She knew.
My stomach turned.
“Please,” Sophie whispered. “Don’t.”
Penelope smiled. “There it is. That voice. That pathetic little begging voice.” She leaned closer, her pearl earrings swinging beside her sharp jaw. “You should have used it sooner, darling.”
Julian’s cries filled the nursery. My son’s face was red, his tiny fists trembling in the blanket Sophie held around him. He wasn’t just hungry. He wasn’t just fussy.
He was terrified.
I had heard those cries through the walls at night and believed them to be normal newborn distress.
I had let my mother explain them away.
“Babies cry, Nicholas,” she would say, placing a cool hand on my arm. “Sophie becomes hysterical over everything. Don’t let her infect you with her anxiety.”
In that parking garage, with my phone glowing in my hand, I realized my son had been trying to tell me the truth the only way he could.
And I had not listened.
