Chapter 4 - The First Baby
Emily had been pregnant once before Chloe.
Only Liam, Anna, and Emily’s parents knew. The pregnancy ended at eleven weeks. The doctor called it a spontaneous loss. Emily remembered blood, fluorescent hospital lights, Liam holding her hand, and Anna crying in the hallway.
She also remembered a detail she had never questioned.
The hospital had no record of the emergency visit.
At the time, Liam said the records must have been filed under her maiden name. Later, when Emily asked again, he became angry and accused her of torturing herself.
Now Detective Alvarez requested every medical record connected to Emily’s name, birth date, and known addresses.
There was nothing.
No emergency admission. No ultrasound. No laboratory report.
Only a pharmacy record for a prescription that Emily did not remember filling.
Misoprostol.
Emily read the drug information twice before the meaning settled inside her.
The detective was careful. “The prescription alone does not prove you took it or that anyone gave it to you.”
“It proves someone wanted it available.”
The prescription had been authorized by Dr. Nathan Bell, a physician who had died in a boating accident two years later. The pickup signature resembled Liam’s.
Liam asked to speak with Emily.
She refused.
He asked again through his attorney.
She refused again.
Marcus refused to answer questions without counsel, but he gave police consent to search the Lake Rainer cabin. The property belonged to Reed Development, though Marcus claimed he had not visited in years.
Detective Alvarez drove Emily there the next morning.
The cabin stood beyond a road narrowed by pine trees and neglect. Its windows were boarded. Moss covered the roof. The lake behind it was perfectly still.
Emily’s body remembered before her mind did.
The front steps.
The iron handle.
A deep scratch in the hallway wall.
She had been here more than once.
Inside, officers photographed everything. Dust lay thick over the furniture, except for a narrow path leading to the basement door.
The brass key from Marcus’s boot opened it.
At the bottom of the stairs, they found a room with no windows.
A child’s wooden crib stood against one wall.
It was too old for Chloe.
A blue file rested on a desk.
Anna’s blue file.
Inside were copies of Emily’s medical information, fertility treatment invoices she had never seen, and photographs of a newborn child wrapped in a yellow blanket. The baby’s face was visible in only one image.
Emily stared at the photograph until the room tilted.
The child had a crescent-shaped birthmark above the left eyebrow.
The same birthmark Chloe had.
But the date printed on the photograph was three years before Chloe was born.
“This is impossible,” Emily whispered.
Detective Alvarez studied the papers. “Unless the date is wrong.”
“It isn’t.”
At the bottom of the file lay a birth certificate.
Mother: Emily Carter.
Father: Liam Carter.
Child: Female, unnamed.
Status: Live birth.
Emily gripped the desk.
Her first baby had not died.
Someone had taken her.
A sound came from the floor above.
Officers shouted.
Footsteps ran across the cabin.
Detective Alvarez drew her weapon and pushed Emily behind the basement wall. The back door slammed. An engine started outside.
Police reached the yard in time to see a dark truck disappearing through the trees.
On the basement stairs, the intruder had dropped a small plastic bag.
Inside was Chloe’s hospital bracelet.
Not from her birth.
From three nights earlier.
Emily’s phone rang.
The caller ID showed Liam’s number, though his phone was in police custody.
She answered.
A woman whispered, “Stop digging, or the child you still have will join the child you lost.”
Then the line went dead.
At the cabin, Emily walked through the upstairs bedroom after officers cleared it. The curtains were the same faded green she remembered. A water stain spread across the ceiling like a map. On the floor beside the bed, technicians found traces of an old sedative in the cracks between boards.
Memory returned in fragments: Liam saying she needed rest; Marcus lifting her; a woman arguing downstairs; the sensation of cold air against her face. She remembered asking for Anna. Someone told her Anna was not there.
The crib in the basement bore tooth marks along one rail. A child had stood there long enough to chew the wood. Forensic testing later showed the marks came from more than one child over several years.
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The discovery transformed the cabin from the site of a single crime into part of a system. Emily touched the crib only once. The wood was smooth where small hands had gripped it. She imagined mothers waking without babies and being told their grief had confused them.
Before leaving, she looked across the lake where Anna’s car had been found. The water reflected the sky without revealing anything beneath it.
