat behind his desk.
“Mr. Miller, about the record you found… there seems to have been a clerical error. That bracelet was from a different patient. A Jane Doe who gave up her child for adoption around the same time. Your wife’s child was, unfortunately, stillborn.”
I stared at him.
“Bullshit.”
Dr. Chen blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“I said bullshit. My wife filmed videos. She named names. She said people at this hospital were paid to make her son disappear. How much did my mother give you? Ten thousand? Twenty?”
Dr. Chen’s face turned red.
“That is a serious accusation, Mr. Miller. I’m going to ask you to leave.”
“Not until I see the real records. Not until I talk to the nurse who was in the room when Emily gave birth. What was her name? Maria? Maria Gonzalez?”
I had seen the name in Emily’s notes.
Dr. Chen went very still.
“Maria Gonzalez no longer works here.”
“Why? Did she quit? Or did my mother pay her to quit too?”
I stood up and leaned across his desk.
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen, Doctor. Either you give me the real records, and you tell me where my son is… or I go to every news station in this city. I tell them how Houston Methodist sells babies to the highest bidder. How you helped a murderer cover up her crime. You think your career survives that? You think this hospital survives that?”
Dr. Chen stared at me.
His hands were shaking.
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a thick manila envelope.
He slid it across the desk.
“If this gets out,” he whispered. “My life is over.”
I opened the envelope.
Birth records.
Apgars.
Footprints.
My son.
Seven pounds, two ounces.
Twenty inches long.
Perfect.
Healthy.
Alive.
And on the discharge papers, under “released to”:
Margaret Hale.
May you like
Signed by Dr. Chen.
And co-signed by Diane Miller.
