Chapter 6
I didn’t make a sound.
I just sat there in the dark, my hand clamped over my mouth, the baby kicking like crazy inside me.
The doorknob turned again.
“Emily, I know you’re in there,” Ethan whispered. “Mom sent me. She’s got the court order. If you don’t open up, she’s gonna call the sheriff from Dallas. They’ll be here in an hour. Please. Just talk to me.”
Footsteps moved across the porch.
A shadow passed the window.
Then the side door.
He was checking every entrance.
I heard Aunt Marnie’s bedroom door open down the hall.
Her bare feet on the hardwood.
She didn’t call out.
She just walked to the front door, and I heard the heavy slide of the deadbolt she’d installed last week.
Then her voice, loud and clear.
“Whoever’s out there, I got a loaded twelve-gauge and I’m not afraid to use it. You got three seconds to get off my property before I start shooting.”
Silence.
Then Ethan’s voice, louder now.
“Aunt Marnie, it’s me. Ethan. I just want to talk to Emily.”
“Ethan who?” she said. “I don’t know no Ethan. And I sure don’t know no boy who’d help his mama steal his own wife’s baby. Now get off my land before I call the sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing.”
“Marnie, please—”
“ONE!” Aunt Marnie shouted.
I heard Ethan’s footsteps hurry off the porch.
A car engine started.
Tires spun on gravel.
Silence again.
Aunt Marnie knocked softly on my door.
“Emily? You okay, honey?”
I opened it.
She was standing there in her flannel nightgown, holding an actual shotgun, the barrel pointed safely at the ceiling.
Beth was behind her, awake now, her medical bag open.
“Did he touch anything?” Beth asked.
“Nah,” Aunt Marnie said. “Just scared the bejesus out of us. Sheriff’s on his way.”
The deputy arrived ten minutes later.
He took our statements, checked the perimeter, and promised to park at the end of the driveway for the rest of the night.
But the damage was done.
The second Ethan left, my water broke.
It wasn’t a big gush like in the movies.
Just a slow, warm trickle down my legs.
I looked down.
Then up at Beth.
“Uh,” I said.
Beth was already moving.
“Okay,” she said, calm as anything. “That’s one thing done. Marnie, get the hot water going. Emily, let’s get you into the bed. How far apart are the contractions?”
I realized my belly had been tightening for the last ten minutes.
I’d been too scared to notice.
“Every… seven minutes?” I guessed.
“Perfect. We’ve got time. First babies take forever. You just breathe. We’re gonna have a baby today.”
Labor was nothing like I’d imagined.
It was long.
Slow.
Pain that built and built until I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, then faded just enough to let me catch my breath before starting again.
Aunt Marnie held my hand through every one.
Beth checked the baby’s heartbeat constantly.
“Strong as a little bull,” she’d say, every time. “Perfect.”
At 2:00 PM, Caroline called.
“Ethan just called me,” she said. “Said he went to the house. Said you wouldn’t see him. Also—Diane knows. About the home birth. Ethan told her.”
My blood ran cold.
“How?”
“Ethan said he saw the midwife’s truck when he was leaving. Put it together. Diane’s on her way to Canton right now. She’s bringing a Dallas sheriff’s deputy with her—she pulled strings. And she’s got that court order. Emily, if she gets to that house before the baby’s born, she can have you taken into protective custody and transported to a Dallas hospital. The order says ‘medical custody pending evaluation.’ It’s garbage, but it’s signed by a judge.”
I cried out as a contraction hit.
“Emily?” Caroline said. “Are you okay?”
“Labor,” Beth said, taking the phone. “She’s at seven centimeters. We’re looking at two, maybe three hours. How far out is Diane?”
“Thirty minutes. Maybe less.”
Beth’s jaw tightened.
“Okay. Listen to me. You call the Canton sheriff. Tell him Diane Holt is en route with a Dallas deputy and a fraudulent court order. Tell him to meet her at the county line. Stall her. Any way he can. Speeding. Broken taillight. I don’t care. Buy us time.”
“I’m on it.”
Caroline hung up.
Beth turned to me.
“Okay, Emily. You hear that? We got two hours. Maybe less. I need you to push with everything you’ve got the second I tell you. You understand? That baby has to be born and in your arms before Diane walks through that door. Otherwise, she takes him. Do you understand me?”
I nodded through the tears.
“I understand.”
“Good. Now—Marnie, get behind her. Hold her up. Emily, next contraction, I want you to push as hard as you can. Don’t hold back. Don’t be polite. Scream if you have to. Just get that baby out.”
The next contraction hit.
I pushed.
God, I pushed.
I pushed until my vision blurred, until my legs shook, until I thought every blood vessel in my face would burst.
“Good!” Beth said. “Head’s right there. One more big push, Emily. Come on. He’s almost here.”
I heard sirens in the distance.
Two sets.
One coming fast.
One moving to intercept.
“Diane’s close,” Aunt Marnie said, her voice tight. “Sheriff’s trying to cut her off.”
“Push, Emily!” Beth shouted. “NOW!”
I screamed.
I pushed with every ounce of strength I had left.
And then—
Sliding.
Warmth.
And the loudest, angriest, most beautiful cry I had ever heard in my life.
Beth caught him.
She wiped his face.
Clamped the cord.
And placed him, screaming and pink and perfect, directly onto my chest.
“He’s here,” Beth said, her voice shaking. “Ten fingers. Ten toes. Seven pounds, four ounces. Perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect.”
I held my son.
He was warm.
He was alive.
He was mine.
I looked up.
Aunt Marnie was crying.
Beth was crying.
Even the deputy, who’d let himself in through the back door when he heard the cry, had tears in his eyes.
“Congratulations, ma’am,” he said. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy,” I whispered. “His name is William.”
Then we heard cars in the driveway.
Lots of them.
Slamming doors.
Shouting.
“Diane’s here,” Aunt Marnie said, grabbing the shotgun again.
Beth wrapped William tighter to my chest and stepped between me and the door.
“Nobody takes this baby,” she said. “Not while I’m breathing.”
The front door burst open.
Diane stood in the doorway.
Expensive suit. Perfect hair. Face like thunder.
Behind her: a Dallas deputy in uniform, hand on his gun. Behind him: Ethan, pale as a ghost.
Diane’s eyes swept the room.
They landed on me.
On the baby in my arms.
May you like
Her smile was cold.
“Too late, Emily,” she said, holding up a piece of paper. “I have a court order. Hand over the child.”
