My husband d:ied four days before I delivered twins. Then my family barged into my hospital room, my father slapped me, took my newborn son, and placed him in my brother’s arms. They believed they had broken a grieving widow—until I pressed the hidden button beneath my bed.
My husband, Ethan Walker, was killed four days before I gave birth to our twins.
A drunk driver drifted across the center line outside Boise, Idaho, and stole him from me in under three seconds. When the police officer came to my door, I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant, swollen, exhausted, and folding the two tiny yellow blankets Ethan had personally picked out.
Four days after that, I lay in a hospital bed with stitches across my abdomen, an IV in my arm, and two newborn babies sleeping beside me.
My daughter, Lily, had Ethan’s dark hair.
My son, Noah, had his mouth.
I was still murmuring their names when the door flew open.
My father, Richard Bell, came in first like a storm. Behind him were my mother, Denise, my older brother, Mark, and Mark’s wife, Carla. None of them had come to see me during my pregnancy. None of them had called after Ethan died, except to ask whether the life insurance had “come through yet.”
“You ungrateful little witch,” my father hissed.
I tried to reach for the call button, but my body was too weak.
